Looks like he's gonna love them with his fist...

In a sign that the disturbingly disfunctional relationship between the Bush White House and the media may be starting to crank (and hopefully the media will pull a Farah Fawcett, Burning Bed moment), Tony Snow slaped aroundThe New York Times, USA Today and CBS News. The shocking part is that they sort of slapped back.

It's not much, but it's something.

Of course, it would have been better if Axelrod said something like, "It is ludicrous for a Press Secretary to send out memos of a combative and critical nature before he has even held his first press conference. Furthermore, it is shockingly appalling that this secretary would think they have the power to control or even suggest what the journalistic institutions of this country print or cover. As members of a free media, we serve an important role as a watch dog on governmental operations and ensure that an administration does not run out of control and become a threat to not only the country itself, but the world at large. Our journalistic integrity demands that we continue to publish the truth and if Mr. Snow would rather we publish happy shiny facts then we suggest his administration starts producing more of them and less scandal, deceit and bad policy."

Axelrod might have gotten all the way to "journalistic integrity" before he burst out laughing and said, "No, no, I'm just kidding, Tony, please don't kick us out of the White House Press Slops Trough. Please! I'll blow you for coverage!"

Addition: Looks like Snow's not only mean, but an idiot.

So, after a week of bitching out the papers, Snow admits he's, "the new kid on the block," and he's, "not fully briefed on the issue." So he turns it over to Dana Perino, who hits like a girl, so he takes it back with the attitude that talking points read in a loud, aggressive voice are much more satisfactory than real answers.

Don't worry, Tony. I'm sure no one will ask you any questions that are too hard for you to give a bright rosy answer to at your first offical press briefing on Monday. After all, in any abusive relationship, there are two people involved.

And the next ball to be dropped by the Dems

Since Dean has decided to become the DNC's whore in exchange for a title and his soul, saying that impeaching Bush would be a bad idea during "wartime" and constantly misquoting the Demcratic platform on the issue of same-sex marriage, I'm sure he'll be more than willing to let the fact that the Bush wiretapping extends to TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS.

Wow, who knew those sleeper cells were so widespread?

Dodging a new round of criticism, he claims the wiretapping was legal and, frankly, we'll have to take is word on it because the NSA decided NOT TO GIVE THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PROBE THE SECURITY CLEARANCE TO INVESTIGATE IT.

Effective, I must admit, if politically abhorent and a slap in the face of everything this country is supposed to stand for.

I'm sure WatergateGate will also blow over or be dropped/ignored by the Dems and even the continuing flood of idictments of standing Republicans, like Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher for conspiracy to hire/fire both personal staff and government workers on the basis of political affiliations, will slip through the enormous cracks in the Democratic party causing them to not capitalize on public opinion and lose 2006 elections as well as the 2008.

In a time when even conservative Republicans are getting fed up with Bush, it seems his only support is coming from Democrats who have proved themselves so spineless as to be unable to mount an offensive when God himself seems to be handing it to them on a silver platter. I mean, really, what does it take for people to stand up to this administration? Will Bush have to actually broadcast a live television special where he sodomizes an Iranian child while performing a Satanic ritual, drinking a 40 and wearing a T-shirt saying "Fuck Poor People, My Daddy's Rich"? Even then, I'm sure Dean would caution against precipitous action.

The whole thing just makes me sick.

Pitt slaps Cohen: Wheeee!

See, Richard Cohen has managed to get a vague infamy out of the whole complaining about Colbert business. I'm not sure I would want this sort of press, though.

William Rivers Pitt tells Dick where the anger comes from...and exactly where he can go...

Best run-on sentece ever written:

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children's future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.

The Fugitive II: Richard Cohen runs away crying like a little girl.

Okay, Stephen Colbert did a journalist's job by drawing attention to the shortcomings of both the presidency and those who cover it at the WHCD. We all know this. Many of us have seen the videos. In response, some of the chided press responded by basically saying, "Well, that's not funny," forgetting that the denial defence didn't prevent them from getting their asses kicked in junior high, either. Leading the vanguard of the self-appointed humor elite was Richard Cohen.

In order to be taken seriously, Cohen informed his readership that he's known as "a funny guy" in "certain circles" , frequently being demanded to produce chuckle product on the spot by cruel elementary teachers who had no idea that their merciless tactics would backfire and convince Richard As A Boy he was actually funny. Cohen then responds to Colbert's address with a critique so unfunny that Lenny Bruce immediately took control of every medium in the country and demanded that someone slap the hell out of him.

Needless to say, the blogosphere (I'm never sure if that word has the second "O" or not) reacted. They were already hoisting Colbert on their digital shoulders and parading him around the Intraweb's equivalent of the town square. Colbert accepts the adulation and acrimony with equal grace. He can afford to, when the blogosphere and, evidently, anyone with email capability was forming a "digital lynch mob" to deal with Cohen and his ilk.

Now, as a funny guy, you would think Cohen would be used to jokes going bad and the tide of the room turning against him and know how to deal with it. Perhaps this is just more proof that Cohen is about as funny as an AIDS patient with Avian Flu and a firm belief in the Bush Medicaid plan.

Cohen was overwhelmed with nearly 3,500 emails. As Cohen is obviously capable of huge generalizations, he admits he only looked into a few of the emails, saw they were less than congratulatory and promptly decided that the Intraweb was out to string him from the limb of the nearest logic tree. Still, you can understand how upset Cohen was and probably excuse his fear of the email swarm (over 2,000 more than he got for an article on Gore a week before) since, every time he opened an email, he got "a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face." Sewage like "You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face," from Patrick Manley or "Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER" from the mononomic Ron.

Wow, that, um...stings?

Now Cohen is hunted like an animal through the twists and turns of cyberspace, hiding out in rarely visted websites, just hoping to find an electronic equivalent of the Underground Railroad which will take him to safety where if people disagree with you they have the decency to not tell you about it.

Which, come to think of it, would have been pretty good advice for Cohen in the first place.

There was a time when people could take the heat. If you wanted to say something critical about someone, you did with the understanding that others could say something critical back and there was no need to go around flagrantly using words like "vituperation". Cohen was critical of a critique and, somehow, thinks that it should end with him, that no one then has a right to be critical of him in turn.

Actually, you know what? That IS pretty funny.

Even better, Cohen then uses the imagined cybermob calling for his head as an indictment of the Democratic party, warning that the anger so obviously felt by the entire party will lead to their demise in 2008. Indeed, his own flame fest is merely the pyre of the martyred seer, barbequed for simply telling the world of Colbert's "unfunniness" and "irrelevance".

This is, of course, the second funny point in Cohen's post, the idea of a WP columnist calling ANYONE else out on their numbers...

In the end, Richard, I am unconvinced. Unconvinced that 3500 emails expressing varying degrees of agreement and disagreement with your opinion of Colbert proves that a simmering hatered lurks just below the surface of the Democratic Left. Unconvinced that the blogosphere and emailers really care about you enough to invest the sort of time it takes to find a rope and a convenient tree limb. And yes, at the end, still utterly unconvinced you are funny.

See, Dick, someone who was funny would have said something snappy in response to all this vitriolic electricity. Something like, "I may not know funny, but since I've accepted Bush as my personal saviour, I do know your address and your movement patterns, so watch your ass." Instead, you chose to whine about it in a flustered attempt to retain your relevance and composure. Basically, you proved Colbert's point.

So, really, I guess the joke's on you.