Distraction Attraction

Prof. Jay Rosen @ PressThink adds depth to my belief that the White House is having a field day with the OCD-ification of the press regarding such meaningless sideshows as the Harry Whittington Slow Train (or is it a short bus)? Read his insightful post today in which he expands up his theory of the post-Watergate/Vietnam-era “rollback” strategy as set in motion by our powermonger-in-command, Big Time:

[The White House] has a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country, but also less of a wild card in fighting enemies of the state in the permanent war on terror.?

A host of worthwhile links are embedded in Rosen’s post today. If only the WH Press Corps would bother with reading the latest Foreign Affairs instead of drumming up more fodder for Entertainment Tonight:

How does it hurt Bush if for three days this week reporters are pummeling Scott McClellan over the details of when they were informed about Cheney?s hunting accident? That?s three days this week they won?t be pummeling Scott McClellan over the details of this article from Foreign Affairs by Paul R. Pillar, the ex-CIA man who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year.Here?s what the article says: ?During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? the Bush administration disregarded the community?s expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.? Pillar was there; if anyone would know he would.

Indeed, Cheney is riding high into the weekend on the cthulu of attention he’s received since shooting his way out of his bunker.

Not only can the #2 American public figure drink beer and shoot up his friends, he saw in Wednesday’s chummy interview with Fox News‘ Brit Hume a golden opportunity to claim lawful authority to declassify, for example, the identity of certain covert CIA operatives.

Steve Clemons debunks Cheney’s claims (slipped into his interview with Brit Hume on Fox News yesterday) in orderly fashion at the Washington Note.

Even George Will is fed up with the administrations utter disrespect for the Constitution.

Terrorism is not the only new danger this era…. The administration, in which mere obduracy sometimes serves as political philosophy, pushes the limits of assertion while disdaining collaboration. This faux toughness is folly….