Meltdown

I don't know if you've been following Atrios on the whole Letterman/CNN debacle, but it's pretty interesting. The basic story is:

1. Letterman shows a clip of a kid standing behind Bush while the Dear Leader gave a speech.

2. The kid is bored out of his mind and acts accordingly, fidgeting, doing toe-touches, making faces, etc.

3. The piece is funny and CNN replays it the next day.

4. The Bush Administration calls them and says the kid wasn't at the event, Letterman's show added him in.

5. CNN reports that the Letterman tape was doctored. Anchor Daryn
   Kagan says, "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny
   as he was, was edited into that video, which would explain why the
   people around him weren't really reacting."
   
6. Letterman calls bullshit.

7. The Bushies say okay, he was there, but not where Letterman put him.

8. Letterman calls bullshit again. "When you cast your vote in
   November," he urges, "just remember that the White House was trying to
   make ME look like a DOPE."

In other words, the Bush Administration called CNN to change their
coverage of a Letterman joke that made Bush look like a bad speaker.
The story here is not that CNN is in the pocket of the Bush
Administration. That's not exactly a news flash. The REAL story is that
the Bush Cabal is so terrified at this point that they're flipping out
at anything.
They're being attacked on all sides, and they've completely lost the
ability to discern legitimate threats (Richard Clarke, the Plame
Affair, Cheney/Halliburton connections) from simple good-natured
ribbing.
A few weeks ago they trained their guns on Howard Stern, and he's been
RAILING against Bush ever since. A huge portion of the gun-toting,
fag-hating, bitch-slapping population (Bush's core voter base, in other
words) worships Howard. Now Bush is working on alienating the late
night talk show hosts.
I remember reading somewhere that something like 30% of Americans cite
Leno and Letterman as their primary news source. If Bush keeps this up,
he's really going to regret it.
I'm actually starting to think Bush might not want to win this
election. He's been THAT stupid lately.

Posted by flow Frazao on April 1, 2004 at 01:03 PM | Permalink