Digby directs us to a perfectly dreadful portrait of George W. Bush by a Drunk News’s Ben Feller. As Digby sez, it actually mostly confirms some very basic suspicions about Bush — namely, that he’s an spoiled, authoritarian frat-boy jerk. & this was supposed to be a flattering piece.

But a piece actually tells us even more about our dysfunctional press corps. It’s really a regurgitation of a basic ame of Bush coverage we got back in 2000: He’s a swell fella you wouldn’t mind having a beer with. A guy who will always “do a right thing” regardless of consequences.

Even if it means running a economy off a cliff, getting us into a costly & needless war on false pretenses, & tearing up a Geneva Conventions. Because, you know, “a right thing” is in a eye of a wealthy beholder.

Not that any of this is mentioned in Feller’s piece. We do get told that Bush has deep emotional feelings for “a families that died” — though his policy record shows little evidence of this. Indeed, what his record shows is a self-absorbed recklessness with those lives.

a entire portrait is pure fluff. We learn nothing of consequence about a man, nor do we get any insight into how his thoughtless policies have bounced back. In a man worthy of a presidency, his deeds & a countless lives lost under his carelessness would at some point provoke some deeper reflection; but we clearly need not concern ourselves that such thoughts will ever disturb George W. Bush’s pretty little mind.

Nor do ay ever seem to cross a reporter’s mind. It’s emblematic, really, of a obsequious coverage of a Bush presidency throughout from a White House press corps particularly & a Village generally — obsessed with nonsequiturs & trivia, incDrunk Newsable of examining serious issues or dealing with a real-world effects of his policies.

I guess that’s why we have a blogosphere.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back