Listics

Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair Columnist, played the pundit panel game on CNN tonight and told the story clearly and concisely. “It was a take down.”

While Jeff Greenfield and Mickey Kaus camped it up with shared assertions regarding bloggers and “the story,” Wolff tried to help them re-focus on the actual story: Dan Rather and CBS News were set-up by the Republicans. The truth about GWB’s character, his unfitness for office, the simple-minded self-centered behavior patterns and the odor of misspent privilege that clings to him like flies in the latrine were packaged nicely in the journo-ju jitsu that turned Dan Rather into the patsy and made GWB look like a poor little put-upon rich boy.

We’re a nation of enablers and co-dependents and Georgie is our pet addict.

I’m intepreting Wolff’s implicit message broadly, but I’m also inferring that Jeff Greenfield, who rode the train that carried Bobby Kennedy home to his final rest, agreed. And that inference is based on a flash cut of the camera to his raised eyebrow when Wolff was talking. Greenfield’s a pro, and he couldn’t openly ride that train with Wolff, but you could see it in the nuanced expression… the pros know. It was a take-down. Discrediting CBS was just the icing on the cake. The story about Bush got buried. The new story about gullible Dan smothered it.

Mission accomplished. The truth was buried even deeper than before. Now, who took Rather down, and when it comes out, who gets busted?

Reprise… just one more time: This has nothing to do with the bloggers. This has nothing to do with the documents. This is all about burying the truth so deep it can’t be excavated until after the Bush inauguration in January.