America's Wolfowitz Problem

*Across the Liberal blogosphere (and in a few precincts of the True Conservative ™ blogosphere still trying to play catch-up with where Liberals have been all along without wearing the tee-shirt), the same question: What the fuck is a disgraced, war-mongering sociopath (and disgraced former World Bank President, because every Neocon has got to get paid!) like Paul Wolfowitz doing on teevee? And why the fuck is he being treated like an "expert" on anything except how to lie and fuck up over and over and over again in ways that cost this country thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and get away with it?

And so, once again I feel compelled to gently (and, to be honest, uselessly) remind my fellow Dirty Hippies that this is the wrong question.

Because Paul Wolfowitz does not get on "Meet the Press" or "Guess That Soup! with Shuck Todd" by wandering in off the street and grabbing the chair.  Actual human beings at NBC/MSNBC with phone numbers and addresses are making affirmative decisions to put this disgraced, war-mongering sociopath on the air over and over again, while other actual human beings at NBC/MSNBC with phone numbers and addresses are making other affirmative decisions not to ask this disgraced, war-mongering sociopath anything remotely like the most basic, substantive questions which any actual journalist would ask.

(Those of us who are doomed to remember the past also vividly recall the last time Dirty Hippies started talking openly about the bloody ordure of failure and madness and slaughter of which Mr. Wolfowitz reeks,  fellow Neocons like David Brooks went straight for the long knives, angrily dismissing criticism of The Great Man as nothing but anti-Semitism and the "socialism of fools".

It's Back
The socialism of fools has returned to vogue not just in the Middle East and France, but in the American left and Washington.
11:00 PM, FEB 20, 2003
...

I mentioned that I barely know Paul Wolfowitz, which is true. But I do admire him enormously, not only because he is both a genuine scholar and an effective policy practitioner, not only because he has been right on most of the major issues during his career, but because he is now the focus of world anti-Semitism. He carries the burden of their hatred, which emanates not only from the Arab world and France, but from some people in our own country, which I had so long underestimated...)

So since some actual human beings with enormous power and a fuckton of money are getting Paul Wolfowitz on teevee and then protecting him once he is there, let me wearily repeat what I wrote back in March (which basically is a 20th generation mimeograph copy of what I have been wearily repeating on this site since the day I started blogging):

...Rachel [Maddow], yell about Paul Wolfowitz all you want. Hell, I'll join you. But until you start taking your blowtorch of truth to people like David Gregory and Joe Scarborough and Arthur Sulzberger -- the people who, day in and day out, keep making affirmative decisions to never demand any accountability from the likes of Kristol and Tom Friedman and David Brooks but instead just hand over huge public media platforms to unreconstructed Iraq War demagogues -- you're just bouncing the rubble around.

I am quite sure that the most fascinating and appalling aspect of the "What the fuck is a disgraced, war-mongering sociopath like Paul Wolfowitz doing on teevee?" story is happening right now, behind closed doors at 30 Rock.  

And I am equally sure that since the answer to that question would reveal just how deep into the bones the corruption and rot of our media has spread, the one institution whose holy mission is supposed to be reporting hard truths about the powerful without fear or favor is the very institution which will never tell us what is really going on.