A Culprit In The Corporate Media Military Pivot

We know about the furor a week ago yesterday when Gen. Wesley Clark, after paying tribute to all-but-named Repug presidential candidate John McBush's military service, said that that experience alone didn’t qualify McBush to be president, which is correct; no single experience by any presidential candidate, however admirable, does not automatically merit election to the presidency.

Well, as The Carpetbagger Report tells us here, John Kerry appeared on Faze The Nation yesterday (stole that from a cartoon; can’t recall which one) and cited many of the flip-flops of “Senator Honor And Virtue,” which earned Kerry the predictable scorn from our corporate media which Just Loves McBush So Stinkin’ Much You Can’t Believe It.

And if you don’t want to believe me, that’s OK; just check out the pic at the top of this post courtesy of Sam Loomis and The Daily Kos (apparently, writing favorable coverage about John W. McBush can earn a lucky journo the right to sit in preferred seating on his private plane; I would be ashamed to receive such a perk, speaking only for myself).

Well, as I considered the Clark interview and now the Kerry interview, I found myself wondering not so much about the subjects, but the interviewer, and that would be this guy.

As Bob Somerby tells us here, Bob Schieffer told Howard Kurtz (birds of a feather) in 2003 that Schieffer became friends with Dubya when President Mistake was the front man for the Texas Rangers baseball team (which, like everything else Dubya has ruined – hopefully this country also starting next year – has improved greatly since he was no longer in charge of it). And Schieffer’s brother Tom became a partner with Dubya in the Rangers, investing $1.4 million for a 4.2 percent interest in the club (actually a greater share than Bush owned).

Somerby also tells us of how Dubya and Tom Schieffer also seemed to be a two-headed ownership monster, if you will, of the Rangers, with Dubya playing “good cop” to Schieffer’s “bad cop,” with the latter having run-ins with baseball legend Nolan Ryan and also Rafael Palmeiro (Schieffer signed first baseman Will Clark while negotiations with Palmeiro, also a first baseman, were supposedly progressing, thus guaranteeing the job to Clark instead).

I don’t know if brother Bob’s indirect relationship to Dubya led to his legendary antipathy towards Al Gore, as Somerby tells us about in 1999 and 2003 radio sessions conducted by Schieffer, but at the very least, that relationship between the Dubya and the Schieffers should have precluded Bob’s right to speak out on any political matter involving someone who apparently was more than a business acquaintance (Tom ultimately went to become our nation’s ambassador to Japan).

And as this Democratic Underground post points out, the one scandal involving Dubya that Schieffer bothered to report on is the GAO one involving Lurita Doan? Considering the war, the DOJ attorney scandals, the contractor fraud, and the White House’s ongoing effort to fight common-sense policies aimed at mitigating the climate crisis?

That’s like convicting Saddam Hussein for the 1982 murders of 148 people in Dujail but not the 5,000 civilians he was accused of killing in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.

(Oops, never mind – we already did that).

So the next time Bob Schieffer decides to wax indignant at a Democratic political figure for speaking the truth, he would do well to remember his own cozy past with our ruling cabal and realize we could just as easily return the favor right back at him.

Update: Keep wanking, Bob.