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WaPo Finds New Ways to Describe The Emperor's Clothes

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Klein

My letter to the Washington Post:

Let me see if I have this right?

Our last election was a bit of a sham because in Ohio a partisan director of elections did everything he could to suppress democratic votes. In any event, it was one of the narrowest reelections of an incumbent in our history.

Our war, started based on a lie by the president and repeated ad nauseum by his people, is going badly, but for a day of pretty pictures and symbolic voting. In essence, our control of Iraq just entered government No. 3. The election was judged a success because only 50 Iraqis, a plane full of British and a few people thought to be safely inside the American embassy were killed. Oh and people voted, for whom and what, we and they did not know. Actually one third of the country, the former ruling party Sunnis did not, and may challenge the results with more bombs and with civil and perhaps regional war.

Death rates continue to sour in this war of distraction and the administration's solution is to give the widows $12,000 extra to hush up.

Osama Bin Ladin is still no where to be found and we seem not to be trying to find him.

The deficit, which is the anti-Christ of former republican politics, is so big we might just give babies a bill when they are born, and the president's response is to declare war on social security.

The minority radical evangelicals that put Bush over the top are clamoring for war spoils so we ratcheted up the gay bigotry a little more, threaten women's rights a little more and take away a few more human rights.

The torture scandal is festering, seething, getting worse by the day, but the president claims he stands for freedom. Not today, not in our allies' countries, not in our enemies' countries, not even in ours, but you know, eventually, and in principle. Firmly. Until tomorrow when we issue a clarification.

The men who once taunted a war hero with purple heart band aids, now paint their fingers purple as if to show us how lining up to vote (for no candidates, parties or platforms, mind you) in Iraq is still easier than getting into a polling place in Cleveland, Ohio and that counting paper ballots is still a lot more reliable than a machine from Diebold.

The conservative media battens down the hatches for all democrats who dare to speak, and yet, without a scorecard, who knows which conservative "reporters" are on the administration's payroll? All of them are certainly on the talking points fax list.

Meanwhile the Washington Post assigns TV columnist Tom Shales to cover the festivities. Shales reports that Bush is winning the perception battle. Poll ratings are awful, distrust and hatred still reign, the world thinks we are fools, and the rot is beginning to smell, but as long as Bush charms a few publishers and tv critics, I guess we won't talk truth.

As for the perception of the Washington Post, while perhaps once -- I'm starting to realize only by accident -- you were the paper of Woodward and Bernstein, today you are simply an establishment newspaper finding ever more colorful ways to tell us that the emperor has beautiful new clothes.

Greg Klein
New York City

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION