ubernoir wrote:

I admit to being wrong about the surge and I want George and all those with blood on their hands to admit they were wrong for starting the war in the first place.

Quite frankly, this is *exactly* the point. It takes courage and honesty to stand up as a democrat and say, "You know what, the surge is helping. I was wrong." But that's not all it takes, unfortunately, because frankly the entire country and the entire world would see it as conceding not just that point, but the WHOLE GAME to the Bush administration.

Stupid and unfair? Of course, but that's the media we have now. Does anyone really thing the overall gestalt of the media would be "Dem concedes surge is working; Iraq as a whole still a giant debacle" ? Fuck no. It'd be "Dem concedes surge is working; Bush vindicated".

And, yeah, no democrats are willing to do that. It's not a function of being too stubborn to admit to being wrong, in and of itself. It's a function of knowing that journalism is dead, objectivity vacationing on Mars and honesty buried under heaps of advertising copy and strategic partnerships.

In other words, this

it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!

is quite true, but not entirely because the Dems are just too hard headed to acknowledge being incorrect, but because they'd be pilloried by everyone for doing precisely the right thing.

This is the most pernicious element of the current political climate in this country. It's absolutely destroying us. I'd like to believe that the way out is for the Dems to take the moral high ground and start being honest and genuine. Unfortunately, I believe that all that's going to do is ensure they never, ever get elected.

Fuck this country's broken media.

RE: The Democrats’ Fairy Tale - New York Times