WTF Is It Now?!?

The Canadians get it
Bush unchallenged by media

The American media largely treated the Bush photo-op as a serious event, if not a nation-building moment. (One had to seek out obscure Web sites to find questions like: Wasn't that a sock stuffed down the front of the president's combat pants?)

Only an administration supremely confident of the media's docility would have risked staging an event like that, leaving Bush open to ridicule from any media outlet that saw its role as more than simply being a chronicler of Tales of Fearless Leaders.

This media docility has allowed the Bush administration to go largely unchallenged as it adopts the mantle of an imperial presidency.

Accordingly, a terrified American public was kept under the mistaken illusion that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction" and would soon strike America if America didn't strike first. Clearly, a vigorous, questioning American media could throw a spanner into the best-laid plans of the White House, but there seems to be little chance of that these days.

Rather, anyone questioning the Commander-in-Chief or his policies is promptly dissed by hostile Bush supporters who display a virulent, anti-democratic contempt for public debate or even, often, civilized discourse. - Snipped from here.