I become a whiner

Rather predictably, the fallout over the Newsweek/Isikoff blunder drove me right into the ditch. I was so foul-tempered and snippy that I left a comment at PressThink that is so whiney and unintentionally ironic that it actually made me laugh at myself.

My grousing complaint: People who complain about the press being ignoble, inaccurate, blah blah blah focus on the blunders, when of course the reality is that the true blunders are rare. When they occur, we're all called to account for them. Result: Everyone learned what they already believed before the Newsweek story.

But of course, what I said was, substantially, the same thing that the Bush Administration and Fox News have been saying about the War: "Oh, the liberal media, they focus on the bad stuff because they hate America and freedom. Nobody wants to talk about the schools and the wells and the smiling children, all the great stuff we're doing every day."

Which, by the way, is a critique that I've always thought we'd be wise to consider in any story. Note that I said consider, not follow by rote.

Anyway, I have now officially become what I hate: an angry, whiney apologist.