Eric Boehlert - Right on Cue...

This is really disgusting, but not unexpected. Why did the press corps lie down on the job for Bush? Were they intimidated? The Bush Gang just totally shit all over the press, and they acted like little lapdogs, begging for more. I've heard some in the press say that the press DID in fact ask Bush the tough questions. In what universe?!! Surely not mine.

Right on cue, the White House press awakens from its Bush slumber
by Eric Boehlert

Pulling a collective Rip Van Winkle, the White House press corps has awakened from its extended nap just in time to aggressively press the new Democratic administration, just as it dogged the last Democratic president during his first days in office back in the 1990s. Conveniently skipped over during the press corps' extended bout of shut-eye? The Bush years, of course.

Suddenly revved up and vowing to keep a hawk-like watch on the Obama administration ("I want to hold these guys accountable for what they say and do") and all of a sudden obsessed with trivia, while glomming onto nitpicking, gotcha-style critiques, Beltway reporters have tossed aside the blanket of calm that had descended on them during the previous administration, a blanket of calm that defined their Bush coverage.

Can't say I'm surprised about the sudden change in behavior, though. Taking the long view, I recently went back and contrasted how the press covered the first days and weeks of Clinton's first term in 1993 with its coverage of Bush's arrival in 2001. The difference in tone and substance was startling. (Think bare-knuckled vs. cottony soft.)

One explanation at the time of the Bush lovefest was that reporters and pundits were just so burnt out by the Clinton scandal years that they needed some downtime. They needed to relax; it was human nature. Conversely, the opposite now seems to be true: Because the press dozed for so long -- because it sleepwalked through the Bush years -- it just had to spring back to life with the new administration. It's human nature.

When contrasting the early Clinton and Bush coverage, I noted it would be deeply suspicious if, in 2009, the press managed to turn up the emotional temperature just in time to cover another Democratic administration. But wouldn't you know it, the press corps' alarm went off right on time for Obama's arrival last week, with the Beltway media taking down off the shelf the dusty set of contentious, in-your-face rules of engagement they practiced during the Clinton years and putting into safe storage the docile, somnambulant guidelines from the Bush era. In other words, one set of rules for Clinton and Obama, another for Bush. One standard for the Democrats; a separate, safer one, for the Republican.

There is a lot more, and it can be found here.

High praise goes to Media Matters for America, and David Brock, ex-Republican hatchet-man. No wonder the rightwingnuts hate Media Matters. MMFA doesn't let them get away with spreading their bullshit. Thank goodness we have at least one watchdog. I don't know if I could do what they do: wading thru constant bullshit and lies. Takes a special kind of person to listen to all that, and not just swallow everything they hear.