Washington Post, Please Spare Us the Tortured "D.C. Insider" Punditry of David Broder

BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

April 23, 2009

David Broder

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

The web’s most brilliant Constitutional journalist and conscience, Glenn Greenwald, jumped all over "D.C. Villager" David Broder for a morally bankrupt April 26 Washington Post column entitled, "Stop Scapegoating. Obama Should Stand Against Prosecutions."

Broder, who embodies the collegial clubiness and mutual protection racket of the D.C. elite (which includes "nationally respected pundits" like Broder), is indignant that anyone would want to find "scapegoats" for torture. Let’s see, if a man shoots a kid just because he looks like a gang member, we guess the shooter is a "scapegoat" to Broder.

Greenwald argues that Broder long defended Bush’s extreme, unconscionable policies and excoriated those individuals who stood up for the law, morality, and the Constitution. As Greenwald observes in his withering style:

On other occasions, Broder mocked those who suggested there was anything extremist or radical about Bush's "counter-terrorism" policies; hailed "Bush's conviction that the quest for freedom is a universal truth"; proclaimed his confidence in Donald Rumsfeld's pre-war Iraq plans; and compared 2002 war opponents to "Jane Fonda in Hanoi or antiwar protesters marching under Viet Cong flags."  …. What Broder states today as fact (that the Bush presidency is "one of the darkest chapters of American history") is almost verbatim that which, when it mattered, when it was happening, he vehemently and repeatedly denied -- and, of course, given that he works in the most accountability-free profession of all (establishment punditry), he does not even have the minimal honesty to acknowledge that. Like so many of his colleagues, Broder played a critical role in defending these crimes and insisting that they were not taking place.

One of Greenwald’s key points is that the inside the beltway elites are protecting themselves when they vigorously advocate "just moving on." We recently saw this in a dismaying television appearance by Peggy Noonan in which she dismissed torture as some sort of trivial historic event. Noonan, like Broder, were protecting the backs of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld as they tortured people to death and got us into a Godforsaken war.

If Broder were to apply for a job as a columnist today, he would summarily be put in the rejected pile. He’s an illogical apologist for the "D.C. club" who wraps himself in the cloak of just having "common sense."

But the only common sense that Broder has is akin to the backside of a Jackass. 

And for that, he merits being anointed the BuzzFlash Media Putz of the Week. 

BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

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