In the very first sentance of this article I see the words; "America's Joseph Goebbels"

Thank you Dale. You are 100% correct. I'm glad you responded to this because I kinda thought people might ignore this article. I did post the article because it had this insane opening line. The author actually loaded the story with all kinds of hot words "Eagle's Nest, Nazis" etc...all to get the reader thinking in that direction. Actually, GA was part of my inspiration for posting this because he said people here had made these sort of comparisons. I don't recall anyone doing that but I have seen it done by people who call themselves journalists. This bothers me because it should make the reader ask the very next question that you ask. 

Why should I bother to read the rest of this article?

This is exactly the point. Here we have a guy (the author of the article) that's addressing an important topic. Something that the American people should know and that they certainly should care about...that the right hand man for our president is the kind of filth I think all of us would agree we don't want polluting our political landscape...and what does this dumb bastard do? He compares Rove to Goebbels in the very first sentence. In all honesty this should be enough for anyone of us...no matter what our political leanings...to stop reading right there. Why? As our good buddy Dale explains it should cause us to think: 

This is a journalistic hit job.

The author certainly sets that idea up right off the bat and probably because he allowed his emotions about the topic to win out over common sense. Which, say what you want about Dale (I mean the guy wears a sweater while swimming) the man has got common sense. The sad thing for the author is all his research (and I'd say he did some) and all his work gathering this information and assembling it into an article is flushed down the toilet in the first line. For the most part the people who most need to read this information, Bush supporters and Republican voters, are not going to get past that first line. Only people who already know about Rove or dislike this administration will probably bother to read on. So although the guy that wrote this thing saw the importance of letting people know about Rove he self destructs in the first sentence.

There are ways of going about exposing an asshole but it should be done in a professional, thought provoking manner if it wants to make an impact.

Dale's right (I know I'm not supposed to say that but I'll make up for it later by posting several times about how wrong he is). When you have a story that's this important I think your top priority should be do it right and not let emotion play into what you're writing. The thing is though this sort of "journalism" is so damn popular right now and it's easy to see why. It's a hell of a lot easier to engage someone at the emotional level than it is to engage them intellectually and get them to think about the facts in a meaningful way. For a journalist to present the facts about Rove so that we consider them...all of us consider them...the story needs to be clean of emotional weight...otherwise it's just an editorial. Otherwise we might think:

This is something completely different and unworthy of consideration because it sounds too personal rather than professional.

What bothers me the most about this is we all lose. WE...and I mean the big WE...as in WE as a people...as a country...need to know who the scumbags are so that we might remove them. WE have to rely on our media to get us the information to help us make these decisions. WE shouldn't have to dig and dig and search far and wide on the internet to discover what's what. Where the lies are buried. The fact is though right now we kinda of have to do this. I feel that we've had so much of this OPINION + fact + ANGRY OPINION + BIASED OPINION= JOURNALISM crap that some people don't recognize this kind of mess when they see it. We've got way to many commentators and far too few journalists.

This guy Wayne that wrote the piece about Rove calls himself an "investigative journalist". Check your credentials pal because you may have done some "investigation" for that piece but at a time when we need that type of journalism the most you let us down. You gave us crap tainted with your own anger and it was something, sadly, we really needed to know about. Now we can't trust you though Wayne.

My big point here really is that we should all be on the same side in this regard. I mean is there anybody on either side or any side for that matter that wouldn't prefer John McCain over George Bush as president? Is there anyone that would debate he's a better man for the job than Bush? A more honorable man? A guy that did not participate in the creation of scum like Saddam because that's who's there now...the guys that made Saddam. His creators. That's pretty much as clear as the nose on your own face...but why can't a guy like McCain get elected? I'm not saying that McCain is my guy...I'm saying if given the choice is there anyone here that would not prefer him over what we have now? Regardless of party or political leanings? This kind of guy could not get elected in our country but a life long do nothing, silver spoon in mouth, daddy gave me evertything I got, failure at every business venture he ever got involved with, bail out king, like Bush can. Should we not be asking ourselves why?

Why would someone want to go up against people like we have in office now...who will destroy you, tar you, smear you, even if you are of the same party...even if what they say is lies the media prints it and you have to defend yourself for it...and the fact is even if you prove they were lying about you there will always be people out there who believe it and will never vote for you because of it...why would you want to oppose these guys when personally it would cost you and your family so much? Kravitz I think asked if any Republicans would have the balls to stand up to these guys. Hhmm...with Rove roaming the White House halls they may be thinking twice about that. We should not be though.

We need to get rid of people like this. We need our media to do a far better job. They need to concern themselves with presenting us with the important stuff and doing it in the proper manner as Dale points out. They need to not worry about which advertisers support the politicians they are writing about.

I agree with Dale, the article I posted is poorly done. It is part of why I posted it and this is what I want us to talk about.

By the way, whay happened to Pat's friend Chris Edwards? He was a great new addition here and perhaps he's busy but I enjoyed talking and debating with him. We do need folks from both sides of the coin here.