Categorical Aperitif

That's "message force multipliers," the Newspeak name for that army of ex-generals and whatnot that formed a de facto front group for the Bush Administration by going forth unto the media and posing as objective voices while dutifully reciting the same talking points, not that we knew they were doing this until that New York Times story came out last weekend, and not that you'd know it know yet if you relied on NBC, CBS, NPR, or PBS for your news. Now, The Daily Show, they're on the case—but not these august representatives of the MSM.

Tuesday's Democracy Now! had a nice segment on the "Pentagon Pundits" story; listen or read down for some particularly infuriating conversations with Frank Sesno and Aaron Brown of CNN. Brown is particularly obnoxious: faced with reasonable questions about why CNN filled the ether with military and ex-military voices but offered virtually no time to war skeptics during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, he responds by calling the issue "a red herring" and blathering on about how knowledgeable the generals are in military matters—and then proceeds to suggest that his DN! interlocutors had somehow missed his point when they press him on the issue of CNN's grotesquely imbalanced pro-war coverage. Gaaaaaah. I hate these people.

// posted by nash @ 12:58 PM