“You can’t keep asking young people to die for a lie,” he said this morning on Democracy Now!, where he talked about his return to public television with a new weekly series called “Bill Moyers Journal.” (Have a look at the DN! interview.)
The first program in the series, “Buying the War,” debuts tonight. Variety’s Bryan Lowery describes it as “a methodical, devastating, pull-no-punches recap of mainstream journalism’s collective failure to challenge the Bush administration [a k a the BananaRepublic] in the run-up to the Iraq war.”
He quotes Moyers as saying, “The press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush administration [again, a k a the President With His Head Up His Ass] to go to war on false pretenses.” Which dovetails with this from yesterday’s item, dontcha think?
Tom Shales raves about the program: “Perhaps the truth shall eventually set you free, but first it might make you very, very depressed.” He calls tonight’s program “one of the most gripping and important pieces of broadcast journalism so far this year.” He also notes, “It’s always depressing to learn that you’ve been had, but incalculably more so when the deception has resulted in thousands of Americans dying in the Iraq war effort.”
(Gee, Tom, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead, dying, and displaced Iraqis. You forgot them.)
Meanwhile, here’s something else Moyers said this morning on Democracy Now! (not that you haven’t heard this before either): “Let’s just face it, democracy has become a racket when it comes to politics and the media. … This is contempt — contempt for democracy and freedom. We cannot rightly claim to have a democracy as long as money is sovereign. … There is a cancer eating at the heart of democracy, and it’s money in politics.”
Finally, congratulations to Sen. Harry Reid for calling Huha’s vice president by the right moniker. “The president sends out his attack dog often. That’s also known as Dick Cheney.”
I’ve never really decided how best to refer to the vice president. I’ve called him everything from the chief crony, Assistant Maximum Leader and the oily conman to the wayward shooter, Cheney Boy and Mr. Sourpuss. But this settles it. Henceforth he will be called Attack Dog.
