A Successful Distraction

I have been fascinated by what has been happening in the blogsphere over the past several weeks. In addition to the escalating YouTube wars (seeing who can find the most awful clip) we have had a blogger (right) on blogger (left) war over uncivil comments. While it is certainly true, as the inestimable Glenn Greenwald states:

But while right-wing bloggers have to dig under rocks to find obscure commenters (e.g. left wing, Dr. C.) making reprehensible comments, many of the most prominent bloggers and opinion leaders on the Right routinely and blithely call for people's deaths, and some even post their home addresses on the Internet for anyone who wants help making those recommendations turn into a reality. The most popular right-wing authors sell millions of books by attacking their political opponents as treasonous and mentally ill.

an even more serious result of these verbal barrages is to distract us from some very disturbing developments. I can think of three that are getting scant attention this morning:

1. Novak has an op-ed piece in the WashPo where he states that Fitzgerald has closed his investigation into the Plame affair. This means that the Bush Administration will now have to comment on the fact that Karl Rove was one of the sources exposing Plame and, if one is to believe the President, he will be fired.

2. While Fitzgerald has not charged anyone with the leak, it is clear that there are three sources of the leak and one (Rove) or two (the primary source) are in the White House. What now George? A crime was committed. Crimes should have consequences.

3. The behavior of Bush's lawyers before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday was despicable. One of the White House lawyers actually said: "The president is always right." I guess that sort of indicates that we are no longer a country that is ruled by Laws.

These are very, very serious developments. Coupled with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (and Gaza), the terrorist bombing in India, and the continuing civil war in Iraq, we should demand that the prominent bloggers address serious matters and forget about the digital diatribes. Don't they realize that a personal attack on the Web is now one of the most ephemeral things that you can do?