Via
Atrios, an appalling confession from Dick Meyer, the editorial director of CBSNews.com.

This is a story I should have written 12 years ago when the "Contract with America" Republicans captured the House in 1994. I apologize.

Really, it's just a simple thesis: The men who ran the Republican Party in the House of Representatives for the past 12 years were a group of weirdos. Together, they comprised one of the oddest legislative power cliques in our history. And for 12 years, the media didn't call a duck a duck, because that's not something we're supposed to do.

Um, why not? What the hell were you supposed to do? Practice your putting? Go to A-list parties?

He focuses on character instead of policy — “I'm not talking about the policies of the Contract for America crowd…” — and he shouldn't. Yes, one drives the other, but it’s the latter we’re going to be paying for for generations — not serial adulteries. Barely restrained — or at least slowed — during Clinton, for the past nearly six years these “characters” been running what my friend Bruce Garret once called “a smash and grab operation.” And, of course, there’s the ultimate in manliness, the war. “Character,” indeed: one part Willie Sutton, one part Caesar.

He gives the Senate a pass on wierdoness; hard to say why. He doesn’t think that a man who makes a complex “diagnosis” via a carefully edited, one-hour video tape is a bit odd? And don’t get me started on the man-on-dog, let’s-bring-dead-baby-home guy. And these men held the top two leadership positions in the Senate. There are others — fewer than the House, to be sure, but then the Senate only has 100 candidates.

Tell you what, Dick. Let’s change jobs. I haven’t worked in publishing in years (and then technical, not news), but I certainly couldn’t do worse. At least I wouldn’t bury or kill stories by journalists who did call a duck a duck.