Connecticut's PT Barnum is said to have said, "There's a sucker born every minute." When you read the news as framed by the Bush administration, and regurgitated by the American press, you might think it's true. Ironically, the circus great probably never said those words, which were likely attributed to him by a rival hoping to discredit Barnum. Every time the curtain opens on a run of the Broadway musical "Barnum" the cast sings, "There's a sucker born every minute." No chance anyone will ever believe old Barnum innocent.
As for the newspapers, one of it's most famous "pundits," HL Mencken once said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
And as Glenn Greenwald points out, we the people, and the American press, have been bedazzled by an administration willing to twist words to their own good. Lately it's the claim that all insurgents in Iraq are al Qaida, and that Iran is now the enemy to be feared the most. This of course at a time where the vice president plays a rhetorical game claiming not to be "an entity of the executive branch."
So what's the American public to do?
Crawl in its well-upholstered hole and believe the unbelievable.
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