Truly Amazing, But Predictable

For the last few days, we've heard much commentary that the president would speed-up his Supreme Court nomination to move the Rove/Plame story out of the news. Innumerable media reports noted this bit of political strategy.

So what happened? Just 24 hours after the Rove story appeared on the front pages of the nation's newspapers -- and not without merit, since the story, after all, is about political retribution, perhaps illegal, perhaps even treasonous, against someone who accurately criticized the falsehoods advanced in the march to war -- it has vanished. Not on the front page of the New York Times, Boston Globe, or, ahem, Berkshire Eagle this morning (the Eagle had not even a paragraph about Rove in its front section, other than my op-ed column about it, "Defending Rove: The Movie"). And right now, according to Google News, there are twice as many Supreme Court stories on newspaper web sites as Rove-related stories.

Not to suggest that the SC nomination isn't critically important, of course. But the very idea that the media could so quickly drop one major story (about a war based on fabrications) for another is remarkable. And, as it has many times in the last four-plus years, it plays perfectly into the communications strategy of the White House.

Here's the slogan I'm going to put on a t-shirt: "The Media: Played Like a Drum Since January 20, 2001."

FYI: Right now there is no Rove/Plame coverage on the home page of CNN.com, nytimes.com, or washingtonpost.com.