Truism Of The Day By: Mark W Adams

Bob Somerby @ Daily Howler:

When a candidate makes “repeated pledges that he will never question his rival’s patriotism,” he’s questioning his rival’s patriotism!

Somerby dissects Dana Milbank for "feasting on narrative" as is all too common among the Village Courtiers enjoying cocktail weenies and bar-b-qued Democrat at Versailles on the Potomac; documenting as always a press corps so wrong, so often, and so predictable the word "dishonest" is hardly adequate.

Glenn Greenwald takes off in a similar vein, tracing the latest poison to it's usual source, high level GOP operatives, namely Karl Rove . . .

This is what happens over and over and over. Media stars love to be used this way. The themes never change and neither does the process. Still, it's amazing how fast it travels from Karl Rove's lips and then out of the mouths of the vast bulk of "journalists" covering the presidential race for establishment media outlets. The fact that they all say the same thing at once -- all of which originate with GOP operatives -- doesn't strike any of them as evidence that they're mindless spouters of conventional wisdom. They think it shows the opposite -- that it's proof that they are political sophisticates plugged into the important election issues ("Obama is arrogant and presumptuous").

The most inane part of it all is that even as they willingly serve as the GOP's attack amplifiers, they simultaneously and openly fret that they're being unfair to Republicans and too biased towards liberals -- a message that they also get from the same GOP operatives who so transparently write their script. Thus, without any recognition whatsoever of how contradictory they are, the two predominant themes from our establishment journalists are now this: (1) Obama is an arrogant, presumptuous, effete liberal and (2) we in the media are far too enamored of Obama and unwilling to criticize him.

Facts be damned, even scientific analysis that it is Obama, not McCain who is being hammered by negativity in the press, this zombie narrative thrives among the pampered plutocrats who are all too aware that the term "liberal media" is a myth, but one that could devour them whole if it every actual manifested itself.

UPDATE: MyDD's Johnathan Singer looks like he's figured it out:

But the more I have thought about it, the more it seems to me that McCain's efforts do have a unifying quality to them, even if a misguided one: Influencing those inside the Beltway. These ads aren't directed at Missouri or Ohio or Pennsylvania, or voters in the other key states who will help decide the outcome of this election. Instead, they are directed at the political establishment, and the establishment media in DC, in particular.