frank rich is a smart man. here's a column from sunday's times that really caught my eye: george bush as a billy-flynn-and-roxie-hart act; the white house press corps, and the mainstream media more generally, as the marionette-like reporter chorus in "they both reached for the gun" -- one of my favorite songs from chicago. if you've seen the show or the movie, or even heard the CD, you'll agree that the circumstances are eerily familiar, right down to the ridiculous moralizing softballs thrown at every white house press conference in the past month.

i read a poll last week that reported that nearly half of americans believe the patently ridiculous assertion that saddam hussein was "personally responsible" (yes, those were the words of the question) for the september 11 attacks. i noted, speaking to my very smart little brother, who hears truth from my parents on the matter, that despite his intelligence and the suspicions of my parents, he also believes this new-minted "fact." how did this happen, and who is responsible? it's difficult to say.

we might blame the white house propaganda machine (at least, i'd really really like to) and its disingenuous manipulation of the stories supporting this war. but the mainstream media are awfully complicit...but then again, you have rich's very critical piece published in the new york times. op-eds oppose the war every day. opposition letters to the editor get printed.

but.

but, these are opinion pieces. i think the (mainstream) media have destroyed their own ability to criticize meaningfully by attempting to divide forever "news" and "opinion." this is almost certainly not a conscious decision. i bet the editors at the times and the post who fail to cover huge anti-war demonstrations -- and the cnn producers who show us diagrams of "smart bombs" and strategic maneuvers instead of the human toll of the war -- are not hanging out in a smoke-filled room someplace, taking bribes from ari fleischer. however: conscious decision or not, the assumptions of the american press about what constitutes an appropriate neutrality make for newspapers (and television reports, and radio broadcasts) that put their opinions in the opinion box and get their "facts" straight from tommy franks and the bush warmachine. this uncritical worship of neutrality and "appropriateness" or "respect" leads to a decidedly non-neutral "neutrality." this neutrality allows the great mass of the american public, who may not have access to critical news sources, to accept the assertions of the administration as truth and to ignore the op-eds that do not agree. after all, that's just somebody's opinion, right? the front page is where you find out what's actually going on.