Media Whores

As Josh Marshall (among others) points out:

But if it turned out that any other president -- doesn't even have to be Clinton -- had a ringer 'reporter' stationed in the press pool to serve up soft-serve questions, and the same folks had already been caught paying off or buying or otherwise subborning other 'journalists' several times in recent months, AND evidence mounted that the ringer 'reporter' turned out to be a ringer 'reporter'/GI Joe-style male prostitute with what Sid Blumenthal rightly calls "enormous potential for blackmail", don't we figure that this would have ginned up a bit more big time press razzle-dazzle and gasps and awwws by now?

Or, put another way, as Wolcott did last week,

That so few major establishment papers have latched on to the unfolding Manchurian Beefcake story helps explain why major establishment newspapers are losing readers in droves, unable to spot a juicy scandal when it's doing a lapdance in front of their glazed eyes.

(Wolcott also links to Rigorous Intuition which reminds us of an earlier, similar scandal.)

Since I missed the Daily Show, and its webserver is overloaded right now, I will have to point you to a few excellent articles on the "Manchurian Beefcake" scandal:

Frank Rich, brilliant and eloquent as usual, The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

MoDo rises to her highest level, Bush's Barberini Faun

(If you want to see the original Barberini Faun, check out this site).

Sidney Blumenthal, in The Guardian, A hireling, a fraud and a prostitute: Bush's agent in the press corps has given spin a new level of meaning

The Christian Science Monitor weighs in with Bush administration blurs media boundary

And if you want all the salacious details, the dirt is dug and dished (with pix and linx) at Americablog and DailyKos.