Meet the New Boss

In response to Nick Gillespie’s brilliant insight about journalists’ hypocrisy on drones:

Someone commented on Twitter, I think maybe Kirsten Powers, that libertarians seem to be the only ones with any consistency on this subject.  We expect partisans to be partisan about their guy, which is why I think Gillespie’s indictment of the media is particularly noteworthy:

By making clear that as a journalist he tries to see things first and foremost from the perspective of the powerful, Michael Tomasky helps to clarify why so many in the media are rushing to the president’s defense. They are entranced with power and the view from the top. “Presidents live with that responsibility [of protecting American lives] every day,” he writes. “If that responsibility were mine, I can’t honestly say what I’d do, and I don’t think anyone can.” Not all journalists are awed by power, of course, even on the right (National Review’s Jim Geraghty, for instance, asserts that this sort of thing of extra-judicial killing policy wouldn’t be cricket even under a GOP president).

This isn’t ultimately about ideological hypocrisy – of liberals changing their tune once their guy is in office – but something much more basic and much more disturbing. It reveals that for all their crowing about being watchdogs of all that is good and decent in society, when push comes to shove, too many journalists are ready and willing handmaidens to power – including the power to kill.

These modern-day watchdogs are now on the inside of the fence protecting those in power and keeping us out.