I had thought it might merely be a symptom of laziness or overwork when my local newspaper headlined the Gonzales choice with "Latino Named As Ashcroft's Successor". There are many ways they could have headlined this -- "Torture Supporter Named...", "Bush Names Own Lawyer...", for a couple of examples -- but instead, the Pee Dee seemed to feel the most important thing they needed to tell their readers about Gonzales was the fact that he is Latino.
This morning, the Pee Dee has an editorial praising Gonzales's virtues of being Latino and unspecified "plans for making the Justice Department more effective and less invective". They're also calling him a "moderate", just as all of this Administration's appointees have been quickly dubbed by the media following their appointments, and they're minimizing his influence and involvement in the military torture scandal, which itself has been minimized by the media to the point where it's not an issue anymore.
When we have one of the architects of the policies that led to Abu Ghraib given a promotion, the mainstream media can't be bothered to take some time out of their coverage of Scott Peterson (who deserves about as much time as they gave Evelyn Hernandez) to remind people of what "mild, physical contact" looks like as interpreted by the Bush administration. Many outlets failed at all to cover the reports of torture in Afghanistan, Cuba, and the rest of Iraq, where prisoners not known to be enemy, in some cases people arrested only for being family of suspected enemy leaders, have been beaten, sometimes to death, and raped as a matter of policy.
From what I've seen, the Pee Dee is just going along with most of the media in not being concerned about the nomination of Gonzales. On the pro-Bush side, The Dallas Morning News says Congress should confirm Gonzales because it would make his mother happy. By all appearances, Congressional Democrats are going to follow the media and roll over again and let this pass without a fight.
Posted by Warrior Tang at November 14, 2004 12:46 PM