An afterthought, or maybe two, on the Media Infotainmenteers' preposterous assault on Wes Clark for telling the plain truth about McCranky

So, again, here is retired General Clark on Face the Nation Sunday expressing unstinting admiration for Young Johnny McCranky's courageous military service but insisting that none of that service is relevant to the job of presiding over the national security of the U.S. And then here's the howling horde of Media Infotainmenteers, braying that McCranky the war hero has been swiftboated!

Over there in the corner is candidate Obama whistling "Yankee Doodle" while General Clark is kneecapped, but that's not the part I want to come back to. Let's go back to the Infotainmenteers.

As everyone knows who is aware of what the general actually said, he never impugned McCranky's courage, military service, or patriotism, and there is no conceivable way that his actual comments can be twisted into any such thing. And yet all those shrunken TV heads babble away, and the Inside the Beltway pundits blogurgitate, with the result that from all sides we hear shocked demands for an apology and/or ridicule for the ludicrous or demonic (depending on your particular slant) political naivete required to attack McCranky's military service.

So, for example, we have ABC News political director Rick Klein blogurgitating:

Find me a single Democrat who thinks it’s good politics to call into question the military credentials of a man who spent five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war.

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As we know, the assumption behind this snotty imbecility is simply false. Now, my fantasy is to require Mr. Klein -- and all the other shrieking shrunken heads -- to answer two questions:

(1) Are you: (a) too lazy or (b) too stupid -- please specify -- to know that your statement is untrue, or (c) too dishonest to care?

(2) Four years ago, when Karl Rove promoted a band of ex-military pathological liars who really and truly swiftboated (hence the name) the naval combat hero John Kerry, were you expressing comparable scorn and/or outrage?

Think of Gerald Seib and Sara Murray blithering in the Wall Street Journal: "“The one certainty of the 2008 campaign, it might have seemed, was that Sen. John McCain would be acknowledged all around as a war hero for his service in Vietnam -- but apparently not.” Can we presume that this is an ironic recycling of the exact sentiment the duo voiced in 2004, except of course with "McCain" erroneously substituted for the real victim, Kerry.

So tell us, Mr. Klein, Mr. Seib, and Ms. Murray --

Do you chalk up your journalistic ineptitude primarily to: (a) laziness, (b), stupidity, or (c) dishonesty? With -- in any case -- a heaping helping of hypocrisy.

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