Dan Rather recently appeared on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” and revealed the heretofore unthinkable notion that Fox News propagates perspectives from the Bush White House:

“I think it’s fair to say, Bill, in fact I know it is, that FOX News operates in at least a somewhat different way than every other news organization that I know, that they have their “talking points,” in which somebody in the hierarchy, whether this is Roger Ailes who runs the place or not, we know that they get talking points from the White House. And they can say well, we don’t always take those talking points, but I think it’s pretty clear that they had wished the election had gone another way.”

O’Reilly is now reacting typically aghast that anyone could criticize his network or accuse it of bias. But he isn’t merely expressing umbrage. As is the pattern with his psychosis, he is escalating it to the level of jihad and associating it with the well known cloak of hatred that enshrouds all of his enemies:

“As you may know, the far left in America is on a jihad to smear FOX News. They hate us for a variety of reasons…So day after day, the far left loons demean, defame, and attempt to damage the FOX News Channel.”

He goes on to say that neither he, nor anyone he knows, nor anyone at Fox, has ever seen a White House Talking Point. He really didn’t have to look any further than Fox News Vice President, John Moody, to find the elusive memos. And as for wishing the elections had gone another way, again Moody provides the evidence:

“The elections and Rumsfeld’s resignation were a major event but not the end of the world.”

In an attempt to appear even handed, O’Reilly cites his past defense of Rather during the controversy over Bush’s National Guard service, wherein O’Reilly helps Rather out by proclaiming that…

“…there’s no evidence Dan Rather fabricated anything. It was sloppy reporting that did him in.”

That’s a defense? With friends like that, who needs enemas?

David Gergen has worked in the White House for several presidents including Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. He has also worked in the press as a frequently consulted pundit and analyst. As such he has experience obfuscating the truth from both sides of the media looking glass.

Today on CNN’s Reliable Sources, he confessed to what many media critics and knowledgeable citizens already knew: The press failed to do their job in the stampede toward the invasion of Iraq. Even worse than that, they affirmatively promoted it.

“There was a sense, in the lead-up to the war, in which the press, I think, was guilty of cheerleading. We were waving the flags and it was almost unpatriotic to question the possibility of war with Iraq.”

That admission should be justification for terminating Gergen and everyone on his cheerleading squad. In a just world, the families of the fallen ought to be able to sue them for wrongful death. There is simply no professional excuse for the behavior Gergen is describing. It is never the media’s purpose to endorse policy. Their purpose is to investigate and report. Had they done that, there is a pretty good chance that we, and the people of Iraq, would not now be mired in the chaos and tragedy that the media’s negligence spawned. Gergen and his cohorts cannot plead ignorance because even he admits that they knew more than they let on:

“…we were too easy on the claims of weapons of mass destruction and the mushroom clouds being a reason to go to war.”

No kidding! And it wasn’t as if there wasn’t a clamoring for further investigation and deliberation. The American people, and people throughout the world, took to the streets in record setting numbers in a vain attempt to head off the hostile intentions of the Bush administration and their enablers in the press.

It is unconscionable that propagandists like Gergen can wreak havoc on the world, and when they discover the curtain has been pulled aside and they are revealed as frauds, they just go on TV again and discuss how the curtain came to be pulled aside.

There are consequences for failure on the level demonstrated here – sad, desperate, enduring consequences. Unfortunately, not for those responsible. Neither our leaders, nor their media co-conspirators will be held to account. But thousands of American families and tens of thousands more in Iraq will forever bear the scars from cuts delivered by Gergen’s Cheerleaders.