The Gannon Chronicles, while revealing in many senses of the word, may be pointing the way to an even richer treasure. Over the past few months, the Republican press gaggle has been inflicting itself with black eyes, bruised ribs and multiple compound fractures of the ethics bone. One after another, wingnut weebles have been wobbled, but the damn things just won’t fall down. The list is long and disturbing:

• HHS distributes “news” videos to TV stations to be aired without disclosing their source or that the “anchors” were actually actors.
• Bill Bennett, author of “The Book of Virtues” is a compulsive gambler.
• Fox reporter, Carl Cameron, whose sister worked for the Bush campaign, publishes false Kerry story at Foxnews.com
• Monica Crowley, former Fox Analyst, now co-hosting her own show on MSNBC, is outted as a plagiarist.
• Rush Limbaugh is a drug addict.
• Armstrong Williams, and others, were paid by the DoE to promulgate propaganda.
• Bill O’Reilly settles an allegation of sexual harrassment.
• And, of course, JimmyJeff Gangucnonkert.

Lest we forget, there were also fabricated stories of war heroes Jessica Lynch (who did not fight till the last bullet) and Pat Tillman (who was actually killed by friendly fire). I’m sure I’ve left some out, but clearly our leaders have been playing us for chumps.

You would think the weight of this mass of embarrassments would cause some dinghy in this fleet to sink. But, what was that old saying: A right-wing tide lifts all restrictions on theo-con morality so they can all go out and buy more boats.

There must be more examples of this kind of misbehavior. Just the fact that those that have been discovered were so amateurishly executed and easy to find tells me that their designers were none too bright and raises the likelyhood that we have just scraped the surface. What do you suppose we could learn by investigating Sean Hannity with the zeal we’ve employed on Gannon? What about Ann Coulter; Jim Pinkerton; Jonah Goldberg; Fred Barnes; Michael Reagan; Laura Ingraham? I truly believe that if we shake these trees there will be snakes falling out and we’ll have all the apples we can eat. If there is one thing we’ve learned about these moralizing twits, it’s that they have no morals.

But the big picture here is that there has to be a way to assert some consequences on those responsible for these compounding failures. I think the way to do that is to try to make an issue of the fact these are not isolated infractions. While the corporate media has done an atrocious job of reporting on these singular events, there has been some light squeaking through. Now its time to flood the stage. How can the media refrain from commenting on the fact that all of these individual pieces form a picture of a brazenly corrupt administration that is transparently manipulating the press and the public. And doing it very badly (except for the fact that its working). It may be difficult to recruit the press into this because doing so will expose them for their myopic timidity. On the other hand, they are also victims of the manipulation and should be angry enough to want some payback. More likely, we could frighten them into participating because not doing so will result in them being shown up again by the bloggers, and you know they’re getting tired of that.

So, how many scandals does it take before the media gets its head out of its ass (don’t want to get hit with one of those new indecency fines). This isn’t a bunch of lone gunmen. Its a friggin crime spree!