Tuesday, March 14th

Back in the saddle

It's been a while. Let's get back on track.

Today's Grapevine sees Brit Hume rehashing several of his favorite topics. Hume, always eager to do anything he can to help out his pal Scooter Libby, references a Vanity Fair article in which former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee suggests that Richard Armitage may have been the first to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

Bradlee says, "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption. I had heard about an e-mail that was sent that had a lot of unprintable language in it." Armitage was a known dissenter from the Bush Iraq policy and if he turned out to the first to disclose Plame's identity, it would be a blow to the conspiracy theorists who have long claimed that the White House leaked her name to intimidate her husband, also an Iraq policy dissenter.

Hume fails to mention that the Washington Post editorial board enthusiastically supported the Iraq war before it began, nor does he remind listeners that Karl Rove himself told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Valerie Plame was "fair game" for political attack. No "conspiracy theory" is needed when the president's Chief of Staff announces that he intends to destroy Plame.

In other segments, Hume does his best to convince us that things are just going swimmingly in Iraq, and its just that nasty old liberal media that's making things seem bad over there. Also, you've got these uppitty negroes all hot and bothered because some white guy wants to put up a statue of some other white guys going to a baseball game. And finally, some guy at Yale is calling some other guy, formerly at Yale, a retard, and all. You know... important, Earth shattering stuff.