Strange Bedfellows

Or maybe I am just too unfamiliar with William J. Bennett and Alan Dershowitz and the bedfellows aren't as strange as it seems to me. In any case, they've teamed up to write A Failure of the Press for WaPo (ht: Jim Miller on Politics).

They have joined to give the Presse Ancienne a stern talking to about the Danish Cartoon fiasco but as we all know their is no end of "issues" about which the press has failed the public which gives them special status under our constitution.

This unlikely duo is rightly peeved with the press for hiding under their beds wrt to the Danish Cartoons fiasco but that is not the only symptom we see of their cowardice. As Bennett and Dershowitz tell us:

Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps.

Courageousness, even professionalism, are rapidly becoming self-delusional myths among the press corps. They attack only what it is safe to attack and do so regardless of consequences - regardless of need. Attack, attack, attack. Always attack. They see themselves as so many Pattons bestriding the battlefield but they never leave the safety of their little playground. They are children playing with sticks and rat-a-tat-tatting at long abandoned bunkers from long ended wars.