The Frost/Nixon book by James Reston, Jr. gets a makeover.
When it turned out that Nixon -- "the man who committed the greatest felony in American history" -- was never going to stand trial for his crimes, it fell to journalists to provide the conviction-by-proxy that justice, democracy and the American people so desperately needed.
It is now thirty years after Frost gutted Nixon on national teevee, sparing us (or so we thought) yet another, inevitable Nixonian rise from yet another political grave followed by yet another giddy, fascist Conservative wilding through the streets of America.
But far from having learned from our mistakes, we instead repeated them.
On steroids. And cut with Hulk gamma-irradiated monkey growth hormones.
We got the Bush Regime, arguably the most incompetent, corrupt and outright-treasonous Administration in American history. A regime so reckless, savage and gleefully bestial that it made the career-Nixon-hating Hunter Thompson actually pine for the good old days of Tricky Dick:
"I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal."
And, like Nixon, it is more than likely that not a single one of the smirking traitors who nearly wrecked this country will ever spend a day in jail.
Instead they remain lodged in our flesh like so many ricin pellets, oozing their poison into our national bloodstream, waddle from one fawning audience to another, worming their way into major media outlets, or dispatching their degenerate children and underlings out into the world the keep their poison pumping.
They soiled our good name, bankrupted the country, shredded the Constitution and kicked the crutches out from under the global economy on their way out the door, and while it is sometimes hard to focus on them through the flames of the world they set on fire, we must.
We must, because if we do not formally, culturally shun them, break with them and come to look back on them forever with horror and shame, they and their imitators and fanboys will fester. And without cleaning and binding up the deep and ugly wound they slashed across our national soul, their disease will continue to rage and rot us from within.
Which brings us to Sunday.
In four days, one of the principle architects of this depraved Administration will be on teevee.
Pimpin' a book.
A book which Media Matters has documented is full of lies.
He will be interviewed for approximately 30 minutes by Famous Journalist, Tom Brokaw.
You perhaps see where I'm going with this...
Rove, of course, is a known quantity; a conscienceless thug who would be rotting in prison cell over in the Better Universe.
But we don't live in the Better Universe. We live here, which means this is about Tom Brokaw.
If he has any reporter left in him at all, on Sunday he has a chance to do some old-fashioned, journalistic public service flogging. He has been handed on a platter of the finest Sterling the opportunity to do what none of us out here in the cold, bloggy world will ever even come close to getting a shot at: demanding answers from Karl Rove face-to-face. To act as an advocate on behalf of the public's right to know. To honorably "afflict the comfortable" and restore a small portion of the trust which the Fourth Estate has spend the last few decades frittering away so easily and cheaply; an cynical erosion of one of the most critical, load-bearing pillars of democracy that reached its nadir during the Age of Bush.
If he has any reporter left in him at all, he can help to lay the Foundations of History on which the judgments of future generations will rest.
If not -- if Tom Brokaw lets this oily little Judas slip through his fingers in the name of the clubby, malignant courtesy that elitist Villager insiders habitually extend to their lodge brothers, then the the best and possibly last opportunity to bring Karl Rove to some kind of public book for his crimes against democracy will have passed.
And like that...
...he'll be gone.
Which gives us just a few, short days to email, blog, Twitter and in every other way we know how contact Tom Brokaw and NBC and let them know that "We The People" are tired of having a Freedom of the Press for which so many millions of Americans have fought and died used a puke funnel for everything from the tribulations of drunken celebrities to long-discredited Neocon drivel, but never for anything so genuinely vital to the survival our democracy as holding some of its worst predators to account for their predations.
On your marks.
Get set...
Cross-posted from here.
