Paul Craig Roberts tells it like it is, the MSM is Pravda

We progressives have criticized the media but the former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and former contributing editor for National Review, Paul Craig Roberts, makes us look like nice guys. You can tell by the title, Sycophantic Media, that he doesn't think to highly of the MSM and then it just gets better.

The conservative media will never recover from its role as Chief Sycophant for the Bush administration. Journalists who demanded that Clinton be held accountable for a minor sex scandal (Monica Lewinsky) and a minor financial scandal (Whitewater) now serve as apologists and propagandists for the Bush administration's major war scandals.

The Republican House of Representatives saw fit to impeach President Clinton for lying about sex. The same Republicans defend to the hilt Bush's lies that launched America into an unjustified war that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans, cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, ruined America's reputation, and lost forever the hearts and minds of Muslims.

No decent or sensible person can have confidence in journalists and politicians who take partisanship to such extreme lengths.

There is plenty of room in journalism and politics for arguments over issues and policies. But two solid years of lies is beyond the pale.

And this is from a former conservative journalist and member of the Reagan administration. And yes he names names.

For example, Tom Frank of The New Republic (once considered to be part of the hated "liberal press") recently expressed his thoughts in that unfortunate magazine. Frank wrote that dissenters from Bush's gratuitous war should be beaten and even killed. He expressed his wish that Arnold Schwarzenegger would punch Stan Goff in the face. He wrote that seeing Arundhati Roy taken out with a "bunker buster" would be a satisfying experience. As for Sherry Wolf and other dissenters, "I wanted John Ashcroft to come busting through the wall with a submachine gun to round everyone up for an immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for interrogation."

What have Stan Goff, Arundhati Roy and Sherry Wolf done to inspire Tom Frank to reveal his brownshirted inner self?

A former Delta Force soldier, Goff joined up with Military Families Speak Out. Roy penned a defense of the right of Iraqis to resist military occupation, and Wolf agreed that Iraqis have a right to resist Bush's occupation of Iraq.

Frank views beatings, arrests, interrogations, torture, and death as appropriate responses to these peaceful expressions of dissent.

These people are facists and are nothing more than "Brownshirts". And they have no excuse, it's all voluntary.

At least the German press and the Soviet press were forced into these roles by Hitler and Stalin. The American conservative media willingly adopted the role on its own.

The function of a journalist is to speak truth to power and to hold accountable those with power. Abandoning this role, the conservative media cheerleads for war, incompetent leaders, and a police state.

This is a pretty good description of the "liberal" press.