The Classics

In a great column that almost justifies paying $50 a year, Krugman notes that after Iraq & Katrina Bush can't get away with "Big Lies" anymore.

But that doesn't mean the GOP and its minions have stopped playing the game of lying small and acting like the world is going to implode (this is known as living like Bill Donohue).

This is the context in which you need to see the wild swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.

First, there were claims that the speaker of the House had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to California. One Republican leader denounced her “arrogance of extravagance” — then, when it became clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that he had never had any evidence.

Now there’s Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria, which Dick Cheney denounced as “bad behavior” — unlike the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to China when he was speaker.

Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the administration’s reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted by news organizations that give little lies their time in the sun.

Fox News, which is a partisan operation in all but name, plays a crucial role in the Little Lie strategy — which is why there is growing pressure on Democratic politicians not to do anything, like participating in Fox-hosted debates, that helps Fox impersonate a legitimate news organization.

But Fox has had plenty of help. Even Time’s Joe Klein, a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip that “the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere has been abysmal.” For example, CNN ran a segment about Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled “Talking to Terrorists.”

The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer. But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S. political scene will remain ugly — as long as many people in the news media keep playing along.

CNN's coverage of Pelosi's trip really has been abysmal and a travesty. Atrios and others put up links where you could demand a retraction and correction. I'm not aware that one has been given, but I believe that the charismaless Wolf Blitzer is back, thereby kicking off the charisma-black hole that was Suzanne Malveoux so there may be some hope. Malveoux makes Blitzer seem like Edward R. Murrow, which is quite sad give what Blitzer is actually like.