Because of the media, the Downing Street Memo is less important than Michael Jackson's trial.  Because of the media, one missing white girl on spring break (as much of a personal tragedy as that may be,) people don't know that Sensenbrenner walked out on hearings regarding prisoner abuse.  Because of the media, Bush is never questioned, etc, etc.

Dean speaks to me and for me.  The media talk to each other.

When Andrea Mitchell and Andrew Sullivan are the liberal voices on the panel, the deck has been stacked. I think the M$M hack from Vogue was Hannity's secret lover.

On the other hand, one of Dean's strongest supporters on MTP was John Harwood from the Wall Street Journal. It was an improvement in the same sense that swimming in a Porta-potty would be preferable to swimming in radioactive waste.

MTP was an M$M love fest and circle jerk. I loved the part where they defended themselves for their failure to cover the Downing Street Memo. Nope. No news story there! It's already been reported. Broder pointed out that the M$M has reported it. Ignored completely was Ken Mehlman's denial that the Downing Street Memo was credible. IOKIYAR.

Broder was in rare form when he pointed out that comparing M$M coverage of Bush to M$M coverage of Clinton was just a case of whose ox was getting gored. The whole panel skipped over the glaring observation that, with one exception, all of the Clinton scandals were hoaxes and all of the Bush scandals have been documented.

Lying about national security and lying about the causus belli for the Iraq war are not nearly as serious as lying about a blow job or covering the latest runaway white girl du jour.

The M$M at its finest!

There was a moment there when they flashed the low-30s figures for Social Security privatization when you could almost hear the collective gasp in the room. But they recovered admirably.