With Disrespect

My Dad used to tell me you could get away with saying anything if you just prefaced your remarks with "Respectfully ..." He was joking, of course! But the White House press corps take this seriously. Correspondents from ABC News and the New York Times engaged in an egregiously disrespectful exchange with Scott McClellan:

TERRY MORAN: With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --

TERRY MORAN: You're pressuring them.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --

TERRY MORAN: It's not pressure?

ELISABETH BUMILLER: Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --

ELISABETH BUMILLER: You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.

This does not capture the snide arrogance of this exchange.

This is how the mainstream media react when one of their own is found out to have been so enamored of an anti-Bush story as to run with it without corroboration from anyone other than a single anonymous source. They expose their animus even more fully, betraying the mindset that makes this kind of mistake possible.