David Gregory is a Whore

Get the feeling I'm a bit angry these days? Sounding a bit like my blogbuddy jurassicpork, whose bandwidth-devouring post I'm going to leave up because it's worth the download time? Well, why the hell shouldn't I?

Mr. Brilliant and I were talking this evening over burgers and uncharacteristically crappy "chopped and formed" onion rings at The Mountain House this evening (being too lazy, tired, and spent from overwork to grill anything at home) about how Walter Cronkite wasn't an investigative journalist but still managed to almost singlehandedly turn America around on Vietnam; about how Rachel Maddow is rapidly becoming an investigative journalist; about why the incredibly charismatic and schticky Greg Palast can't get work in this country; and why newspapers have only themselves to blame (*cough* Judith Miller *cough*) for their own downfall. Then after working a few more hours, I checked what's going on and found this:

There's a bevy of information in there, but one exchange that jumped out at us was the one between Sanford's press secretary, Joel Sawyer (who just today announced he's quitting -- good for him!) and David Gregory, the host of NBC's Meet the Press. In courting Sanford's office, Gregory wrote that "coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation as you really want to."

All the networks aggressively wooed Sanford's office in the period during and just after his disappearance, in an effort to convince that their show offered the perfect forum for him to address the controversy. CNN's John King told Sawyer he had always appreciated Sanford's "kindness, candor, and hospitality," and added, in a transparent attempt to bond, "I'm all for anonymous escapes myself." George Stephanopoulos offered his show, ABC's This Week, as a "civil forum to address this week's events." And producers for CBS's Face the Nation, ABC's Good Morning America, several Fox shows, and many others gave Sanford's office the hard sell too.

But the emails of Gregory -- who in the past has been known as a pretty aggressive questioner -- make particularly clear just what a get Sanford was seen as, and how far the networks were willing to go in promising a safe landing place for the governor.

Think about it: Barack Obama has been President for all of six months, and the hacks of television news are already sucking up to the guy they figured would be the next one -- a hypocritical asshole who thinks with his dick, who has absolutely no moral core, and who thinks nothing of letting poor students rot in subpar schools while he spends thousands of dollars of state taxpayer money to fly his dick down to Argentina for a little in-out in-out.

This is the guy for whom David Gregory, who I'm sure had much to say about how Walter Cronkite inspired him, was willing to pimp out Meet the Press. Not that Russert was any less of a fellater of Republicans; after all, he knew damn well that it was Dick Cheney who outed Valerie Plame. But if Gregory's dance with Karl Rove a few years ago didn't tell you who he'll lay down for, his making a nice cushy bed for Mark Sanford on Sunday mornings ought to.

David Gregory, you aren't fit to shine Walter Cronkite's funeral shoes.