Sex and the Court

"Twenty minutes ago, to hear the media tell it, Rove & Co were geniuses, presiding over a generational shift to the right. Now, they're lawyering themselves to the gills, and beltway speculation centers on whether the GOP could lose both the House and the Senate in 2006. Yesterday, you had to be some tinfoil hat-wearing Michael Moore type to connect the dots; tomorrow, conceivably, exposing the grand conspiracy will be a recipe for a Pulitzer.

"Much as the mainstream media pretend to be disinterested, or even skeptical, the narrative they've spun until now has been fawning. They love power, and they love to be loved by the powerful. But Valerie, Terri, Cindy, Katrina and Harriet have finally forced the chattering class to unstrap its kneepads and radically rewrite the story."

Unstrap its kneepads? I know Marty's an old Mondale Democrat, but that seems way over the top.

The Judy Miller mystery continues to consume the news biz, and NYU prof and blogger Jay Rosen --while emphasizing that he's speculating--has some thoughts worth quoting at length:

"At this point Judith Miller is a deeply unpopular figure in the [NYT] newsroom, even with the sacrifice of her freedom for 85 days, an act which most Times-people identified with and respected at first. It is painful to learn that their instinct to side with Miller when she was jailed and defiant--a form of loyalty--may blow up in their faces. They wonder how the Times got itself into a situation where Judy Miller and her attorneys seem to be calling the shots for the newspaper-at-large.

"Judith Miller is a Washington journalist for the Times, but she isn't really under the control of the Times Washington bureau-- or a 'member.' The bureau ('We've been left out of this story') feels isolated; it has been ignored and de-fanged by the confounding logic of this case. Anything new it might dig up could complicate Judy Miller's trials, or undermine the positions (and prior statements) of the people in charge of the newspaper.

"What the reporters in the DC bureau cannot do is report on the Judy Miller story without fear or favor. It's killing them. But what recourse do they have . . . complain to the publisher? He bet the First Amendment house on Judy Miller...

"Officially, everything has to wait until the moment when Judy 'can be expected to tell what happened,' as [Deputy Managing Editor Jon] Landman so carefully put it. When it comes and she still refuses the hierarchy will turn a whiter shade of pale. Key people will then know their investment in Miller went terribly wrong. That is when telling the truth to readers will be the only option. . . .

"Thus the team of Jonathan Landman, Don Van Natta, Adam Liptak and Janny Scott will have to tell Miller's story without Miller's help -- and in a sense 'against' her. No one had planned for this, and it is part of the reason for the sputtering and the delay. Especially as her story crumbles, Miller has no interest in helping the Times reporters investigate her...

" Jeralyn Merritt refined one scenario: 'when Fitzgerald's investigation is over, and it becomes clear that Judith Miller didn't go to jail because she is Saint Judy, protecting the First Amendment rights of journalists everywhere, but to protect her own career and sources, so no one would learn just how embedded she is with the Bush Administration.'

"And if something like that happened, it's going to mean the Times was far too 'embedded' with the administration."

Times ombudsman Byron Calame has finally signaled his impatience with the paper: