“I’ve been thinking some more about CNN hiring Tony Snow as a commentator. Coming in the wake of Newsweek’s hiring of Karl Rove, and the New York Times’ hiring of Bill Kristol, the mainstream media’s embrace of these unabashed propagandists has revealed a self-loathing streak a mile wide. Have they been so cowed by the Right’s relentless branding of them as “liberal” that they feel compelled to show they’re not sleeping with the enemy? And make no mistake, Rove, Kristol, and Snow are the enemies — of honesty, truth, facts, reality, and the public’s right to know. Anything.” Arianna Huffington

To which you can add dangerous, hired political shills like the dire Gerson and the mealy-mouthed George F. Will, and the ever-partisan Robert Novak in the Washington Post.

We are being swamped, and democracy is under threat, drowned out by the paid hacks of the big corporations. The “liberal media” indeed!

Attagirl, Arianna! A good Oxford graduate! Can we import more genuine freedom lovers like her?

(Note to foreign readers: these people mentioned above are obscure to you, and I apologize for mentioning the distasteful names. The British media, for instance, was long ago handed with a neatly tied bow to Rupert Murdoch and there the decline of the democratic procees is not news. But in the U.S it hasn’t yet dawned on the population as a whole that the old American form of democracy is dying but not quite buried. Don’t be fooled by the continued propaganda, which is pervasive and has brainwashed so many otherwise intelligent people).