Great column by Signorile:
But let’s get back to that pass the Bushies seem to get from the press and what the reasons for it might be. It’s been said that the media realized, far too late, just how ugly they got with Bill Clinton, sensationalizing, packaging andn selling a nothing scandal, ultimately greatly damaging our political system and affecting us all in detrimental ways. Now, this argument goes, they’re afraid of ever doing it again, so they’re being hyper-cautious with Bush–to the point of letting him off scot-free. Maybe that is true: The Washington Post, which railed endlessly against Clinton over Whitewater–the investigations of which cost millions of our taxpayer dollars and netted nada–wrote an editorial recently imploring us all to lay off of Bush regarding his Harken Energy scams (for the good of the country, you understand). And the Democrats, as it’s often been said, just don’t go for the jugular in the way the Republicans do, wimping out right when they should be thrusting forward, thus not helping the media to get a story with more bite.
Whatever the reasons, you can rest assured that if this were the Clinton administration in office rather than the W administration, the blaring attack headlines would be nonstop and tv news would be on the administration’s butt like there was no tomorrow. If Clinton and Gore were in the White House right now and were involved in the same corporate scandals, two independent investigations–one for Harken, one for Halliburton–would be under way. There would be congressional hearings about why we’ve failed to meet the primary mission in Afghanistan, why we didn’t get the leader of Al Qaeda and the leader of the Taliban, which would shift the entire debate on the effectiveness of the "war on terror." And there would be another investigation into why the administration was asleep at the switch from the get-go, as Time magazine’s cover story last week showed, stalling the previous administration’s antiterrorism activities.
[bold mine]
Regarding the bit in bold - I could buy that explanation except for one thing - they're STILL on Clinton/Gore as they were during Zippergate.
