Not News Writer, but a representation of her state of mind.

Maybe I’m just gettin old, or maybe I’ve been in the newz biz for too long and it’s time to find a saner profession … but I must admit to you all here and now that I’m awfully confused.

Now, before you say anything, I am well aware that confusion is almost a natural state for me. But this is different.

Atop my WTF list today is a pair of quotes from MSNBC, along with the reaction to them. First, Firedoglake’s Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel), on why Townhall’s Matt Lewis thought that investigating the possible criminal behavior of the Bush administration, since it was already over and all that, would set a bad precedent:

Your idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton for a blow job for like five years, we shouldn’t investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration, only because Alberto Gonzales was too much in the back pocket of Dick Cheney to do it while he was still in office. That’s ridiculous.

Meanwhile, erstwhile presidential candidate and culture war declarer Pat Buchanan had this to say:

Well, first, with regard to Levi, I think First Dude up there in Alaska, Todd Palin, ought to take Levi down to the creek and hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.

Now, I’m not at all confused by these things being said. Pat Buchanan is a fucking jackass and Marcy Wheeler never pulls any punches. But here’s what’s confusing: The reaction.

When Buchanan made his comments on Morning Joe, the anchors just laughed and laughed. It was a joke *wink wink*.

But when Marcy spoke up? Hosts Tamron Hall and David Schuster couldn’t wait to apologize for her.

HALL: I’m sure she apologizes for that choice of words, she’s very passionate about it.

SCHUSTER: We all say things sometimes when we’re passionate that we don’t intend, and especially on a dayside family-oriented cable television news network.

HALL: I’m sure she apologizes, and we do, too.

Actually, I’m sure she doesn’t apologize. And I wonder if they were so upset because she dared to say “blow job” on the air or because she told the truth about Alberto Gonzalez and Darth Cheney.

And while Hall and Schuster were busy being all apologetic, Washington Post media critic Howie Kurtz was Tweeting about the whole thing, wondering what ever happened to the “euphemisms.”

Euphemisms? Isn’t “blow job” a euphemism for “sucking dick”? I’m just sayin. Oh, wait. Is this a family Web site?

But Marcy Wheeler has never been shy about saying “blow job” on live television. She did the same thing, also on MSNBC, during a 2007 panel discussion — with former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart — about why my colleagues were so fucking fixated on Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinisky. And she used the offensive phrase several times while wondering if someone else had used it — someone, oh, say, in the administration — if that might have short-circuited the media madness. Here’s Marcy at fdl talking about the whole thing, 2007 and this week:

I wasn’t really imagining the White House Spokesman saying blow job when I said this–just someone. Some prominent surrogate to go out there to say blow job blow job blow job.

It never happened.

And the DC press corps, I think, is apparently still horrified by the possibility that you can just say it, like that, blow job, and in doing so, expose it for all its tawdry but ultimately minor import. Perhaps just saying it like that would break the spell they were under for two years, break the magic of the Presidential blow job. I don’t know.

At some point, though, we as a country have to be willing and able to weigh what the Village did in the late 90s against the massive illegality of the Bush White House and, finally, realize there are more important things than a blow job, and we need to take those more important things at least as seriously as that magic blow job that captivated the press for so long under Clinton.

I don’t know whether my efforts today helped or hurt those efforts. Next time I’ll just repeat, endlessly, torture torture torture. It’ll probably cause the same kind of outrage.

I really hate it when they call my colleagues “the Village” or “the Villagers,” although I’ve said some pretty tough things about the DC/White House press corps myself. It’s just that when they use that phrase, it tarnishes all of us, and not just those prissy insulated reporters who have apparently forgotten how to question anything without a scorecard. We, the press, the media, whatever you call us, we are more than just those folks who work inside the Beltway and have dinners where the president comes and makes fun of us.

Sorry. Pet peeve of mine. Where was I? Oh yeah. Marcy Wheeler said “blow job” on TV and the boys all got in an uproar, like it’s not the thing they want most in the world, while Pat Buchanan “jokes” about drowning the father of Bristol Palin’s baby and everybody laughs at it.

But that’s how these guys roll. Can’t tell the truth about a fucking blow job — and who knew MSNBC is such a family oriented network, huh? Honey, bring the kids in. It’s time to watch Morning Joe. Seriously — can’t tell the truth about a blow job but yeah, let’s “joke” about killing somebody.

Jeff Sessions, the little weasel senator from Alabama who inexplicably got Arlen Specter’s old spot as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee — a position from which he is making a royal ass of himself questioning Sonia Sotomayor — lost a federal judgeship under Ronald Reagan because he ran around saying things like he used to think the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out that a bunch of ‘em smoked pot. But, oh, hahahaha, that was just a joke. Maybe it was, but kinda stupid, don’t you think? Or maybe Sessions just fancied himself a bit of comic actor Henry Gibson, whom he does resemble.

Same with drowning Levi Johnston, and same with being afraid of talking about a blow job. C’mon.

Hmph. But maybe the real problem with talking about blow jobs on TV is that those guys are just jealous.

Y’know, I don’t think I’m confused anymore. Thanks for listening.