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The Medium is the Massage

It seems to me that Michael Gerson was a perfect fit for the Washington Post’s editorial page. As Jim Pinkerton has suggested,  the Post’s editorial and op-ed pages have become central forums for the advocates of militarist Wilsonian foreign policy which places the causes of promoting democracy worldwide and humanitarian intervention ahead of considerations of national interest. As Media […]

It seems to me that Michael Gerson was a perfect fit for the Washington Post’s editorial page. As Jim Pinkerton has suggested,  the Post’s editorial and op-ed pages have become central forums for the advocates of militarist Wilsonian foreign policy which places the causes of promoting democracy worldwide and humanitarian intervention ahead of considerations of national interest.

As Media Matters pointed out in an analysis of the the enthusiastic support by the Post‘s editorial board for the Iraq War that was published after it had hired Gerson:

Gerson, as President Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001-2005, wrote or contributed to most of the administration’s major speeches — such as President Bush’s State of the Union addresses and former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations — and crafted the false and misleading rhetoric the Bush administration used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Post editorial board repeated without question some of that false and misleading rhetoric in its support of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and its continued justification for that support.

At the same time, by hiring a Republican and a “compassionate” conservative like Gerson, the Post can challenge the allegations from the political right that it’s too liberal.

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