Homocon

But as the self-mythologizing of the news media and the concurrent Hollywood glamorization of reporters has continued unabated, we now have splashy graphics, chugging intro music, designer suits, pancake makeup, name-changes that would make Rock Hudson blush and hair-pieces with the capacity to frighten children and the elderly, all cleverly designed to disguise the real story underneath: that instead of the pure motives and the righteous crusading for the truth depicted in the likes of "All the Presidents Men," what we have instead are a motley assortment of awards-grubbing Dan Rathers, Eason Jordans, Jayson Blairs, Connie Chungs, Paul Krugmans and Michael Isikoffs spewing a post-radical-chic rhetoric informed by the ideals of Gotcha! reportage and buttressed by decades of unchallenged dominance in information dissemblance and a Circle the Wagons defense strategy.

And now, out from the long shadow of journalistic nostalgia steps W. Mark Felt, the real Deep Throat, who's revealed not so much as an insider mole with access to classified documents and a sacred zeal for exposing executive misdeeds, but as a former deputy associate director of the FBI pissed-off that he was passed over by Nixon for promotion, and additionally prodded by a bureaucratic desperation that the President not gain control over a previously independent and near-rogue domestic investigative department.

When asked back in 1999 as to what he would feel like were anyone to consider him to be the actual Deep Throat, W. Mark Felt had this to say: "It would be terrible. This would completely undermine the reputation that you might have as a loyal, logical employee of the FBI. It just wouldn't fit at all . . . It would be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information."

Here's a snippet from the Nixon tapes: Nixon: "Well, if they've got a leak down at the FBI, why the hell can't Gray tell us what the hell is left? You know what I mean? ... " Haldeman: "We know what's left, and we know who leaked it." Nixon: "Somebody in the FBI?" Haldeman: "Yes, sir. Mark Felt. ... If we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything . . . I think he wants to be in the top spot." Nixon: "That's a hell of a way for him to get to the top."

Indeed.

And here's a telling reply by Woodward himself during a 1989 Playboy interview when asked if he resented the implication that Deep Throat was a member of the intelligence community: "I resent it because it's untrue. As you know, I'm not going to discuss the identity of Deep Throat or any other of my confidential sources who are still alive. But let me just say that this suggestion that we were being used by the intelligence community was of concern to us at the time and afterward. When somebody first wrote the article saying about me, "Wait a minute; this is somebody in an intelligence agency who doesn't like Nixon and is trying to get him out," I took that seriously."

Yet Woodward knew at the time that his source for the Watergate information was one of the highest ranked officials in the FBI, that the FBI was frantic to get Nixon off their backs, and that it was more than likely he and Bernstein were being used as patsies by the intelligence community to take Nixon down, but Woodward apparently wasn't as concerned as he'd like us to believe, and wanted his fifteen minutes of fame anyway, motives be damned and thank you very much for the Pulitzer.

The whole thing is sordid -- not just Nixon's involvement with the wiretapping and the subsequent attempts at cover-up, but also the FBI's pathological quest for independence of any executive oversight, as well as the mainstream media's desire to pound its chest over the kill, any kill, who cares who it is, what it is or how the carcass reached the plate. Because, really, the only thing this all goes to show is that the media is terrific at reporting stories that are entirely handed to them on a silver platter: "The role that government institutions themselves play in exposing official misconduct and corruption therefore tends to be seriously neglected, if not wholly ignored, in the press . . . At best, reporters, including Woodward and Bernstein, only leaked elements of the prosecutors' case to the public in advance of the trial."

While the media continues to insist on the importance of anonymous sources for providing confidential information, the case of Deep Throat's own bureaucratic motivations and petty careerist revenge is, for me, just another classic example as to the pitfalls of anonymous sourcing and the questionable legacy of a Watergate-nostalgic MSM.

UPDATE:
Because it was all about the truth . . .

UPDATE 2:
"The MSM will stick with the heroic narrative . . . because in celebrating this story in a certain way journalists of a certain age celebrate themselves. Because to bring unwelcome and unwanted skepticism to the narrative would be to deny 20th-century journalism--and 21st-century journalists--their great claim to glory."