Demagogue

Through last Thursday, not a single member of the White House press corpse had found the smoking memo important enough to ask even one question about it during two weeks of daily briefings with Scott McClellan (with special appearances by Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, no less).

I can report that the question remained unasked at the Friday briefing, the Monday gaggle, and the Tuesday briefing. Actually, I shouldn't say "the" question wasn't asked, since they haven't bothered to ask any questions about the memo.

What's especially pathetic is that it was at the Monday gaggle that McClellan lambasted Newsweek for not living up to journalistic standards and relying on an unreliable and anonymous source, and for not retracting the story (which it did a few hours later, IIRC). In the many questions that followed--not all of which were about the Koran-in-toilet story, so it's not as if the press corpse was limited in permissible subject matter--any reporter with half a brain and a smidgen of independent thought could have asked a question that would have landed him on Tuesday's front page.

Pathetic.