Not quite a funeral for a friend

Thank you, Mr. Froomkin:

Today’s column is my last for The Washington Post. And the first thing I want to say is thank you. Thank you to all you readers, e-mailers, commenters, questioners, Facebook friends and Twitterers for spending your time with me and engaging with me over the years. And thank you for the recent outpouring of support. It was extraordinarily uplifting, and I’m deeply grateful. If I ever had any doubt, your words have further inspired me to continue doing accountability journalism. My plan is to take a few weeks off before embarking upon my next endeavor — but when I do, I hope you’ll join me.

Dan Froomkin may be finished at the Washington Post, but he assures us this isn’t over. Keep your eye on WhiteHouseWatch.com for future developments. And take comfort that the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University will continue to carry his work.

Eulogies abound. I will get to those later. Maybe.

Today in News

Or, as Dan Froomkin notes, “Who says the media isn’t focusing on the important stuff?”

Helene Cooper of the New York Times called it out:

Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray.

Oh, forty-four days? You mean forty-four days and he went gray? Or do you mean forty-four days was as long as you could wait to waste the goddamn front page of the freakin’ New York Times with this … this …?

No, really. The article ends with Walt Frazier and a slogan for Just For Men hair dye. And tells me about “black parlance from the 1960s”.

Seriously, what the hell?

Finally! (That, and the time-machine joke, which isn’t funny)

Finally, someone else says it.

Throughout the Iraqi Bush Adventure, there has been a curious argument taking place:

Critic: The intelligence was wrong. They knew it. The whole thing was a setup.
Administration: Yes, but _____ said the same thing we did. How were we to know?

What seems so disingenuous about the administration’s argument is that, for the most part, the various people whose names could fill in the blank were operating according to what the White House told them. It is not so much that other people agreed with the administration’s line, but rather that they believed it.

And for some reason, this point has brought nothing but the sound of the wind and maybe the occasional tumbleweed.

Better reading?

I added a new link to the blogroll earlier today. Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch, from WashingtonPost.com makes for good reading if political news is your thing.

Of course, I managed to get the link up as Mr. Froomkin heads off for a short break. He’ll be back on June 2.

Yeah. That’s my bad. Anyway, check out recent columns on Karl Rove, Bush’s recent dust-up with NBC, or the president’s wartime sacrifice. Or just drop the feed into your favorite viewer.

Or don’t. Not my business, I guess.