Biting The Hand For Fun N' Profit

As most of you know, ex-White House spokesperson Scott McClellan has written a book that's an extremely harsh critique of the Bush Administration and deals extensively with what McClellan terms as national and foreign policy failures, especially in Iraq.

I have just one brief comment on the matter.

Scott McClellan was the White House spokesperson.What that means is that he was essentially a PR person with one major duty - talking to reporters, and repeating whatever he was told to say by the president and the administration in response to various questions.

It's not a policy making position, and has no decision making input whatsoever. In other words,it's highly unlikely that McClellan or any other White House spokesperson is privy to any more actual information on what happens at the deepest levels of government than the guy who cleans out the Oval Office at the end of the day.

So, aside from cutesy little anecdotes along the lines of what the president eats for breakfast, what huge fun it is to talk to Sam Donaldson, how Mrs. Bush talked to the help or about the efforts to stop Barney from marking his territory in the Lincoln Bedroom, a White House spokesperson is unlikely to have much hard information on how policy decisions may have been formulated. And the few books that have been written to date by former White House spokes people have concentrated on these little human interest details.

So why is this one different? Because it needed to be, in order to generate sales. And McClellan would probably not have been given a book deal otherwise.

And here's the key thing - it had to be negative in character. If it wasn't, could you see it generating the headlines it has? This way, McClellan's book will be gang-ordered by libraries, given premium front-of-store space at bookstores and he'll be on all the major talk shows to shill for his merchandise.

This was this chubby little weasel's way of making one last huge killing from his time feeding at the trough.

In a way, it's only poetic justice, seeing that President Bush has been, shall we say, not exactly noted for loyalty downwards when it suited him. And there's certainly no lack of things to dislike and criticize about the Bush Administration.

Still, the stand up part of me dislikes the spectacle of this none-too-bright lackey turning on his former master out of sheer greed. Nor do I like what the dinosaur media is likely to make out of it.

Selah.