Billmon: Memory Loss

In his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez includes an episode in which the residents of his fictional Columbian village are struck by a bizarre plague of mass amnesia, forcing them to post signs like: I am a cow, milk me," or "I am a gate, open me," in order to keep up their daily routines.

I think American journalism -- such as it is -- might benefit if reporters and editors were required to stick a similar sign on their computer terminals: "I am Google, search me."

I mention this because of the latest example of complete institutional memory failure at the Los Angeles Times, as noted by an exasperated Josh Marshall. Reporter Janet Hook pokes a grubby finger in the eye of reality by arguing that:

Unlike President Reagan's broad-brush "Morning in America" campaign for reelection in 1984, for example, Bush ran in 2004 on a specific agenda of new issues, notably overhauling Social Security and the tax code. Some Bush allies say his recent troubles in Congress are a measure of how ambitious his aims are, not how much leverage he has lost.

Hook goes on to quote the usual White House shill as documentary evidence for her remarkable assertion.