JOHN ASHCROFT….Atrios was watching CNN last night when they reported John Ashcroft’s announcement that some terrorist plotters had been arrested. He thinks the press is becoming skeptical of these declarations from Ashcroft:
Maybe I was just projecting, but I sensed a bit of subliminal eyerolling coming from the CNN anchordesk.
For what it’s worth, I happened to be watching ABC News last night when they ran a segment about this, and the skepticism was more than subliminal. Peter Jennings came about as close as an anchor can to telling us that Ashcroft was completely full of shit before ABC ran its piece.
The fact that Ashcroft is such an obvious camera hog is probably part of the reason for this treatment. I swear, I think he’d hold a press conference to announce his own birthday if he thought it would get him on the evening news. Nor does it help that two weeks ago he announced a huge terrorism scare, only to have Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge sound confused the next day while admitting that, no, as far as he knew there was nothing serious going on and the threat level would stay at yellow.
All of which means that Ashcroft is in serious danger of being the boy who cried wolf. And that’s a dangerous game to play since there are quite a few genuine wolves out there.
