Posted 2:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Reads
Rumproast and Pandagon on PUMA. Not surprisingly, the head of PUMA will appear on Fox & Friends.

UPDATE: Another must-read article: Eric Boehlert on the New York Times' historical revisionism regarding the Swift Boat hoax":

By patting the press on the back for its role in "undermin[ing] the Swift Boat charges," the Times is simply rewriting media history -- a history that it is imperative we understand as the current general election gains momentum.

The sad truth is that the Swift Boat hoax (and that's what it was -- a hoax) did not represent some sort of unvarnished truth-telling by the press. It represented a low point in timid campaign journalism.

"Instead of acting as filters for the truth, reporters nodded and attentively transcribed both sides of the story, invariably failing to provide context, background, or any sense of which claims held up and which were misleading," wrote Brian Montopoli, Zachary Roth, and Thomas Lang at CJR Daily, back in August 2004.

The press, in other words, got used. Badly.

It was painful enough in 2004 to watch the intimidated press corps stand down while the GOP rolled out its smear campaign. But to watch the press four years later try to pretend it shot down the smears in real time is infuriating.