That NPR isn’t perceived as a bastion of massive and self-satisfied suckitude is a sad commentary on the state of the rest of our famously free press.

Take the coverage of the “stay the course” flap—please. I was listening to Morning Edition just now, and started yelling at the radio. Again.

Never mind the amazing but true fact that the coverage is all about the semantics; all about the words used about Iraq, not about the war itself, or even about whether the words make any kind of sense: Being so very, very meta is what makes the SCLM so very, very post-modern.

NPR just misses the “stay the course” story entirely!

They accept Pony Blow’s current spin that Bush has “stopped using” “stay the course.”

And never mind that they miss a chance to say that “stay the course” is “inoperative”—heck, Nixon is ancient history.

The real story that NPR misses? Before they came to their senses and started using the “stopped using” line, Dear Leader Himself, and his shill, Dan Bartlett, both insisted they never said “stay the course” at all! Philly’s own Dick Polman:

Let’s go to the videotape.

1. When host George Stephanopoulos referred to the phrase “stay the course,” during their discussion about Iraq, Bush sought to correct him: “We’ve never been ‘stay the course,’ George.”

Did he really say “never?” I have to confess that I had a problem with Bush’s remark, probably because I am not suffering from amnesia. I suppose that in the Orwellian world of 1984 - where all past inconvenient remarks were automatically deemed inoperative and stuffed down a “memory hole,” to be “whirled away on a warm current of air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere” – anything spoken by the leader would be automatically welcomed as credible. The problem in America is, we still have memories, and here’s just a sampling of what those memories yield:

Bush on July 10, 2003: “We’re making steady progress. A free Iraq will mean a peaceful world. And it’s very important for us to stay the course, and we will stay the course.”

(Looks like Dick’s been reading Think Progress for the transcript, and Corrente for the Orwell, but never mind: We exist only to serve.)

What kind of people can deny they said words that everybody heard them say?

What kind of people can deny they said words that can be found with a simple search using The Google?

That’s the question NPR should be asking, and answering. It Instead, they regurgitate Pony Blow’s spin. Je repete:

The story is not that Bush is using new words. The story is that Bush is using new words, and denying he said what the whole world heard him say!

Thanks, NPR. Thanks a lot. Shameful.