Shots in the Dark

…and challenges Standing Eagle: Name thyself.

In a post below, Sam addresses the prolific poster Standing Eagle:

…a few things you’ve said in the last few months don’t fit with what I know. I, too, am now skeptical about you (and your cohort?) coming out. It seems to me that you’ve played a game (nicely done, by the way), but that your veracity is now in doubt because you are continuing to hide while pontificating.

What pretext (sic) could you possibly be waiting for? Come out and let’s see if what you’ve said, fits with who you are. My prediction… you won’t. However, if incorrect, which I usually am, if you’d like, we’ll have a very good dinner with very good wine… on me.

Standing Eagle has indicated a willingness to come clean. Will he?

At stake is more than just a good dinner. There’s also the question of the credibility of Standing Eagle, who has made various claims to insider knowledge, if not near omniscience, over the past months.

The challenge has been issued. Mr. Eagle?

Scott McClellan’s charge that the press was soft on President Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war has prompted some soul-searching from reporters—and some remarkable confessions, according to this Washington Post article [emphasis added].

CBS anchor Katie Couric, who was at NBC during the run-up to war, told “The Early Show” last week that this was “one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism. . . . There was a sense, a pressure from the corporations who own where we work, and from government itself to really squash any kind of dissent.”

CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin, recalling her time at MSNBC, told viewers that “the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fervor in the nation. . . . The higher the president’s ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president</em>.”

So much for the liberal media, right?

At least with Rupert Murdoch, you know where he’s coming from.