Noise machine

In response to former White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s new book, I've read a lot of comments from people calling McClellan “disgruntled” and a “traitor,” saying that a liberal publisher “got to him” and that he sounds like a “liberal blogger” (Ouch!). But I have yet to hear anyone say that anything he wrote is inaccurate.

It’s typical of the right-wing noise machine: If you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger. Recall the responses to works by former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill

"We didn't listen to [O'Neill's] wacky ideas when he was in the White House, why should we start listening to him now," said a senior official. The official said he informed Bush of O'Neill's comments but declined to describe the president's reaction.

Former National Security Council's Counterterrorism Chief Richard Clarke

Since Clarke's debut on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday, administration officials have been bombarding him with personal calumny and abuse. They have called him an embittered job-seeker, a publicity-seeking author, a fabricator, a Democratic partisan and, perhaps worst of all, a friend of a friend of John Kerry. On Tuesday Bush himself responded to Clarke's charges, insisting "had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on 9/11, we would have acted."

and, of course, Michael Moore.

Yeah, yeah, they’re disgruntled, have an ax to grind, radicals or, shudder, fat. But how about a comment on the content of their messages? Try to make it a little more specific and substantive than “total crap.”

Until I hear that, forgive me if I’m bored.

UPDATE: The latest shit flung to the wall by the RWNM and leaving a streak as it slowly slides down and joins the growing, festering pile on the floor: McClellan’s book hurts military families. Coming soon: McClellan’s book hates America, McClellan’s book burned the flag and McClellan’s book is gay and married to an Al Franken book.

I hate to have to harp on this point, but is anything in his book inaccurate?