Ethics

Balko is right

By Ed Brayton

He says it's time to stop paying the White House press secretary:

Yet we pay this person well into six figures of taxpayer money . . . for what, exactly? This person is supposed to be the liaison between the White House and the press. And we're now to the point where stonewalling, obfuscating, spinning, parsing, and generally preventing the flow of truthful information are accepted and acknowledged parts of the job description (standard disclaimer about these things also being endemic to politics itself notwithstanding).

Why are we paying someone to mislead us, stonewall us, and flack for the president-someone who basically runs an overglorified White House PR shop? Any time there's any sort of controversy at all, you can bet the WHPS will be doing everything he/she can to make sure we know as little as possible. So why should we pay for that? It's pretty insulting, really.

Couldn't agree more. The White House press secretary is paid to lie to us. We all know it.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on March 26, 2008 (boomark / email).