The Queen of Literate Snark, Cintra Wilson, has a lengthy piece in Salon about her recent embed in the White House Press Corps. There are many fine quotations, but this was my favorite, attributed to an anonymous conservative reporter on the topic of slippery Press Secretary Scott McClellan:
“You get frustrated, and you think it’s like nailing mercury to a wall, and then you realize that it’s not because Scott is so masterfully evasive, but because the White House declines to provide any mercury, or a wall.”
I have to contrast this to another quotation, this one from Helen Thomas:
“The press has a duty to find out the truth…if we fall down on the job, the people suffer. [The Bush administration] doesn’t think the people have a right to know, but we know they do. You can’t have a democracy without an informed people.”
Given the characterization of McClellan from someone within his own party, I’d say democracy is either dead or just extremely sleepy.