Krugman on Pundits, Moore

I haven't been reading Paul Krugman lately.

In today's NYT, he states the obvious about the Punditocracy's fawning over Bush, and the other standard used to criticize Moore over his latest.

...There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?...

Why indeed? It's abundantly clear that the pundits are echoing the sentiments of their paymasters.

The various sets of standards that pundits ascribe to their wide range of interests simply add more credence to the now all too obvious fact that the 'liberal media' is at best a myth. Pundits are - with a few notable exceptions - owned wholly by corporate giants. Thus, we consumers of media are fed a steady diet of opinion ranging from far-right to a sort of chewy-centered, smarmy moderate-right that is supposed to represent the loyal opposition.

I should point out that I'm not a fan of Michael Moore's. I am however, less a fan of those applying differing standards if 'circumstances' dictate.