Peeling away the conspiracy

On ABC's "Good Morning America," W finally offered up an explanation for the bulge:

Bush: "Well, you know, Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett have rigged up a sound system -- "

Gibson: "You're getting in trouble -- "

Bush: "I don't know what that is. I mean, it is, uh, it is, it's a -- I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."

Gibson: "It was the shirt?"

Bush: "Yeah, absolutely."

Very funny.

But I don't think anyone's going to buy into this explanation. Take a look at the latest bulge photo, available here, on the official White House web site. He's lighting a menorah.

Go ahead. Try to convince me that that's a "poorly-tailored shirt." Try to convince any sane person of such an outrageous proposition. I've worn a lot of badly-fitting shirts in my time (because resolutions to eat healthily alternate with a life-long love for a good bowl of chili), but I've never encountered one that did anything like that.

Apologists are already claiming that the president is wearing a bullet proof vest in this photo. Come on. Is W really so insecure that he feels the need to wear a bullet-prooof vest in the White House, just to meet a few Jewish kids?

And some folks call me paranoid!

People often compare conspiracy stories to the layers of an onion. Never has the analogy proven more apt. At first, the White House blamed the French hobbit who made Bush's jacket. When that didn't work, W blamed his shirt. When that story fails to stick, he may mutter something about a "bad t-shirt." Finally, of course, we will hear vague references to an unusual skin condition...

You'll appreciate what David Lindorff has to say about this...

So now we know, if we didn't know it already, that the White House is lying.

They're getting away with it because, except for Gibson, nobody in the mainstream press that tags around after the president is pressing him on it, much less investigating the matter more aggressively by trying to get sources from inside the president's camp to come forward.

They're getting away with it because, as one reporter who has contacted friends in many of the major news outlets has been told, the mainstream press won't go after this story "because the Kerry camp hasn’t made it an issue."

Get that: the media cannot go after a story about a candidate unless the other candidate makes it an issue. Now there's a wimpy new answer to the question: what is news?

Oh, but the situation gets worse.

As noted earlier, certain rightists have fastened onto the notion that the "bulge" story is a canard spread by Kerry forces, as opposed to lone-wolf sonsabitches like yours truly. So: Let's all blame Kerry for the "invention" of this story -- and let's all blame Kerry because the story does not receive more serious attention.

It's raining in Los Angeles right now. I suppose we can blame Kerry for that, as well.