Why you should put bloggers on TV

Blogger Marcy Wheeler caused a media stir yesterday when she appeared on  MSNBC and said "blow job" on live TV. (See clip below.) She said it in the context of Republicans demanding that the Obama administration not investigate possible law-breaking by the previous GOP administration.

Said Wheeler to her conservative counterpart on MSNBC:

And your idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton of a blow job for like five years, we shouldn't investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration only because Alberto Gonzales was too much in the back pocket of Dick Cheney to do it when he was still in office.

MSNBC's hosts quickly apologized on behalf of Wheeler, stressing she didn't mean to say that phrase on daytime TV. Gawker poked some fun, posting the headline:

Why You Should Never Put Bloggers On TV

But I don't buy it. Of course, I see the general point--when people go on cable news shows they ought to refrain from using certain sexual phrases. But you know what, if liberal bloggers were around in the late `90's during the impeachment insanity and had regularly gone on TV to remind voters that Republicans were trying to remove a sitting president from office over a "blow job," maybe that nonsense could have been curtailed.

Instead, the Beltway pundits minded their manners and pretended impeachment was about something grand and important and legal and historic and...whatever. It wasn't. It was about a blow job, but the press and Republicans didn't want to dwell on that detail. Instead they played dumb. Today, bloggers exist to call out that kind of BS as Wheeler demonstrated. (Blow jobs = big gov't investigations, but illegal torture and wiretapping are out of bounds?)

Personally, I wish bloggers like Wheeler had been around ten years ago for some much needed truth telling about blow jobs.