Given the recent revelation of the identity of Watergate source Deep Throat, it’s interesting to contemplate the trajectory of the American press since those heady days.

Briefly, rather than exposing Republican dirty tricksters, it appears that the press is being played like violins.

A case in point was a June 18 item headlined “Dean Condemns ‘Anti-Semitic Literature’.” The lead in the article was that Dean was responding to the distribution of material that, among other things, suggested that Israel plotted 9/11 to increase American involvement in the Middle East.

The material was distributed at a June 16 Democratic forum examining the so-called Downing Street Memo, which suggests that President Bush was hell-bent to attack Iraq without adequate legal or intelligence grounds.

So a story about an inquiry into possible misdeeds by Bush becomes a story about the supposed anit-Semitism among Democrats. (I saw nothing in the paper about the forum the day after it was held; the first mention was in the article about anti-Semitic literature, two days later.)

Gee, I wonder who was distributing the material.

Deep Throat, pick up the phone!