Writes Graham:

Rumsfeld has ascribed much of the negative perception of him and the Bush administration to distorted media coverage. "The intellectual dishonesty on the part of the press is serious," he asserted. He groused about "a strong incentive to be negative and dramatic" that had infused much of the coverage. "It's a formula that works. It gets Pulitzers; it gets promotions; it gets name identification on the front page above the fold."

Part of the formula, Rumsfeld added, involved pillorying him along with Bush and Cheney but sparing Powell and Rice. As an example, he noted accusations that Bush and Cheney had lied about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction in making the case for the invasion of Iraq. "They never say Colin Powell lied," Rumsfeld asserted. "They don't say Condi lied."

Graham also notes that Rumsfeld was so eager to prove that he wasn't the ass everyone thinks he is, that he showed off all sorts of letters from people telling him how great he was, also noting how people treated him like a rock star when he goes out in public.

Rumsfeld wanted to be sure I saw the many letters of praise and kind words he had received following the announcement of his resignation. He had sorted the letters according to source - members of Congress, foreign dignitaries, U.S. military personnel, former associates, friends - and filed them in large, three-ring binders. The correspondence noted Rumsfeld's contributions to the war on terrorism, commended him for his drive to transform the U.S. military, and expressed thanks for his public service.

Such letters seemed to give Rumsfeld some solace amid media commentary that tended to focus on all that had gone wrong - the mistakes made in the Iraq War, the difficult relations with the military chiefs, the tensions with Congress, the quarrels with other NSC members. As low as his popularity was when he left office - Gallup/Harris polls showed him at 34% - Rumsfeld still found that when he dined out at a restaurant or walked along a street, people approached him eager to shake his hand.

Unfortunately, Graham doesn't provide any names of people who wrote letters commending Rumsfeld, but we guess that among them were the names Limbaugh, Bachmann, Cheney and Hannity. Too easy, right?

Donald Rumsfeld in Repose [Time]

Downside: the Washington Post says Pelosi doesn't even try to make this a fair documentary; it's just a string of the dumbest people she could find at Republican rallies, saying the dumbest possible things:

All the conventions of the smirking, winking, belittling political documentary are abided by in this film. An inordinate number of the yahoos wear T-shirts and weird caps...There is a young guy whose T-shirt, meant to deride Obama, declares "Say No to Socilism," and when Alexandra Pelosi tells him he's misspelled socialism and asks him to define it, we know he's not going to be able to, that he's going to say something way wrong and stupid — which he does, offering that socialism is "basically, it's like the views of Hitler. It's between like communism and — I don't know what the other word is."

Upside: Yes obviously Alexandra Pelosi is totally in the tank, she is from San Francisco and her mom is a Democratic politician and she is a confirmed member of the liberal media. But can you ever get too many clips of Neanderthal Republican racists? I don't think so! Enjoy a few clips starting about 2:00 in this Pelosi interview with Rachel Maddow, liberal lesbian Democrat in-the-tanker:

Since she left the Times she's been with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think thank, because she's given up entirely on getting anyone to like her or take her seriously anymore. Also she endorsed Barack Obama because why not? She probably believes in abortion and socialism and progressive taxation just as much as she believed that Iraq was a dangerous threat based on the most specious and misleading of evidence. For a while all the "serious" media liberals had to acknowledge that Bush was more "serious" about National Security than those peacenik hippie Nation-reading commies, remember? No, no one remembers, or cares, whatever.

Miller is of course either delusional or just doesn't give a shit:

However, going to Fox only reinforces the idea among left-wing critics that she’s been on the side of the Bush Administration. Miller contends that she’s a “political independent,” and said Fox wasn’t looking for any ideological perspective on national security.

“They didn’t ask me what I was going to say, or whether I was going to fit a mold,” Miller said. “I think they want me to be independent, and that’s what I am."

Yes, Judy, of course, they hired a disgraced national security correspondent because of her wonderful reputation for being right all the time, not because she was a neo-conservative cheerleader.

Feel free to email Judy all your good wishes!

• Joe was like, the Demon-crats want American courts to approve investigations of foreign terrorists!
• Then Glenn and everyone was just like "It just does not."
• Then Joe made it worse! And Glenn was all "what country do you live in?"
• And then Glenn was like "Time Magazine has done a superb service for the country by illustrating everything that is rancid and corrupt with our political media." MEOW.
• And Time put up a pretty iffy correction.
• And Joe was like shrug, I don't really know anything and can't figure this out.
• And the pitchfork-hoisting mob was like CRUCIFY HIM CRUCIFY HIM. Which is sort of a good point!
• Now poor Joe can't blog at all without his comments sections being taken over by calls for his big mistaken head!
• Except one commenter was like:

  It's already a win-win for Time. The controversy drives extra traffic to Swampland. But all the extra eyeballs here are people who already know Joe is wrong and why. In the meantime, the print edition will "cover the controversy" and in exactly the same way that Genesis gets promoted to a reasonable scientific theory in classrooms, The RW misrepresentations will get elevated to a plausable alternative to the actual text of the bill. And Joe doesn't get laughed off the playground by his DLC buddies.

• Which is definitely a good point.