Last year, Robert Spencer wrote of the left, journalism and the War On Terror:

Here’s a new slogan for the zeitgeist: stay quiet and you’ll be OK. This was the message, according to the tapes released last week, that Muhammad Atta gave to the passengers on the ill-fated airplane that he and his fellow terrorists had commandeered.

Stay quiet and you’ll be OK. Don’t mention that a Saudi imam who spoke at the opening of a large new Islamic center in London once preached a sermon in which he called Jews “evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others’] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race ‘whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs,” and “an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption.” AP noted that in London he said that Islam’s history was “the best testament to how different communities can live together in peace and harmony.” The BBC called him “one of Islam’s most renowned Imams” and reported his praise for British Muslims for having “taken great steps towards achieving community cohesion.” Neither said anything about his hate speech.

Stay quiet and you’ll be OK.

That also seems to be the motto at the New York Times, even as their stock price has dropped 40 percent since 2002. After Judge Richard Posner wrote an op-ed late last month that repeated what about half the Blogosphere had been saying about the Times since about 9/12, (sit tight for this one) the Times' editor Bill Keller wrote a letter to the editor explaining that as the editor of the Times he was angry with Posner's column.

Meanwhile, the Times' Frank Rich looks at criticism of Cindy Sheehan and dubs it, "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan". And no, ironically, he didn't intend it as the compliment it actually is. Ed Morrissey writes:

Two points have to be made here. First of all, if one wants to decry character assassination, perhaps one should not engage in it. Unfortunately, that would leave the serially dishonest Mr. Rich out of a job. Second, the transformation of Swift Boat into a verb implies that the 250+ veterans of the Viet Nam war lied about their testimony regarding the in-country and post-war behavior of John Kerry. If Rich wants to get back into that debate, he's welcome to it, because the Swift Boat vets have not been disproven in any of their major allegations -- while Kerry was forced to retract his Christmas in Cambodia tale, the arrogation of Tedd Peck's service record on PCF 94, the battle stories including David Alston as a member of his Silver Star engagement, and so on and so forth.

Besides, if Rich wants to argue that this country cannot abide any criticism of the political rants of a Gold Star Mom, how can he tar these men who actually served in battle as liars? Does that make any sense to anyone at all? Why not just address the criticisms themselves?

And Morrissey proceeds to do just that. Sheehan's worst rhetoric--which she herself has uttered in speeches and put up on the Internet--is absolutely self-destructive to her cause, which is why the press has gone to great lengths to bottle it up.

Once upon a time, long before there was a Blogosphere, the press attempted to portray itself as non-biased and objective. But these days, even as its staffed by men whose motto was "Question Authority" in the 1970s, these days, their slogans really do seem to alternate between "stay quiet and you'll be OK", and "don't question our authority", as the laces on the cocoon are pulled ever-tighter.