Why Oh Why Can't We Have A Better Press Corp?

[elfs]

WOWCWHABPC is a feature of Brad DeLong's blog. I'm borrowing it because Deb Reichmann of the Associated Press deserves a slapdown for failing to do her homework when she wrote this steaming pile of ignorance:

To see the type of person who still backs him, President Bush need only look in the mirror. The president fits the composite of today's Bush supporter: a conservative, white, Republican man, an evangelical Christian who goes to church regularly.

As been noted by more than one pundit (and could be found with a simple search), George W. Bush does not "attend church regularly." He has rarely been seen in a church building, and when he has it has always been during a major photo opportunity: a state funeral, a press op for a natural disaster, or that sort of thing. Amy Sullivan documented the White House's excuses in glowing detail: the security detail is too onerous (tell that to Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, both of whom went to church far more often), it would be pointless because Bush could never get involved with the church the way a parishoner should (Jimmy Carter had no problem managing that), and "George Bush is sufficiently spiritual that doesn't need to go to a specific building to demonstrate his faith." Anyone familiar with the notion of religious fellowship knows that the last is not merely nonsense, but in Christianity is hubristic, sinful nonsense.

Looking into the mirror, George Bush sees a conservative, white, Republican man who experiences fellowship not with people of faith but with, as he once put it, "my people: the haves and the have mores."