The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has a column up today making fun of congress for investigating bottled water. The second thought that struck me was the irony of Milbank making fun of congress for wasting time on such trivialities when he had just devoted a whole column to it himself. But the first thought that struck me was about how much Milbank sounded like a lobbyist for the bottled water industry, and then I wondered if he had recently run into such a lobbyist at one of those “Salon’s” the WaPo was selling to lobbyists. You know, the one where you got direct, non-confrontational access to reporters and opinion leaders?
Now, I have no real reason to believe Milbank was acting the stenographer for moneyed interests, so normally I would keep my speculations to myself. But the thought itself is worthy of comment, because I wouldn’t have had it before I found out about those Salons (or whatever they were called before they got caught). That’s what the corrosivity of money is all about. It causes people to suspect everything.
