Dignify this

After coming to office with a vow to restore dignity to the White House, the president yesterday took a brief sabbatical from that effort: He granted an exclusive interview to a British tabloid that features daily photographs of nude women and articles akin to those found in our own National Enquirer.

Press secretary Scott McClellan broke the news yesterday with nonchalance. "Good morning," he told reporters. "The president had his usual briefings this morning and just recently completed an interview with the Sun, for a discussion of his upcoming visit to the United Kingdom."

A British journalist for a more highbrow outlet was not about to let that slip by unnoticed. "Just to clarify," he asked, "why has the president chosen to do an interview with the Sun? It's a newspaper which publishes daily pictures of topless women."

Such comments are grossly unfair to the Sun. True, its Page 3 is devoted daily to photographs of women and their breasts. True, it this week named "classy Krystle, the beautiful brunette babe" as this year's "Page 3 Idol" and amply displayed evidence of what it called her "vital statistics of 32C-24-33."

But the Sun is so much more than breasts. It is also reporting this week on a woman who is "made of two women" and "is NOT the biological mother of two of the children she conceived and had naturally." Other news items highlighted on the Sun's Web site: "Man begins 12-day sausage, bean and chip bath to promote Brit food," "German saboteurs plotted to bomb Palace with peas in WW2, files reveal," and "Sobbing islanders say sorry to the ancestor of minister eaten by natives."

Bush, meanwhile, has given no solo interviews this year to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time or Newsweek. And he hasn't given an exclusive interview in his entire presidency to the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and dozens of other major publications. article

Come on! He doesn't understand the questions those magazines are asking. Cut the man some slack.

Besides, Cheney's done it. And besides again, it's a Murdoch rag.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.