Hey! Don't come around here no more

(Image by Swopa)

Ron Fournier is The Thing That Wouldn't Die. Just last Saturday, as newly-crowned AP Washington Bureau Chief, he ran this fair and balanced hatchet job on Obama VP candidate Joe Biden:

The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn't beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden pick is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.

Well, this generated a lot of heat and criticism in the intertubes. MoveOn.org and our friends at Firedoglake organized letter writing campaigns to call for Fournier's dismissal. After all, this is the guy who exchanged chummy emails with Karl Rove, and tried to get a gig working on theMcCain campaign.

But clearly Fournier hasn't learned his lesson. I'll let Swopa take it from here:

Here he is tonight, spitting reflecting on Hillary Clinton’s speech to the Democratic convention:

Clinton had to somehow convince people that she honestly thought Obama was ready for the presidency. But something stood in her way: Her words.

– Dec. 3, 2007: “So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on Day One … or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate.”

– March 2008. “I know Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.“

I know, I know — you’re shocked that a now-famed McCainiac like Fournier found a way to work some out-of-context “praise” for John McCain in reporting on a speech that focused on all the things Clinton and Barack Obama are for, but McCain is against (as Hillary herself repeatedly pointed out during the primaries, even as she competed against Obama).

Read the rest. This guy is taking the already compromised AP toward the rarified heights of Pravda.

Swopa closes:

Because what Clinton and Obama actually believe isn’t important to Fournier, any more than he gave a flying fig about Clinton’s actual speech last night. His intention is to distract readers from what she said, to disrupt what Clinton and Obama are seeking to achieve by imposing his previously-formed opinions on the event.

In a “news” story. For the once-famously objective Associated Press.

But if Fournier has to take them down to along the way, he will. After all, he’s got a candidate to get elected.

Bastard. Fournier, that is, not Swopa. But you already knew that. Sorry.