A Roving Post

As the Rove story enters its third day of intense coverage, we wonder how much longer the press will be able to hold on a story that probably won’t advance much further. Scott McClellan has indicated over the last two days that he’s not giving an inch, so where will the fresh angles come from?

Other notes today:

• Yesterday CNN offered an almost Aruba-like level of coverage to this story. Will the story gain similar traction on all the cable channels? And if you doubt the ability of cable channels to cover nothing all summer, remember the wall-to-wall coverage of Gary Condit four summers ago?

• Jon Stewart last night summed up perhaps the most surprising aspect of this story for many blog observers: The White House press corps seems ready to do battle with Scott McClellan on this story. Is it just because there’s “blood in the water” or is it because they’re entirely fed up with years of stone-walling? Stewart on the last two days of White House press briefings: “We’ve secretly replaced the White House press corps with real reporters.”

• Chris Lehmann writes in the New York Observer that the press should be going after the editor of Time or the special prosecutor himself, not wasting effort on attacking Bob Novak. We think there’s probably time and resources to do all three.

• The Achenblog asks some questions: “There’s a piece just waiting to be written on HOW THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF FOUND OUT SHE WAS A SPOOK. Which WH staff have access to that kind of info, whether there could have been any legitimate reason for them to be informed of it, (unlikely), etc. What probably happened is someone sought or passed along the info for the exact purposes Joe Wilson alleges. If Rove asked for the info, then he spied on a US citizen for political purposes (AND endangered national security)….This chain-of-information part of the story inside the WH stinks to high heaven but hasn’t been touched because everyone has been too busy writing about who struck John.”

• In a chat yesterday, Dana Milbank explains about “double super secret background”: “An excellent question. I believe it was originally coined by Dean Vernon Wormer in ‘Animal House.’ I should point out that this entire online chat has been on double secret background, and anybody revealing its contents will be frogmarched into a cell adjacent to Judy Miller’s.”

  His most sobering quote is his prediction about where this story goes: “This is Karl Rove’s town, and the rest of us — President Bush included — are just living in it.” If it matters, which it doesn’t, Karen Feld agrees.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.