The funny thing is down here in GA a lot of LTE complain abut the liberal AP stories in the ultra conservative local daily newspaper.

"Breezy?" There's nothing breezy about the email exchange or the tone in which it was written, given the subject matter. The men are discussing the nature of heroism vis a vis the death of a soldier.

Fournier makes a straw apology, to coin a phrase, because he can't bring himself to address the real reason why the email is so troubling: he wanted to be Rove's friend, not a detached observer.

It would be interesting to read pieces he filed on and around that day and the days that followed. I bet they're very breezy.

That wasn't "breezy" that was a kool-aid drinking message of solidarity to their shared cause. He is a GOP operative running the AP Washington bureau. His GOP talking point attacks on Obama under the premise of an unbiased AP report were proof enough really, this is just the icing on the cake.

Of course left unsaid is that his "breezy" correspondence with Rove is a large part of what is wrong with our national media today. Too many media types have too-close personal relationships with those in power, and it makes them less likely to ask the hard questions of those power. If his relationship with Rove weren't so casual and friendly--and instead purely professional like it should have been--then maybe he would instead have asked Rove what he knew about the WMD claims of the president, the allegations of torture that were just beginning to surface, or the increasing evidence of the politicization of the DOJ. But no. Instead, content with chit-chat, he glossed over these issues in order to ensure that his personal access to those in power was preserved.

There are too many media-types like him and now they are in positions of substantial authority. And our politics and gov't are the worse for it.

What we see is just another ordinary guy selling his soul and trying to work his way up the social ladder. And if he has to kiss a few asses and step on the honor of a dead American soldier to do it, so what?

You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

The man doesn't even know what to pseudo-apologize for. It's not that I don't want reporters to have breezy rapport with sources (all the better to get the information), it's that I expect them to maintain a modicum of non-bias in their reporting, fer crissakes.

He actually mean to say "sleazy".

It is simply and example of "fourniercating" with Rove.

The AP is becoming the Fox News of print journalism. How long until they describe their stories as "edutainment"?

You gotta admit that the 'wingers are masters at playing all the phony platitudes...to further their own interests of course; Rove fluffs Fournier, and Fournier responds in kind with a breezy reacharound (never mind the dissonance about being breezy in regards to soldier's death).

Another classic example of craven cluelessness from the Tillman report is Peggy Noonan:

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan e-mailed the White House’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Peter Wehner, recommending that he “find out what faith Tillman practiced and have the president go by that church and light a candle or say a prayer.”

Craven, because it is definitively using religion as propaganda (no doubt Ms. Noonan would have enshrined this event in her column as an example of Bush's steadfast faith and all-around Godliness).

Clueless, because Tillman purposely avoided organized religion--an inconvenient truth for those, like Noonan, Rove and Fournier, who sought to use his death as a propaganda tool.

Indeed, we should all be asking 'How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?'

Why apologize at all? It's par for the course. A "breezy" exchange with a political operative is just what we've come to expect from those White House lapdog reporters who like to have a breezy time laughing it up with officials at those correspondents' dinners. "Liberal" media my ass!
"Keep up the good fight," you lame AP shill.

Breezy? Yeah in the sense that Karl Rove might have felt a faint breeze tickling his sphincter, coming from Fournier's breath as Fournier buried his nose deep inside Rove's ass.

Boy, if you ever need to know what Rove's ass smells like, Fournier is the go-to man for that question. Fournier was, shall we say, embedded.