'Couric & Co.' Also Notes Mayans 'Cleansing' Site of Bush Visit

NewsBusters previously reported that the AP, NBC's "Today," and ABC's "Good Morning America" reported as a curiosity some Mayan priests who complain that President Bush brought evil spirits with him to Guatemala.

Well, CBS's Peter Maer didn't want to be left out apparently. He wrote up a little something at "Couric & Co.," Katie Couric's e-sandbox on CBS's Web site.

Maer's account, like the others mentioned, seems to leave out two key facts for their readers.

1) Just how bloody ancient Mayan rituals were in the bad old days.

It's a bit inconvenient to the media storyline to remind audiences that while the Mayan priests attack President Bush as bloodthirsty, they're engaging in bloodless renditions of pagan rituals that resulted in the deaths of perhaps millions of innocents over hundreds of years.

2) "Bush is the devil" rhetoric is not only cartoonish, it's unoriginal.

Last September in a speech to the United Nations, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez called President Bush "el Diablo" and made the sign of the cross as he complained that the air at the speaker's podium in the UN General Assembly stank of sulfur from the American president's visit the day prior.

At the time the disrespectful gesture made by Chavez on American soil earned bipartisan condemnation, including critical words from longtime Bush critics such as the liberal Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).