Bob Mueller’s elephant and the media blind men

If you want to make sense of the endless flood of media reports about Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation, it helps to recall the ancient parable of the blind men asked to describe an elephant.

One reaches out to the unknown creature, feels the trunk and says, “It’s like a snake.” The next touches an ear: “It’s like a fan.” A third grabs a leg: “It’s like a tree.” And so on through the critter’s side (“a wall”), tail (“a rope”) and tusk (“a spear”).

For months, reporters have dug up, or been fed, tidbits about what Mueller’s team is looking at and rushed into print with claims that he’s … going to nab President Trump for obstruction of justice, or show the Russians used the NRA to elect Trump, or expose Russian funding of Trump projects long ago — whatever.

And the supposed dirt inevitably comes from anonymous sources, making it impossible for readers to judge what spin has been introduced along the way.

No matter: Each report triggers days of MSNBC mouth-frothing over the pending end of Trump, and outrage on the right over the latest “smear” — complete with calls for Mueller’s head that (bizarrely) assume the Trump-hating liberal media have the story right.

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