Let’s put on some Alanis and relive the 90s
by digby
I see Politico is taking a 90s nostalgia tour today, running a story about a shady donor with a funny foreign sounding name seeking influence from the Democratic president (who is himself sort of “foreign” and for whom a lot of “foreign” types vote, dontcha know.)
Anyway, this bombshell is the usual Drudge style “buddhist temple” hack job. As I have written before, this is a patented style of cartoonish right wing scandal mongering, which the Villagers love more than anything:
These are patented Whitewater-style “smell test” stories. They are based on complicated details that make the casual reader’s eyes glaze over and about which the subject has to issue long confusing explanations in return. They feature colorful and unsavory political characters in some way. They often happened in the past and they tend to be written in such a way as to say that even if they aren’t illegal they “look bad.” The underlying theme is hypocrisy because the subjects are portrayed as making a dishonest buck while pretending to represent the average working man. Oh, and they always feature a Democrat. Republicans are not subject to such scrutiny because a craven, opportunistic Republican isn’t “news.” (Neat trick huh?)
I don’t know if there’s much appetite for this stuff at the moment, but the Drugico nexus will always be there to flog such stories. They have a strange affinity for the “icky foreigner” story. I wonder why?