Oiling The Hinges

by digby

Glenn Greenwald offers a fascinating anatomy of a small wingnut feeding frenzy today as he recounts the breathless, overwrought coverage on the right wing blogs (and National Review) of the bizarre story that the Clinton Administration had spied on Princess Diana. He had earlier noted when the story first broke that the conservatives instantly formed the theory that this somehow invalidated liberal arguments against the illegal spying. (I guess it’s logical that conservatives would think that legally spying on British royalty in Paris without a warrant is the same as illegally spying on an American citizen in Cincinnati without one. They love the idea of monarchy.)

Anyway, read Glenn’s post to see just what horses asses these wingnuts made of themselves over this silly story — which was revealed today to be complete nonsense. But Glenn asks some interesting questions and brings up some points about this whole thing that are worth discussing a little bit more:

What kind of judgment do these people have that they have been running around for the last several days all but accusing the Clinton administration of lawbreaking and dark eavesdropping plots? That, of course, led to the standard campaign to start heaping all the blame on Hillary and her amoral, monstrous quest for political power.

Fox News linked to York’s National Review original article, touting it as a story suggesting the need for a “Clinton probe” over wiretapping. Between the multiple National Review items (York, Frum, McCarthy), Instapundit, Kaus at Slate, the Fox link, not to mention all the right-wing blogs linking to them how many people were subjected to this completely baseless innuendo, all of which was designed to suggest that Bush’s eavesdropping is unnoteworthy because Clinton did worse and/or that Hillary illegally bugged poor Princess Diana all for selfish political reasons, etc.

It was so obvious from the beginning that there were gaping holes in the story and that the “sources” for it were extremely unreliable. York even prefaced his article with this acknowledgment: “The first thing to remember in trying to evaluate reports that U.S. intelligence services wiretapped Princess Diana is that British press accounts can be notoriously unreliable.”

But that isn’t good enough. In fact, that makes it worse. Gossip columnists pass on rumors. Responsible, credible analysts, political pundits, and journalists do not. And they certainly don’t spend day after day, like Kaus did (with Reynolds cheering on every word) building one scurrilous accusation after the next based on chatter.

Actually they do. This is how the rightwing noise machine operates under the Clinton Rules. If it had turned out that this story had even some vague basis in fact, it would only have been a matter of days before the entire machinery of the Entertainment Industrial Complex would have cranked up to join in the irresponsible speculation.

I believe this reaction is an emotional thing as much as a political tactic. They are drawn like moths to flame at any slight suggestion of a sleazy, nefarious and hopefully sexy story about Democrats, particularly the Clintons. Perhaps it’s pavlovian by now — they went to that well so often and with such fervor for eight long years that they no longer have control of their own impulses. But the focus and intensity and sheer joy they obviously feel in pursuing these trivial, irrelevant stories and then pumping them up into fables and allegories rich with hidden meaning and messages of great import, is a sight to behold. When the mainstream press joins in you have a frenzy of epic proportions.

This is how it will be if we have a Democratic president. The right likes it this way. And it works for them. Knowing that the public can’t avert their eyes any more than they can avert their eyes from a car crash or Britney Spears, they exhaust them with these stories, creating a feeling almost of overindulgence, like too much chocolate mousse. The resultant sick feeling they then project on to the person in office. They called it “Clinton fatigue” last time. In fact, it’s just that concept that they are conjuring with this Diana story — showing the folks that if Hillary wins the presidency we’ll be face first in that mousse again.

The truth is that we will be in it no matter who is president. These people are trained to fetishize these small stories so they can make Democrats seem frivolous and small. It’s a game to them, sure, and they love it more than any other kind of political combat, but it’s also a very successful tactic. They tie the Democrats in knots and keep the Kewl Kidz distracted and amused. It’s what they do best.

They’re a little bit rusty so they are oiling up the hinges with this silly Diana story. This is only the beginning.

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