Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Kabuki Ethics

Perhaps I’m being obtuse. I had some dental work this week that was quite unpleasant so perhaps I accidentally spit my higher brain function down that cute little sink next to the torture chair. Am I reading correctly that the funniest man in the universe is obliquely scolding himself and the rest of us for flogging the Jeff Gannon story? Why yes, I believe he is and now that I think about it, it’s a darned good idea.

He admits how difficult it is to resist the urge to giggle incessantly and point out every word in a Gannon piece that his inner Beavis finds suggestive, but he concludes that pursuing this story is the work of the devil and oh is he ever right. The Poorman isn’t the only sharp guy to make the point that the Gannon story is somehow wrong, though. As this article in TAPPED points out, the major lefty magazines, with the exception of Salon (a bunch of “San Francisco liberals” ) have all tip-toed around this story very delicately. David Corn has wrestled with his demons in public however and gives un an insight into the problem:

Should the White House have handed a daily press pass to a reporter who turned tricks on the side? Was it hypocritical of the Bush White House to have done so? Was it a security lapse to let a pseudonymous fellow and possible felon close to the president? Gannon/Guckert and Talon ought to have been vetted more closely regarding their journalistic credentials. But I will not gripe if the White House press office decides it is not its job to investigate the personal lives and websites of those who apply for access to the press room. Some of Gannon/Guckert’s critics have suggested that he was allowed into the White House due to some sort of gay connection. One site has used the Gannon/Guckert affair to float unsubstantiated rumors about the sex life of Scott McClellan. This is fair game–but only for journalistic investigation, not for throw-it-and-see-if-it-sticks postings. If there is evidence that McClellan is a gay GOP hypocrite or that Gannon/Guckert had an advantage because he was literally in bed with a White House official, that’s a news story. Otherwise, it’s smear-by-blogging. Last year, I spent months talking to a professional dominatrix who claimed she had been hired several times by a prominent Republican who does the family-values shtick. I examined her allegations the best I could. But I could not substantiate her claim, which I found credible. I had nothing to publish, nothing specific to blog.

It’s certainly embarrassing to the Bush White House that its press operation accepted a reporter who was an actual or wannabe prostitute. But this is not the same as paying columnists to shill for the administration, producing pro-administration propaganda packaged as news reports, mounting fake town meetings, or restricting the number of press conferences. And to date there is no compelling evidence that the White House recruited or deployed Gannon/Guckert as a plant. It really had little cause to do so. Both Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan have demonstrated they can duck questions ably on their own.

This is what responsible journalism and ethical blogging are all about. We wouldn’t want people to hear unsubstantiated gossip. That’s why he writes that he refused to report or blog about the credible dominatrix who couldn’t provide proof of her allegations that “she had been hired several times by a prominent Republican who does the family-values shtick.” I would imagine that a certain “Virtues Czar” has been quaking in his leather chaps over this story and is mightily relieved that Corn has decided not to blog about it. I’m sure everyone will take Corn’s ethical lead and refuse to give this story another moment’s consideration. It wouldn’t be right and I simply do not want to participate in such activity. I do plan to write a lot about this kind of good journalism, however, the kind where you don’t report on stories about credible dominatrixes and disgraced moralizing gamblers without proof.

I think the press should continue to wring its collective hands about this story in just this way, over and over again. They should discuss its various ins and outs (hello, beavis) in great detail, just as Corn does.

Just how can it be that somebody would hire a male prostitute with no journalism experience to work for a vanity GOP web site who then lobbed softballs in the White House press room and transcribed press releases? Yet it happened. Should we cover that?

I think they should explore in great depth whether this reaches the level of scandal that the Armstrong Williams scandal does. They should compare them, calling attention to the fact that Williams was paid $250k in taxpayer money. Perhaps they should also publicly ponder whether they should cover the fact that Williams was sued for sexual harassment by a male employee and settled for an undisclosed sum.

Is that relevant? I just don’t know. Let’s discuss.

Is the fact that Gannon appears to have been only paid a “stipend” enough to wonder how he was getting paid all those months and should we follow up on why GOPUSA is taking down its web-site, scrubbing it’s articles and appears to be funded with nothing but air?

Is that really a story? Gosh I’m so conflicted.

And I think it would be very therapeutic for the pundit class to publicly ponder whether the fact that the GOP has made a fetish (shut up beavis) out of subtly gay bashing the entire Democratic Party for a generation leaves them open to more questions than usual when it turns out that they are paying conservative gay columnists who also bash gays with taxpayer money and allowing fake marine male hookers into the White House under unusual circumstances.

Is this a legitimate rap on the Republicans or not? I think a nice long New York Times magazine piece is in order don’t you? Just to try to sort out the ethics involved.

And as far as Democratic political operatives are concerned, I would think they need to talk to anyone and everyone about their angst over exploiting this issue. Is it right for the Democrats to point out that the family values Republican elite are hob knobbing with gay hookers?

Gosh, I just don’t know if it’s right to point out that the very religious administration of George W. Bush doesn’t practice what it preaches. Is that really ethical?

Yes, I think there is a serious ethical dilemma that must be worked out before we can proceed with this story. It’s time for an open, cleansing dialog about whether the story of the male hooker/GOP activist/ White House reporter with the very graphic naked pictures he posted all over the internet should be pursued. I’d hate for the press to do something unethical with this.

Update: There was an excellent article back in January in the NYRB by Mark Danner called “Why Bush Really Won.” I wrote a couple of posts about it at the time. Here are some letters to the editor regarding that piece that I think are very relevant to this GannonGuckert issue. I urge you to read the whole thing. One can certainly understand the moral dilemma of the press corps when you consider something like this:

On March 5, for example, The New York Times published a piece headlined “Bush Campaigns Amid a Furor over Ads,” about a supposed controversy over the campaign’s first television ads, which offered a glimpse of a dead fireman being carried out of the World Trade Center site. In the article the Times reporters revealed that the campaign was “scrambling to counter criticism that his first television commercials crassly politicized the tragedy of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.” Indeed, the controversy was so serious, according to the Times, that it had “complicated efforts by Republicans to seize the initiative after months in which Mr. Bush has often been on the defensive.” Newsweek, for its part, in an article headlined “A ‘Shocking’ Stumble,” reported that the ad controversy “threw campaign officials on the defensive—and raised questions about the Bush team’s ability to effectively spend its massive $150 million war chest, some GOP insiders say.”

Seven months later, and two weeks after the election, Newsweek published another and very different “inside account,” this one based on exclusive access to the campaigns which was granted on the understanding that nothing from this reporting would be published until after the election.[*] Here is what Newsweek’s writers now told us about what “two Bush strategists” really thought of their campaign’s “shocking stumble”:

McKinnon and Dowd were ecstatic. At a strategy meeting the next day—the same morning the Times headline appeared—they joked about how they could fan the flames. Controversy sells, they said. It meant lots of “free media”; the ads were shown over and over again on news shows, particularly on cable TV. The “visual” of the rubble at the World Trade Center was a powerful reminder of the nation’s darkest hour—and Bush’s finest, when he climbed on the rock pile with a bullhorn. What’s more, the story eclipsed some grim economic news….

At that Saturday’s Breakfast Club, they were still laughing about the ad flap…. Dowd told the group they had received $6 million to $7 million worth of free ad coverage. “Unfortunately, we’ve been talking about 9/11 and our ads for five days,” Dowd deadpanned at a senior staff meeting. “We’re going to try to pivot back to the economy as soon as we can.”

There were chuckles all around.

So much for the “inside story.” As so often in journalism, the source offered the reporter access and the scoop; in exchange, the reporter in effect granted the source— in this case, the Bush strategist—the power to shape the storyline. The reporter thus publishes a supposed “inside story” about “scrambling” within the campaign that is in effect a kind of “false bottom” constructed by the campaign itself and intended to “fan the flames” of what is in fact a largely bogus story. The deeper reality—in this case, the determination to focus relentlessly on September 11 and the President’s “leadership” role in it (“the nation’s darkest hour and Bush’s finest”) and thus to emphasize the “masculine” values of steadiness, forthrightness, and strength that this role exemplified—may have been plain to those political professionals who were looking closely but it was much less clear to voters relying on the press for the supposed “inside story” of the campaign. The Bush campaign’s “shocking stumble” was, in Daniel Boorstin’s term, a “pseudo-event”; indeed, our political campaigns are built largely of such pseudo-events and rely fundamentally on the press and the commentariat to play their necessary part in constructing them and conveying them to the public. Both sides are immersed in this language, of course, and it is hard to see, given the terms of the game, how Democrats could “challenge the Republican story directly”—or even what “directly,” in this context, might actually mean.

One can certainly understand, after reading that, why so many in the press are worried about violating journalistic ethics by reporting about Gannon. It’s not a real story.

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The Resentment Tribe

The other day I rhetorically asked, “Why are they so angry?” and Matt Stoller replies :

As long as individuals can stand up outside of the tribe and claim Americanism as their own, the right is revealed as weak, because it is their own lies about themselves that they cannot stand. Proof in the form of our existence is enough to make them angry. This is why, as Digby wonders, they keep getting madder as they keep gaining power. They are not really after a conservative agenda in terms of policy; they are not even after power, really. They are after a complete and utter subjugation of the American consciousness to their tribal mentality. And they will not stop until they get it. Hence, the culture wars. And now, the real wars. And unfortunately, I don’t think they are done.

They are far from done. In fact, it’s so old and so familiar that we might as well prop open our eyelids with toothpicks and turn on “I Love Lucy” re-runs.

I wrote about this tribal divide sometime back and I agree with Matt’s analysis. This has its genesis in the original sin of slavery and is best illustrated by the fact that as the country has divides itself distinctly between the parties in a 50/50 fashion, the dividing line continues to fall along the same lines of the old confederacy. Once again, the best way to understand this is to go right to the heart of the beast and quote the first Republican president (who hailed from one of the bluest of blue states) Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper Union in New York in 1860:

And now, if they would listen – as I suppose they will not – I would address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: – You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to “Black Republicans.” In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of “Black Republicanism” as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite – license, so to speak – among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

[…]

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor … In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

[…]

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer’s distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact – the statement in the opinion that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.”

[…]

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?

But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another…Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

Lincoln had a keen understanding of the problem and he logically framed it in moral terms regarding the subject at hand, slavery. As it turns out this was not simply about slavery. It was about a deep and abiding tribal divide in the country that was originally defined by slavery but metatisized into something far beyond it, even then. Southern “exceptionalism” was always justified by its culture, which was assumed to be unique and unprecedented.

You can apply Lincoln’s arguments to any number of current issues and come out the same. There is an incoherence of principle that we see in every section of the republican party, the willingness to call to State’s Rights (their old rallying cry) when it suits them and a complete abdication of the principle once they hold federal power — while still insisting that they believe in limited government! They blatantly misconstrue the plain meaning of long standing constitutional principles and federal policies (such as Brit Hume’s abject intellectual whorishness in the matter of FDR’s beliefs about social security privatization) and show irrational, rabid anger at any disagreement. They see Democrats as “traitors” fighting for the other side, just as the Southerners of the 1850’s accused the “Black Republicans” of fomenting slave revolts. They brook no compromise and instead repay those who would reach out to them with furious perfidy unless they show absolute fealty to every facet of the program. It is loyalty to “the cause”, however it is defined and however it changes in principle from day to day, that matters.

It’s clear to me that during the first 70 years of the country’s existence, the old South and the slave territories that came later (as defined in that famous map from 1860) created a culture based largely on their sense of the rest of the country’s, and the world’s, disapprobation. Within it grew what Michael Lind describes as its “cavalier” culture, which created an outsized sense of masculine ego and “fighting” mentality (along with an exaggerated caricature of male and female social roles.) Resentment was a foundation of the culture as slavery was hotly debated from the very inception and the division was based on what was always perceived by many as a moral issue. The character and morality of the south had always had to be defended. Hence a defensive culture was born.

The civil war and Jim Crow deepened it and the Lost Cause mythology romanticized it. The civil rights movement crystallized it. A two hundred year old resentment has created a permanent cultural divide.

This explains why the dependence on hyper-religiosity (and the cloak of social protection it provides) along with the fervent embrace of “moral values” is so important despite the obvious fact that Republicans are no more “moral” in any sense of the word than any other group of humans. It explains the utopian martial nationalism. And although that map shows that the regional divide is still quite relevant (and why the slave states fought for the Electoral College at the convention) it explains why this culture has now manifested itself as a matter of political identity throughout much of the country. Wherever resentment resides in the human character it can find a home in the Republican Party. This anger and frustration stems from a long nurtured sense of cultural besiegement, which they are finding can never be dealt with through the attainment of power alone. They seek approval.

Lincoln concluded the speech at the Cooper Union with this and I think it’s relevant today to those of us who believe that our side is, as Lincoln thought then, the side of enlightened, moral progress:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

This fight for the soul of America has been going on since the very beginning and it isn’t over yet. We can take heart in the fact that in every great battle thus far, the forces of equality and moral progress have won the day. It’s never been easy.

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Where’s my Swag?

Thanks to all of you who voted for me. It’s ridiculous, of course. The people who I allegedly “beat” are blogospheric godhead and I am quite disturbed that your standards have fallen so low. I worry about you people.

The Koufax awards are very dear to my heart. I won one for best commenter back in 2002 and it made me finally decide to go for it and get into this blogging thing on my own. (In those days everybody and his Jack Russell terrier didn’t have a blog. It seemed like something serious then.) The Koufaxes were a nice little community affair that represented our commitment to each other and the cause in a sea of libertarian and conservative ranting and chestbeating after 9/11 and the ’02 elections. It’s true that our community may have grown exponentially, but it still has a nice feel of down home solidarity even though we have become much more than a rag tag bunch of bloggers and blog readers. We are a gen-you-ine political constituency, now. They talk about us on the teevee and everything.

Blogging is becoming its own literary form. People have always written diary entries, pamphlets, letters or simple observations and essays. But never before could you publish and within minutes have direct criticism on what you’ve just written by dozens of readers and fellow writers. As a writer, it’s quite wonderful (and sometimes depressing) to know what your audience thinks right away. You aren’t stuck waiting for some literary snob or political critic to make you or break you; your validation or rejection is immediate and obvious. So, it’s really not the writer but the readership that makes this new format so innovative. They are as much a part of the piece as you are, critiquing, adding information, fine tuning the argument, helping you all along the way. In that sense, blogging is a collaborative writing medium which is very rare and very sweet. I appreciate “all four of my readers” more than you know.

Congrats to all the winners. If you haven’t checked out all the blogs and posts that were nominated, do yourself a favor and read them. It will blow your mind. Send a little more scratch over to Wampum while you are at it. It was a big burden to do this project and they are really good people for doing it.

Check them out here.

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It’s Irresponsible Not To

WOODRUFF: As we reported a little while ago in our blog segment, the Internet is abuzz with reaction to comments by New York Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey. The congressman over the weekend shared his views about the now disputed CBS News report about President Bush’s Air National Guard service. Representative Maurice Hinchey is with me now, he joins us from Albany, New York.

Congressman Hinchey, what exactly did you say on Saturday at this town meeting in Ithaca?

REP. MAURICE HINCHEY (D), NEW YORK: Well, Judy, what I said came in response to a question from one of my constituents. There were about 100 people there. And they asked some questions about media manipulation. They were concerned about the issue of Armstrong Williams, for example, people being hired by this administration to pretend that they were giving objective news and information but were really putting forth the point of view of the administration rather than doing it objectively. And also the issue with Mr. Gannon, who was admitted to the White House press corps but who was not a legitimate press person, and was there just to throw softballs to the president.

And then the issue of the CBS Dan Rather event came up, and I said that there were false documents or documents which were falsified and presented as being accurate and there was a question as to where those documents came from. And in the context of the discussion I suggested that — my theory was that I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from the White House political operation, headed up by Karl Rove.

WOODRUFF: Well, I’m reading here a transcript of what you said, you said: “I have my own beliefs about how that happened. It originated with Karl Rove in my belief in the White House.” What do you know that you base that on?

HINCHEY: Well, I think there’s a great deal of circumstantial information and factual information. Mr. Rove, for example, has been involved in a host of political dirty tricks that are traceable back — all the way back to the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, right on up to the present. The way in which he treated Senator McCain, for example, in the context of the 2000 election.

So it doesn’t take an awful lot of imagination if you’re thinking about who it is that might have produced these false documents to try to mislead people in this very cynical way. It would take someone very brilliant, very cynical, very Machiavellian, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with the name of Karl Rove as a possibility of having done that.

WOODRUFF: But, at this point, it is just imagination, is that correct?

HINCHEY: It’s a possibility, yes. It’s a possibility based upon circumstantial evidence and the history of his behavior over the course of several decades. WOODRUFF: Well, you know, there was an independent panel that CBS asked to look into this — you know, to look into how CBS got these documents, what went wrong with the story that appears on “60 MINUTES.” They were not able to conclude where these documents came from. They said, finally, they weren’t even able to determine whether these documents were authentic or whether they were forged. So my question is, how are you in a position to know more than they or others who have investigated this now?

HINCHEY: Well, Judy, no one has come to any conclusions and that’s the unfortunate thing. We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to get to the bottom of the whole business of manipulating the media that has gone on in the context of this administration.

I think that that’s critically important. The essence of this democracy is really at stake. If people sitting back in their living rooms can’t rely upon the information they’re getting over the news channel or over the radio, then very important aspects of this Democratic system become eroded.

So, we need to get to the bottom of it, that’s the point here. I’m quite surprised, frankly, that this has gotten all the attention that it has, but in a way I’m grateful that it has because it’s important for us to be concerned about these things. Manipulating the media in this kind of a cynical way is antithetical to what we stand for as a nation, we need to find out who did it.

WOODRUFF: But some would say, listening to what you said and hearing your acknowledgment that you don’t have any proof, that it’s irresponsible or — let me ask you, do you think it’s responsible for you to say this without evidence?

HINCHEY: I think it’s very responsible of me to speculate about where this manipulation is coming from. Yes. I think it’s important to speculate about it, I think it’s important to discuss it and I think it’s important to try to stimulate the investigative agencies to look into this.

Unfortunately, the Congress is not doing its job. There are — this is something that ought to be investigated by the Congress of the United States. But this Congress is not doing its job. It’s not standing up for the American people the way it should. And, as a consequence, there is a certain amount of frustration out there and that frustration was voiced by the people who attended the meeting that I held last Saturday.

WOODRUFF: We’re going to have to leave it there, Congressman Maurice Hinchey. And again, we did try to reach the White House to get their comment on all of this, we were not able to get a comment from them.

As Peggy Noonan so memorably wrote about the “little Elian” drama:

Was Mr. Clinton being blackmailed? The Starr report tells us of what the president said to Monica Lewinsky about their telephone sex: that there was reason to believe that they were monitored by a foreign intelligence service. Naturally the service would have taped the calls, to use in the blackmail of the president. Maybe it was Mr. Castro’s intelligence service, or that of a Castro friend.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

We’re playing by Clinton rules now. Sit back and enjoy it, fellas.

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Swiftboat Liars Part II

I’ve been awfully impressed today with how the cosmopolitan MSM believes that the Preznit has been shown in these tapes to be such a truly decent guy on the gay rights issue.(Oooh. And he smoked pot, too!)

William Kristol on Fox news posited that he thought it must have been a Rove operation because it is so favorable to the president. The roundtable giggled and smirked delightedly.

One wonders what our tolerant moderate president will have to say about what his Swift Boat Scumbag friends are doing:

Look for the administration to launch into its Butterfly McQueen routine any day now, bemoaning these independent groups over which they have no control.

But, elderly people aren’t stupid. What in the world does the AARP have to do with Iraq and gay marriage? It seems to me that they’ve got all the Dear Leader cultists on board already. Is there an additional group of elderly people out there who can be convinced that social security should be privatized or gay’s will be allowed to marry? This seems like a reach.

One thing is crystal clear. If any of the fainthearted faction think that they will be able to buy a permanent get out of jail free card from the Republicans they are idiots. The AARP sold their members down the river with that ridiculous drug company giveaway last year and look what it bought them. Gay bashing and treason. There is ZERO margin in cooperation.

Our old friend hesiod reminded me by e-mail today that the man spearheading this son of swiftboat smear, Charles Jarvis, quit Gary Bauer’s campaign because Bauer was allegedly behaving in a way that gave the appearance of impropriety. Gary Bauer.

The core idea of this rumor campaign is that I have violated the vows I made to my wife 27 years ago,” Bauer said. “These rumors and character assassination are disgusting, outrageous, evil and sick. They are trash-can politics at its worst. . . . I have not violated my vows.”

Bill Dal Col, Forbes’s manager, denied the suggestion that the Forbes campaign was spreading rumors and said he would fire anyone who promoted allegations of sexual impropriety.

Instead of putting the issue to rest, Bauer’s news conference prompted Jarvis and McDonald to go public with their concerns. In addition, sources said the boards of two organizations with strong ties to Bauer, the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, both warned the candidate that he should stop having extended closed-door meetings with his staff member and should not travel alone with her.

[…]

“As a pro-family and pro-life leader, Gary is held to a higher standard. Meeting hour after hour alone [with the deputy manager], as a married man, candidate and as a pro-family pro-life leader, he has no business creating that kind of appearance of impropriety,” Jarvis said in a telephone interview.

Jarvis doesn’t seem to have a problem with gay hookers plastering their naked erections all over the internet and hanging out in the white house with god knows who, though, does he? Apparently, that doesn’t create the appearance of impropriety at all.

It is long past time that somebody got Bauer and Dobson on the record about this.

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Poisonous Fruit

It is no wonder that the media thinks bloggers are a threat. When you hear TIME magazine’s “Blogger of the year” Hinderocket say things like this you can’t blame them:

By “the left” I’m including almost the entire Democratic Party, you can count the exceptions on your fingers, you can name them, Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman…The whole mainstream of the party is engaged in an effort that is a betrayal of America, what they care about is not winning the war on terror…I don’t think they care about the danger to us as Americans or the danger to people in other countries. They care about power.

Via Kos, here’s the video of the very calm and reasonable sounding Hinderocket speaking the words of a paranoid totalitarian. It’s quite chilling.

I do not think that the majority of Republicans have partaken of this poisonous fruit. They do not believe that the Democratic Party is “engaged in an effort that is a betrayal of America.” Clearly, they do not think this in the US Congress, even though the comity that once reigned has been snuffed. They know that the people they see every day are not traitors even if they hate their politics. They understand that the Democratic party disagrees with the Republicans as a matter of policy and philosophy but that we are all Americans and under the constitution dissent is protected in order to have a thriving, open democracy.

But the right wing echo chamber is increasingly made up of voices that sound both this “reasonable” and this crazy. The more people listen to talk radio and watch FoxNews and read wingnut blogs exclusively the more they are going to see the world this way. It’s extremely dangerous.

What continues to fascinate me is that this sense of frustration seems to be growing despite the fact that the Democrats have less power than they’ve ever had before. TBOGG links to Hinderocket responding to a home state blogger’s rather benign questioning on the Gannon matter with this:

You dumb shit, he didn’t get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties’ concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing shithead. And don’t bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don’t qualify, you stupid shit.

Like I said before, there is something very strange going on in rightwingland. The more power they have the madder they get. Any psychologists out there care to weigh in on this strange psychosis?

Update: Orcinus has the definitive response to Powerline’s silly notion that Jimmy Carter is “on the other side.”

I don’t mean to harp on this stuff, but I think that blogs need to publicize the fact that some of these alleged “mainstream” bloggers on the right are quite far out on the fringe. They will respond furiously that Atrios and Kos and others are America haters or “barking moonbats” but their own words speak for themselves. It’s important that people see them, especially the mainstream media who are just beginnning to pay attention. They need to understand that Powerline is not just some nice lawyers and bankers who write about politics. They represent what Richard Hofsteder calls the paranoid strain in American politics. It’s important that people begin to make distinctions.

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Homewreckers Need Not Apply

If this is true, the White House has gone completely nuts:

GEORGE Bush has banned Camilla Parker Bowles from the White House – because she is a divorcee.

The unprecedented snub has effectively sabotaged Charles’s plan to take his bride on a Royal tour of America later this year.

The trip would have been the pair’s first official tour as a married couple.

But the US President – a notoriously right-wing Christian and reformed alcoholic – told aides it was “inappropriate” for him to be playing host to the newly-weds, who are both divorcees.

The decision was made even though the late President Ronald Reagan was divorced.

The trip would have been the pair’s first official tour as a married couple.

But the US President – a notoriously right-wing Christian and reformed alcoholic – told aides it was “inappropriate” for him to be playing host to the newly-weds, who are both divorcees.

The decision was made even though the late President Ronald Reagan was divorced.

A Government insider said: “It was relayed to us from Washington that Mrs Parker Bowles would not be welcome at the White House.

“The Americans are aware that the visit will be subject to a lot of media attent ion and did not want the President drawn into what they view to be a public relations exercise.

“It’s now uncertain if the visit will even go ahead.”

Insiders point out that hosting a lavish Royal dinner for Charles and Camilla would be bad PR for President Bush because while Princess Diana is still much loved by many Americans, her ex-husband is seen and dull and aloof – and bothhe and Camilla are widely blamed for the break-up of his marriage.

The trip, which has been planned for three years, was being portrayed as a “trade mission” and Charles and Camilla were expected to dine with Mr Bush and his wife Laura at the White House.

I wonder if Charles would have been allowed if he came with a Talon News correspondent.

This has to be bunk. I suspect that they cancelled it because of the media circus, but it would be interesting to know if some dope actually did use the divorce angle as one of the reasons.

Are there no divorcees in the Bush White House? I can’t believe there aren’t.

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Rest In Peace You Brilliant Goddamned Beast

For some of us of a certain age, Hunter S. Thompson was our muse, our godfather, our Shakespeare. He spoke for us in a wierd sort of exaggerated drug addled way that defined the world. For some of us of a certain age who follow politics, his view of the game informs us in ways that we will never wholly shake off. “Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail” remains the seminal work of baby boomer campaign journalism. He took the genre, shot it up with mescaline and invited us all along for the ride.

I was just re-reading his collection of essays “Generation of Swine” about the political scene in the 1980’s a couple of months ago. He saw it all then— the bizarre up-is-downism, the hallucinatory nature of the modern media, the craziness of America in its days of dominance. I was struck, however, at how deeply uncynical he really was, how strangely hopeful and secure that the American people were simply too solid to be completely taken in by these people. The state of politics today must have made him feel like he was on a bad trip that would never end.

Skinner called from Washington last week and warned me that I was dangerously wrong and ignorant about George Bush. “I know you won’t want to hear this,” he said ‘but George is an utterly different person from the one he appears to be — from the one you’ve been whipping on, for that matter. I thought you should know…”

I put him on hold and said I would call him back after the Kentucky Maryland game. I had given 5 points and Kentucky was ahead by 7 with 18 seconds to go…George Bush meant nothing to me at that moment. The whole campaign was like the sound of some radio far up the street.

But Skinner persisted, for some reason….He was trying to tell me something. He was saying that Bush was not what he seemed to be — that somewhere inside him were the seeds of a genuine philosopher king.

“He is smarter that Thomas Jefferson., “Skinner said. “he has the potential to stand taller in history than both of the Roosevelts put together.”

I was shocked. “You lying swine,” I said. “Who paid you to say these things? Why are you calling me?”

“It’s for your own good,” he said. “I’m just trying to help you.” …. He took a call on one of his other lines, then came back to me in a blaze of disconnected gibberish.

“Listen to me,” he was saying. “I was with him last night, all alone. We sat in front of his fireplace and burned big logs and listened to music and drank whiskey and he got a little weepy, but I told him not to worry about it, and he said he was the only living voice of Bobby Kennedy in American politics today.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t tell me that swill, it’s too horrible. I depend on you for more than that.”

I laughed. It was crazy. Here was Gene Skinner — one of the meanest and most cynical hit men in politics — telling me that he’d spent the last two night arguing with George Bush about the true meaning of Plato’s Republic and the Parable of the Caves, smoking Dharum cigarettes and weeping distractedly while they kept playing and replaying old Leonard Cohen tunes on his old Nakamichi tape machine.

“Yeah,” Skinner said, “”he still carries that 250 with the Hallibuton case, the one he’s carried for years … he loves music, really high rock’n roll. He has tapes of Alice Stuart that he made himself on the Nak.”

Ye Gods, I thought. They’ve finally turned him; he’s gone belly up. How did he get my phone number?

“You hideous punk! Don’t call me anymore!” I yelled at him. “I’m moving to Hawaii next week. I know where you’ve been for the last two years. Stay away from me!”

“You fool!” he shouted. “Where were you when we were looking for you in New Orleans last week? We hung around for three days. George wanted to hook up with the Neville brothers. We were traveling incognito”…and now he was telling me that Bush — half mad on cheap gin and hubris, with 16 states already locked up on Super Tuesday — showed up at the New Orleans airport on Sunday night with only one bodyguard and a black 928 Porsche with smoked windows and Argentine license plates…

I felt sick and said nothing. Skinner rambled on; drifted from one demented story to another like he was talking to the Maharishi. It made no sense at all.

None of it did, for that matter. George Bush was a mean crook from Texas. He had no friends and nobody in Washington wanted to be seen with him on the streets at night. There was something queasy about him, they said — a sense of something grown back unto itself, like a dead animal … it was impossible that he could be roaming about Washington or New Orleans at night jabbering about Dylan Thomas and picking up dead cats.

Yes there was something wrong about it, deeply wrong, even queer … yet Skinner seemed to believe these things and he wanted me to believe them.

Why? It was like hearing that Ivan Boesky had written “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” or that Ed Meese wakes up every morning and hurls a $100 bill across the Potomac.

I hung up the phone and felt crazy. Then I walked back to the hotel in the rain.

March 21, 1988

He had it nailed. This world is a lonelier place without him in it.

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TBOGG Understands How This game Is Played

While all of the other bloggers are relishing the idea of the Eight Inch Bulldog being deposed on his connections to the White House, I’m much more interested in hearing about his full-time job as an Escort with Benefits in the DC area. In particular, a “client” list or little black book.

Do click the link for the most disturbing metaphor I think I’ve ever read.

But while we’re on on the rare and untrod subject of JimJeff “GG” Gannon, the loose cannon, I’m curious if anyone has talked to this guy about the GG matter? He is described by the Washington Post as “deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, one of four White House political departments run by uberstrategist Karl Rove.” He was also appeared in his official capacity at both the 2003 and 2004 GOPUSA conferences in DC.

John F. Kennedy created the concept of a public liaison, Nixon institutionalized the office and Republicans say Bush has perfected it. Few, if any, have been as effective at using the taxpayer-funded staff to keep the base of the party happy and involved in the policymaking process. Rove’s intimate involvement in the office enhances its influence not only inside the White House but also outside with the scores of activist groups Bush relies on to help sell his agenda.

Most mornings at 8:30, Rove huddles with about eight White House aides from the four political offices to plot strategy. These offices are public liaison, intergovernmental affairs, political affairs and strategic initiatives.

This is where Rove, Goeglein and others share thoughts on synthesizing the president’s ideas, enlisting outside assistance to sell them and heading off potential fights with or among supporters on the outside. When the meeting lets out, Goeglein operates as an ambassador of sorts for Bush and Rove.

In Republican politics, a person’s conservative fervor is often judged by the people he worked for or with. In the eyes of many conservatives, Goeglein’s credentials are unassailable.

A product of Indiana from the era of Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh’s reign, Goeglein learned politics from the two conservative Dans of the Hoosier State — Coats in the Senate and later Quayle, when he was vice president.

After spending his first year out of college in broadcast media, Goeglein, a native of Fort Wayne, often found himself handling communications strategy for the two Indiana Republicans during the 1990s. In the 2000 campaign, he signed on as spokesman not for Bush, but for Gary Bauer, who ran as the most conservative conservative in the Republican primary.

Shortly after Bauer dropped out, Karen Hughes, one of Bush’s closest advisers, recruited Goeglein to help shop Bush’s message to voters and activists. Goeglein packed up his wife and two young sons and headed to a cramped apartment in Austin.

He assumed he was headed to the White House press shop after the election. But, he said, Rove phoned with an unexpected message: “I am calling to change your life.” A few minutes later, Goeglein was Rove’s right-hand man dealing with the political right. Goeglein plans to assume the same role in the second term. “I love people. I love policy, and I love politics.”

This fellow is both intimately familiar with GOPUSA and walks in the highest corridors of power in the White House. It would be quite interesting to know if he had any comment on how a GOPUSA “correspondent” got into the White House press room. He certainly seems like a guy with enough juice to make it happen.

Check out the links to the GOPUSA conferences. G. Gordon Liddy is referred to as a “former presidential advisor.” LOL.

Mega props to CSI dKos for gathering an amazing amount of information.

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Going Too Far

Americans Want an Opposition Party

“Americans want Democrats to stand up to Bush,” the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire reports. “Fully 60%, including one-fourth of Republicans, say Democrats in Congress should make sure Bush and his party ‘don’t go too far.’ Just 34% want Democrats to ‘work in a bipartisan way’ to help pass the president’s priorities.”

We all know that the Republicans have spent may years damning our party for being weak, traitorous and cowardly. This seems like a very good opportunity to begin to turn that around. People want the Democrats to obstruct the excesses of the GOP — even a quarter of the GOP itself.

Perhaps the best way to put this is simply to say it exactly as the question is worded. “We are keeping the Republicans from going too far.” There’s a certain common sense ring to that that I think a lot of people understand instinctively. This may be the key to why the public hasn’t rallied around the social security privatization phase out plan. They can feel that the Republicans are just going too far.

Update: Let me clarify that I am not advocating this as a campaign slogan or a Democratic rallying cry. I’m talking about a public legislative strategy, which is what I think was being addressed in this poll. We are in the minority and the American people have assigned us a role to play. We should play it, take the credit and position outselves as the voices of sanity against a radical right wing bunch of nuts — which happens to be true. One of the ways that we convey this is by standing together, not cutting deals and consistently portraying the other side as out of control — which also happens to be true.

This isn’t a capitulation. It’s framing us as the regular people and them as the crazies for a change — something that 60% of the American people seem to agree is at least a possibility. This is a good things folks. We can work with it.

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