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Crossfire
Always a problem in Republican circular firing squads!
By Bryan Zepp Jamieson |
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April 14, 2002 - Mt. Shasta (zeppscommentaries.com) -- The onset of another bad week for our weak and stupid pseudo President began with Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), who openly demanded a full investigation into what, if any, advance knowledge the administration might have had regarding the attacks on September 11th. Given the large number of oddities in the responses the administration showed on that terrible day, it's a reasonable request.
Republicans, of course, leapt to the attack. Questioning the president is treason, just like it was in 1998.
As did Democratic disgrace Zell Miller (D-GOP) and the captive right wing media.
But McKinney fired right back, saying, "News reports from Der Spiegel to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN, indicate that many different warnings were received by the Administration. In addition, it has even been reported that the United States government broke bin Laden's secure communications before September 11... What is undeniable is that corporations close to the Administration, have directly benefited [sic] from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11. The Carlyle Group, DynCorp, and Halliburton certainly stand out as companies close to this Administration." Like Barbara Lee, who voted against invading Afghanistan and was subject to wild abuse from the screaming neo-fascists in the GOP, she held her ground, and it turned out the GOP had nothing going for it other than fabricated outrage.
Given that substantiation of such charges could result in Putsch facing a firing squad, this wasn't the result the Republicans wanted. (Lee, incidentally, won her primary last month in California by a hefty margin, something that was NOT a given in December, when flags were still flying everywhere and Republicans could get away with screaming "traitor!" at anyone who disagreed with them).
It didn't help any that an unscientific poll conducted by an Atlanta newspaper online showed that fully 50% of respondents thought the Administration knew something in advance of the attacks.
A memo from RNC operative Matthew Dowd got leaked, advising party faithful to expect Putsch's ratings to drop sharply into the 60s between now and July, as political patterns renormalized. Dowd didn't do anything wrong; he was just giving solid, good common-sense political advice, and being honest.
These are not considered virtues among the right. The GOP found it annoying.
Then there was the Crossfire thing. Some fairly highly-placed GOP operative was silly enough to tell a reporter that word was out in the GOP to stay away from the reformatted show, which now featured voluble and aggressive Democrats Paul Begala and James Carville. The message was clear: Republicans were afraid to appear on any discussion show that wasn't as prearranged as a WWF match. When Republicans whined that Carville was aggressively rude, people thought of Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly, and burst out laughing. Listening to Republicans whine about television manners in political discourse was like hearing an old whore complain that young girls today were more interested in money than in romance. Gleeful Democrats portrayed Republicans as being like the people in that hamburger restaurant chain's ads who spontaneously make chicken noises while trying to work.
Rank and file democrats weren't the only ones fed up with the pervasive right-wing control of the media. Sen. Tom Daschle and Rep. Dick Gephardt sent an open letter to FOX News Chairman Roger Ailes, CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson and MSNBC President Erik Sorenson complaining about the level of coverage Putsch received in relation to ranking Democrats.
Ailes, the marketing genius who brought Limbaugh the Grunting Pig to the dinner table of American media, was described on the Internet as having responded to one hostile email:
"Some moron left wing newsletter must be advising a bunch of pathetic losers who sit home a play with themselves on computers to write to me to tell me to be more fair and balanced. These uncreative robots make every letter sound the same. THE LEFT MUST be losing the war if they are reduced to this low level crap."
Ailes, like Richard Mellon Scaife, doesn't do well in direct confrontations with the left, and has a history of shooting from the hip.
So much for all that "fair and balanced" crap that FAUX News Channel likes to talk about. The die-hard right wingers will stick with FAUX, but there have to be a lot of more fair-minded Americans who realize that FAUX exists for the sole purpose of lying to them, and that these lies are not in the best interests of those particular viewers.
On a darker note, the neo-conservative movement fought the mounting tide of outrage at the policies of Ariel Sharon by leaking to Palestinians dignitaries the incredible canard that they would love to help them out - a lie on the face of it - but that they couldn't, because they were drowned out by the "Jewish-controlled media" in America. Nothing like shafting the Palestinians while simultaneously sticking it to the local Jews, eh? If you are thinking that it doesn't exactly make sense that voter sympathies for the Palestinians would be rising if all they heard was "Jewish-controlled" news, ponder this: some of the very neo-cons promoting this poisonous little bit of international manipulation on Putsch's behalf are, in fact, Jewish. Not word on whether it included the authors of a nazi-like invocation by the Wall Street Journal to "burn out" the Palestinians, killing them all.
It seems that the neo-con movement, which has a large number of gay-bashing, homophobic gays among its writers (for details, see "Blinded by the Right" by David Brock), also has a few Quislings willing to sell out domestic Jews by perpetrating the oldest and nastiest anti-Semitic lie in the book in the name of supporting a dishonest policy to push the interests of Israel. This incredible story can be found at http//www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0204pnac.html.
After three weeks at number one on the national bestseller's list, "Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore could no longer be dismissed as a fluke by Republicans, and a smear campaign was launched. The attack blew up in the face of the principal attacker, right wing hack Andrew Sullivan. At its heart was an list of dubious "accomplishments" by the illegal junta in Washington during its first few weeks. The list, as it appeared in Moore's book, had gained wide currency on the Internet as one of those unattibuted pieces that shows up everywhere. I even had a copy of it on my own website, in the "Other Voices" section. I recognized it instantly when I read Moore's book, and knew that he had cribbed it from the Internet.
Spinsanity mentioned in passing that the list wasn't original to Moore while concentrating on other errors and inaccuracies. Andrew Sullivan gleefully pounced on that, accusing Moore of plagiarism, and of stripping the list of footnotes in the process.
However, Sullivan was wrong on both counts.
Kirsten Selberg, the compiler, did put the list up on Voter March West's wall, as noted. However, only a handful of the items on the list were actually footnoted, and Selberg herself intended for the list to be distributed as widely as possible, and regarded herself as a compiler of public domain information, rather than an author. So Sullivan was wrong, and, given his own professional knowledge of journalistic ethics, had to be lying, when he claimed Moore was committing plagiarism. Selberg's only complaint wasn't that Moore used the list, but that he didn't update it. (The fact that the editing of the book was six months out of date when it was released may have had something to do with that.)
Moore DID screw up. He should have said he got the list off the web. He deserves a slap on the wrist for being sloppy.
But it's not plagiarism.
And what started out as a bright hope to discredit Moore simply revealed how nasty the GOP was in trying to smear liberal voices, and it backfired.
Finally, even the news that a Democrat had been convicted on ten felony counts of racketeering, bribery, and other crimes and was facing expulsion from the House and up to 63 years in prison didn't cheer up the Pubs.
You see, the Democrat in question was James Traficant, and it was no secret that he was a hard-line right-winger -- and that prior to his indictments, the Republicans had considered him a fair-haired boy and tried to get him to defect, while Democrats considered him a traitor and a right-wing sleaze-ball, and had stripped him of all committee positions.
It's a hell of a note when a member of the opposition party gets busted, and that reflects more on you then it does the opposition party. That's what happened with Traficant, who is seen as representing right wing sleaze, and not Democratic sleaze.
But then, Republicans should be used to that. The impeachment of Clinton said far more about them then it did about Clinton.
And the right wing grip on America continues to falter.
Bryan Zepp Jamieson is an online activist and commentator and a founding member of the ironically-named Lying Socialist Weasels. The permanent URL for this commentary is http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/crossfire.htm.
Copyright © 2002, Bryan Zepp Jamieson.