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Huh? What? The microphone's on? Oh, right, I knew that. *ahem* Thank you, thank you.
After a (somewhat unwanted) lengthy absence, I'm back! Don't worry, during Kaptain's bout of stupidity, er, I mean, technical problems, I've been productive during this downtime. I've been sharpening my knives, and now it's time to see just how sharp they are. I must admit, there have been a few Gene Lyons columns that I just couldn't butcher too badly, because Gene would make some good points. Unfortunately, when Gene makes good points, there are usually 4 or 5 stupid ones to go with them. (I say unfortunately with the understanding that it is unfortunate for Gene. I relish them, however, but it is bad form to take delight in other people's misfortune.) This, however, is not one of them. So let's get right to it.
As always, Gene's blathering are in blue, my blatherings are in black, and all of my links should pop to a new window.
A cat among the pigeons
Gene Lyons
Posted on Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Samuel Johnson, the iconoclastic 18th century English essayist, put it best: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”
I've read some people who blur that line of distinction.
So, sure, former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan compiled his memoirs with an eye toward making a buck. Since when are Republicans opposed to profit?
Since when has Gene ever been concerned with telling the truth?
McClellan’s memoir, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” has caused quite a stir. But can there be any American not currently on the White House payroll who doesn’t know that the administration hoodwinked the nation into invading Iraq with a tidal wave of meretricious propaganda?
Can you prove that remark with any scrap of evidence, Gene? Funny how the Robb-Silberman report found no evidence of "hoodwinking", isn't it?
Condi Rice alibis that President Bush never intended to mislead the public and “was very clear about the reasons for going to war.”
So clear that they even put out a sheet listing those reasons.
Yeah, well, I recall Rice testifying under oath that a CIA briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” was “historical” in nature, before its contents were declassified and everybody saw that it had predicted everything but the precise location of the 9 /11 attacks before they happened. Bush went fishing.
Everything but the precise location, dates, times, nature of attack, people involved, and other little details like that. This is a lie, Gene. Here is the report, (PDF format!) so you can read for yourself. Show me where these attacks are predicted. The bulletin says that al-Qaida was doing "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Weren't the Twin Towers commercial buildings, which is quite a bit different from federal buildings? Weren't the federal buildings targeted not in New York, but in Washington, D.C. and Virginia? The final sentence there says that bin Laden supporters were planning an attack with "explosives". Since when has jet fuel and airplanes been considered "explosives"?
McClellan calls Rice “sometimes too accommodating” as national security adviser. She was worse than that. Her 9 /11 testimony exhibited two qualities essential to rising in the Bush administration: shameless sycophancy and an incapacity to be embarrassed.
Well, if anybody knows shamelessness and sycophancy, and has an incapacity to be embarrassed...
Give her the motorcade and the big corner office and there’s no falsehood so brazen that Condi won’t embrace it.
Wonder how big Gene's corner office is?
Then there’s Bush himself, whom Mc-Clellan depicts as a charming fellow who frequently “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment” and engages in “self-deception.” Do tell. Would this be the same president who’s repeatedly claimed that Saddam Hussein forced him to invade Iraq by refusing to admit U.N. arms inspectors? This despite the fact that mocking those inspectors ’ incompetence—never mind they proved 100 percent correct about Iraq’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction”
Wrong.
—kept White House imagineers busy until the “shock and awe” bombardment began.
So which do you believe, your president or your lying eyes?
Gosh, Gene, it turns out we can do both.
The sheer brazenness of Bush’s fictions suggests a classic con-man’s personality: intellectually insecure, but inwardly contemptuous of how gullible and easily manipulated people are.
I thought we weren't supposed to talk about Bill Clinton anymore?
He may even buy into that make-believe about Saddam at some level. Even for a stone sociopath, a story’s an easier sell when it’s halfway sincere. But his strongest belief is that George W. Bush is a big cat in a world of pigeons.
McClellen even reports overhearing Bush telling a supporter that he couldn’t remember if he ever used cocaine. If you believe that, chances are your brains are made of feathers.
What, believe that McClellan actually overheard that? Don't worry, Gene, I don't believe that at all.
Granted, for McClellan to suggest that the Bush White House’s critical mistake was “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed” suggests an only-virgin-in-the-whorehouse naiveté not in keeping with his performance as press secretary. Writing at salon.com, Louis Bayard
Wow, a named source! What's gotten into Gene?
reminds us that the Texan was particularly unpersuasive: “Watch McClellan’s old press briefings and you’ll see a man who is deeply uncomfortable,” he writes, adding: “His eyes are wary, his manner stiff—his evasions actually sound like evasions.”
There's some evidence that Scotty is lying now. And by some, I mean to say "overwhelming".
But what really provided sardonic amusement during the book’s roll-out was the disingenuous reaction of the high-dollar press.
“If anything,” McClellan wrote, “the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.
“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise.... In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
Got that, pigeons? The Bush administration’s former press spokesman surrounds the phrase “liberal media” with ironical quotes to indicate what most people with the intellectual acumen of a basset hound already know: that far from being an independent check on government power, today’s corporate-controlled, courtier-dominated Washington/New York media function as reliably, and far more smoothly, to advance White House propaganda than McClellan himself ever did. But this is unthinkable,so the networks, Glenn Greenwald noted,
in between his sockpuppet plays (Good DAY, sir!)(God, I love this link!)
rolled out “their full stable of multimillionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan’s claims. One media star after the next—Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer—materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are ‘deferential, complicit enablers’ in government propaganda.” That said, quality journalism definitely got done amid the Iraq propaganda barrage. One news organization, then Knight Ridder, now McClatchy, and a handful of terrific reporters—Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel, Joe Galloway, etc. —were all over this story back when it counted. See their response to McClellan at washingtonbureau.typepad.com/nationalsecurity/.
Just in case you haven't gotten your lifetime dose of stupidity in one day, let's fisk the other liberal who has a column put out on a Wednesday, Grady Jim Robinson. Unfortunately, I'm not going to publish the whole column. I just couldn't do that to you guys. I'll just go with the... well, "highlights" isn't quite the right word, is it?
TABLE FOR ONE : Who’s worse?
Grady Jim Robinson
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
I’m not surprised that former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan now admits in his new memoir, “ What Happened, ” that he was merely the administration’s designated liar. As Gomer Pyle used to say, “ Surprise, surprise !”
McClellan was about the worst press secretary we’ve ever seen. He was bland, fake, boring and couldn’t lie worth a hoot. You could tell he was lying. When he uttered a sentence it was like a neon sign over his head that said, “ If I’m speaking I am lying. ” A press secretary must be able to lie convincingly, like Tony Snow. Tony could lie with a certain flair and wit that one had to admire.
“ Scooter” Libby and Karl Rove were up to their necks in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. It was almost laughable when McClellan said, “ I’ve talked to both of them and they assured me they had nothing to do with the leak of Valerie Plame’s name to the press.” The White House press corps wanted to scream, “YOU ARE LYING!” because they all knew it was a Rove stink bomb from the beginning. McClellan includes Bush and Cheney in the operation. Think about that! Go Gomer! “Surprise, surprise!”
Uh, Grady Jim? Didn't Scott say that he believed he was telling the truth during this period of time? So, is he lying now about telling the truth then, or, if he was lying then, what makes you believe that anything he says now could be truthful?
The Republicans are going bonkers. Naturally they are screaming bloody murder that one of their insiders is spilling the beans. They are playing the “ disgruntled” card. Anytime a former employee breaks rank and writes a book disclosing the inside truth those who are still spinning lies moan about the poor employee as being “pitiful”,“bitter”, but most of all, “disgruntled”.
“He must have suffered a mental breakdown.”
“Poor boy, he must be so embittered and lonely to have written such a book.”
Hey, maybe he felt so guilty he just decided to tell the truth. Ever thought of that ?
See McClellans book proposal here. Strange how it changed in tone from the proposal to the final form, isn't it? And isn't it also strange that the book publisher is run by a leftie, and is partially owned by George Soros?
Well, surprise surprise surprise!
I’ve read about half the book but I don’t plan to finish it. It is sickening to read about how poor sincere, hopeful, trusting, naive Scott believed he was doing the right thing, but how he now looks back and realizes he was lying like a mangy dog. Most of us with any smidge of objectivity knew he was lying back when he was so insipidly spewing forth his continuous stream of pure blather.
Well, on the note of "pure blather", we'll end this. I'm sure your brain cells are begging for mercy by now, so I'll be merciful. This time.
And so ends another week of "Wasting Time With Gene Lyons". Join us next week when we kill even more brain cells trying to get into the mind of a liberal.
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Posted by Kaptain_Krude on 2008-06-06 10:55:39 | Rating: | Views: 30
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