Since I shut of all access to my site from my work IP, I’ve posted through gmail. But, as of late, it’s added some %20 characters and other non-human reading garbage, so I’m trying to post right now through Apple Mail. Sadly, I alone will be unable to see the results and proof them as necessary.
Today I’m smiling to myself, wondering if it is the day that Karl Rove will finally implode. Probably not, since that man is more weaselly than, I don’t know, a weasel, with Teflon-coated skin to boot. I can’t really envision a world where he’s out of the picture. GW isn’t a real boy yet, so he can’t exactly fire Gepetto yanking his strings and all. I think Laura Bush’s mentioning that they are all good friends is just a plot point to remind the audience that even if Iago is fired, he’s still gonna be around…
What fucking kills me about the discussion of Rove as a victim of partisan attacks, a la this quote from the NY Times:
“He wasn’t talking at all about her identity,” said Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the committee and a protege of Mr. Rove’s, accusing Democrats of playing an unseemly game in criticizing the chief strategist of Mr. Bush’s victory last year.
is kind of two-fold. First, there’s the kind of “What the Fuck?” incredulity. Karl Rove, the man who said liberals were all pussies for not going along with Bush’s war last month, is complaining about partisan attacks? Please, Karl, you might be many things, but you ain’t no victim.
The other interesting thing is how the logic seems to closely parallel the kind of wordsmithing for which Clinton was positively CRUCIFIED, during the Lewinski investigation. It depends on how you define “leak” or “sex” or you say tomato, I say tomato. And, apparently mentioning Wilson’s wife isn’t really identifying Plame, because, I guess, he must have several secret wives, right?
In the grand scheme, I sure as fucking hell hope history records this past decade accurately. Clinton got a little head, was less than forthcoming on facts and no lives were lost.
Bush, on the other hand, out and out lied (unless he alone is still looking for the phantom WMDs, kind of like OJ and the real killers) and possibly aided and abetted an act of treason, what with the whole protection for covert intelligence and all (during wartime no less). He is doing it all for love of country and god and all sorts of happy horseshit without the simple logic of Clinton getting his dick sucked, and people have died and more casualties will come.
Talking Points Memo and its cafe area have my paranoia on full alert. It’s now hard to imagine there isn’t some kind of Watergate cover-up and good, old-fashioned Nixonian smears and tricks ruling the Whitehouse right now. Even Nixon didn’t manipulate us directly into war.
As for the journalistic integrity thing and protecting sources, this column reminded me completely of the lessons learned in journalism school.
We were taught, back in the distant and innocent past of the 1980s, that you just didn’t go around promising to protect a source that wasn’t a whistleblower or at some kind of risk, and only if there was no other way. Even when you look at the relatively romantic notion of a “Deep Throat,” the professors taught us that background sources might provide a lead, like “follow the money,” but good reporting required getting other sources, checking and rechecking and getting shit on the record. (Not to mention checking out the motives as to why the leak might be leaking.)
Most of all, we young students of the reported word were cautioned, there’s a whole big, bad world of hard-ball playing sources, who would be playing you any way they can if you let them. Giving up the confidential source card to them in the game is about as smart as shouting out “Damn, look at all these aces,” whilst playing poker. Journalists like Time magazine’s Matt Cooper should be required to watch the movie Absence of Malice, while punching themselves on the forehead and repeating “Karl Rove used me.”