tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40730292856095774552010-01-09T00:13:06.062-08:00Zug The continuation of <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/hd8/blogger.html">Skiing Uphill</a> and <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blog/blogger.html">Boregasm</a>, Zug is <i><b>'the little blog that could.'</i></b>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.comBlogger168125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-25704320179809556242007-10-08T16:40:00.000-07:002007-10-17T21:35:31.217-07:00Once more unto the breach, dear friends...<p align="center"><img alt="St. Crispian's Day!" src="http://www.hartwilliams.com/images/HENRY-V-crest.png" height="177" width="160" /></p>Kicking and screaming, I am dragged back into the fray.<br /><br />Didn't want to. Didn't mean to. But it is, as Kant notes, a Moral Imperative, no matter how hopeless I might reckon the effort.<br /><br />But not here. Instead, HERE: at <a href="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">his vorpal sword</span></a>, and at <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blogistan/blogger.html"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Commonwealth of Blogistan</span></a>. (They're NOT the same blog.) I also cross-post at numinous other sites.<br /><br />Gentlemen in England now abed <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blogistan/2007/10/breach.html">will hold their manhood cheap that did not blog here with us</a> upon Saint Crispin's Day. <span style="font-size:78%;">(<a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/henryV/21/">Or, HERE</a>)</span><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/henryV/11/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">KING HENRY V</span> (Wm. Shakespeare)</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Act 3. Scene I</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">SCENE I.</span> France. Before Harfleur.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);">Alarum. Enter KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">KING HENRY</span>:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 102);">Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;</span><br />Or close the wall up with our English dead.<br />In peace there's nothing so becomes a man<br />As modest stillness and humility:<br />But when the blast of war blows in our ears,<br />Then imitate the action of the tiger;<br />Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,<br />Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;<br />Then lend the eye a terrible aspect .... <span style="font-size:78%;">[<a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/henryv/full.html">MORE</a>]</span><br /><br /></blockquote>Courage. Grrrr.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-2570432017980955624?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-26972336812776150052007-08-17T06:54:00.000-07:002007-08-18T04:48:21.379-07:00<p align="center"><img alt="so long & thx 4 all the fish!" src="http://www.hartwilliams.com/images/HWsig360.gif" /><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/closed4ever.jpg" alt="With apologies to Magritte" align="middle" border="0" /><br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-2697233681277615005?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-10722069336738299162007-08-16T01:11:00.000-07:002007-08-16T20:00:17.882-07:00The End<p align="center"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Quang_Duc" title="Direct link to file"><img src="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/monk4.jpg" alt="Protest" border="0" height="235" width="200" /></a></p>Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-1072206933673829916?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-15675339584974418812007-08-15T16:44:00.000-07:002007-08-18T04:51:27.899-07:00The Eyes of Texas are Upon You ...<p align="center"><br /></p><p align="center"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c9/Itcanthappenhere.jpg/382px-Itcanthappenhere.jpg" title="Direct link to file"><img src="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/boosh.jpg" alt="hat tip to ThinkProgress" align="middle" border="0" height="213" width="221" /></a></p><br />It is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here">Buzz Windrip</a>'s dream come true, the wet dream of Tricky Dick Nixon, the paranoid fantasy of a thousand "libertarian" science fiction writers, right-wing columnists, lefty conspiracy theorists, and now it's come true: We ARE living in a <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/images/eye1-psm.jpg">Philip K. Dick novel</a>.<br /><br />From <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118714764716998275.html">the Wall Street Journal</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites</strong><br />By ROBERT BLOCK<br />August 15, 2007; Page A1<br /><br />The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.<br /><br />The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.<br /><br />Until now, only a handful of federal civilian agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, have had access to the most basic spy-satellite imagery, and only for the purpose of scientific and environmental study... [<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118714764716998275.html">MORE</a>]</blockquote><br />But wait! (As they say) there's MORE!!<br /><br /><blockquote>Plans to provide DHS with significantly expanded access have been on the drawing board for over two years. The idea was first talked about as a possibility by the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11 as a way to help better secure the country. "It is an idea whose time has arrived," says Charles Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer, who will be in charge of the new program. DHS officials say the program has been granted a budget by Congress and has the approval of the relevant committees in both chambers.<br /><strong><br />Wiretap Legislation</strong><br /><br />Coming on the back of legislation that upgraded the administration's ability to wiretap terrorist suspects without warrants, the development is likely to heat up debate about the balance between civil liberties and national security.<br /><br />Access to the satellite surveillance will be controlled by a new Homeland Security branch -- the National Applications Office -- which will be up and running in October.</blockquote><br />Debate? What fucking DEBATE?!!?! Civil liberties? What fucking CIVIL LIBERTIES??!?<br /><br />I remember writing in 1986 or '87 (or trying to write, since nobody would publish my political stuff. SEX stuff, sure, but important political stuff? Naw.) when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that you had NO right to privacy in the airspace above your home, that they'd opened the door to spy satellite surveillance on U.S. Citizens. This was, naturally, considered the wildest form of Leftie Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Wackiness.<br /><br />Well, kiddies, here you are.<br /><br />In a related story, the White House will be <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/15/petraeus-white-house-report/">authoring the "surge" report</a> in September. They're not even TRYING to hide the lying, the enabling acts, the arrogation of power, the illegal wiretaps, warrantless searches, gag orders, etc. etc. etc.<br /><br />In such a climate, it is insane and dangerous for me to write about politics, or to put my neck on the line for the likes of you. Because, frankly, I don't love you <em>that</em> much.<br /><br />So, to paraphrase Chief Joseph at the end of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nez_Perce">Nez Percé War</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 0, 153);"><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Hear me, my readers, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will blog no more forever.</strong></span></blockquote><br />I'm ready for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Joseph#Aftermath">boat to Leavenworth now, General Miles</a>.<br /><br />disCourage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-1567533958497441881?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-48778324543030550972007-08-15T05:22:00.000-07:002007-08-15T05:43:49.546-07:00Crazy From The Heat, or It’s Only Logickal<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/doggie.jpg" title="Direct link to file"><img src="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/doggie.thumbnail.jpg" alt="doggie.jpg" border="0" height="128" width="106" /></a> <a href="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/doggie.jpg" title="Direct link to file"><img src="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/doggie.thumbnail.jpg" alt="doggie.jpg" align="middle" border="0" height="128" width="106" /></a><a href="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/doggie.jpg" title="Direct link to file"><img src="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/doggie.thumbnail.jpg" alt="doggie.jpg" border="0" height="128" width="106" /></a><br /></div><br />Welcome to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_days">dog days</a> of August. Originally having something or other to do with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sothic_cycle">heliacal rising of the Dog Star</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius#Etymology_and_cultural_significance">Sirius</a>, the Nile floods and the <a href="http://skepdic.com/vondanik.html">UFOs moving the Pyramids</a>, they now seem to just be dog days.<br /><br />Today they released <a href="http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker">a Wikipedia "scanner"</a> that allows people to see WHO has been editing the popular on-line community-written encyclopedia. Little did anyone realize what mad hounds of paranoia would be unleashed in the increasingly fabulist world of the Rightie Blogosmear ...<br /><br /><a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26654">Little Green Footballs</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>NYT Bias Graphically Illustrated</strong><br />Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 11:31:44 am PST<br /><br />Someone at the New York Times contributed the following edit to the Wikipedia page for George W. Bush: Wikipedia scanner results.<br /><br />[<strong>NOTE</strong>: someone has added the word "Jerk" to Bush's Wikipedia profile. A mild descriptive, compared to how those whose children are dead in this war feel about him. -- HW]<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE</strong> at 8/14/07 11:50:54 am:<br /><br />Just to verify, here’s a WHOIS lookup on the IP: 199.181.174.146.<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE</strong> at 8/14/07 2:44:37 pm:<br /><br />Auspundits has another gem of an edit, also by someone at the New York Times, in which they changed a description of Tom Delay from “a prominent member of the Republican Party” to “a Grand Dragon of the Republican Party.”<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE</strong> at 8/14/07 2:47:27 pm:<br /><br />Someone at the New York Times has also been editing the Wall Street Journal’s Wikipedia page: Riehl World View: New York Times Editing WSJ’s Wiki?<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE</strong> at 8/14/07 2:53:03 pm:<br /><br />Allahpundit discovered a Democratic Party IP that was apparently used to vandalize a page about Rush Limbaugh.</blockquote><br />Gee. Somebody who works at the New York Times (perhaps in the mail room) added "jerk" to George W. Bush's page on Wikipedia. Ahh. THEREFORE, the TIMES is BLATANTLY BIASED!!!! (<em>All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore: All men are Socrates.</em> Logick is so much more funner than drinking used ter be.)<br /><br />Oh, and Democrats might have said bad things about Rush Limbaugh. YA THINK?<br /><br />(I must admit that calling Tom Delay "a Grand Dragon of the Republican Party" seems to me more like a sincere attempt to increase the accuracy of the entry in question than anything necessarily negative. But then, having been <a href="http://www.tomdelay.com/home/democrat-blogger-calls-for-assassinations.html">personally smeared</a> on his website, I may be a tad biased.)<br /><br />Hmmm, what other EARTH-SHAKING revelations have come to the dazed dogs?<br /><br />Over at NewsBusters -- "Combating and Exposing Liberal Media Bias" -- this one seems right up their alley (as it were). Under an unintentionally ironic (as in, <em>how he can write this with a straight face is beyond me</em>) title, "<a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2007/08/14/wikipedia-tool-propaganda">Tool For Propaganda?</a>" Matthew Shepherd (who works for Brent Bozell's "Media Research Center," of which NewsBusters is a wholly-owned, and just-turned-two-years-old subsidiary) writes:<br /><br /><blockquote>This type of cybersquatting is quite widespread but up until now, difficult to track. That's changed however, with the creation of <a href="http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/">Wikiscanner</a>, a search engine that allows you to see what organizations have been editing Wikipedia. You can, for instance, look up to see what Wikipedia users from different political groups, business, churches, and any other organization have been up to on the site. Early results are showing that many employees seem to have a habit of editing the entries of their own company/organization. You can also see that at least one person at the <em>New York Times</em> <a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26654_NYT_Bias_Graphically_Illustrated&only">deliberately defaced</a> Wikipedia's entry for George W. Bush with the words* "jerk" inserted into the page repeatedly.</blockquote><br />[* The last time I checked, "jerk" was one word. "Repeatedly" would mean that one word was used several times.]<br /><br />I guess I stand in slack-jawed awe at someone who can take an organization the size of the <em>New York Times</em>, and, based on the actions of one employee in putting "jerk" into the Wikipedia entry for George W. Bush, divine that the ENTIRE organization, including Arthur Sulzberger himself, were squeezed into that basement cubicle, beside the xerox machine, egging that bored employee on to put digital graffiti into the Wikipedia description of Bush. Ahahahahahah!!!! (Mad Scientist cackle goes HERE.)<br /><br />You see, that "traditional value" that the Righties pride themselves on, classical Logic, has been quietly supplanted by classical Logick, which is what allows the Inquisitor to logically prove you to be a witch. Therefore, you are in league with the Devil. Therefore ... (well, you get the idea.)<br /><br />If the defacer of The Decider had been an employee of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Inc. we could, therefore logickally divine that every smiling stylized picture of long-dead figurehead Col. Sanders is actually oozing contempt and liberal bias right into the drumsticks.<br /><br />Or, perhaps, had it been an employee of the State of Texas, we could logickally divine that the government of Texas had turned against the Commander Guy, and safety precautions would have to be taken on a massive scale, up to and including the invading and subduing major areas of discontent, such as Austin, Fort Worth, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luckenbach,_Texas">Luckenbach</a>.<br /><br />Going mad with the heat, the blog at Hot Air -- an enterprise entitled with the opacity of the obvious and the obliviousness of the truly opaque -- <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/14/awesome-wikipedia-edit-tracker-shows-whos-editing-which-pages/">Allahpundit unleashes the dogs</a> in the garden to root for gophers ...<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Awesome: Wikipedia edit tracker shows who’s editing which pages<br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">posted at 1:34 pm on August 14, 2007 by Allahpundit </span><br /><br />They’re getting slammed with such immense traffic that it’s actually crippled their search function for the moment. But I’m <a href="http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/">going to link anyway</a>, first and foremost so that you can bookmark it for use later when the wave subsides and second because the “Editor’s Picks” search terms in the sidebar <em>do</em> work — and some of them are tasty indeed. For example, select “Democratic Party” and it’ll bring up all the edits made to all Wikipedia pages from the range of IPs (allegedly) assigned to Democratic Party computers. Scroll down to the one for Rush Limbaugh and click the number in the “diff” column and you’ll see this. The pre-edit version is in the red text in the yellow box at the top and the post-edit is in the red text in the green box. Needless to say. Click to enlarge:<br /><br /><a href="http://hotair.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/wiki.png" class="imagelink" title="wiki.png">[photo]<br /></a><br /><br />That should start you off. I’ll leave you to find the other easter eggs for yourself; I’ve already found a few myself. Feel free to report back in the comments below. Thanks to <a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26650&only&rss">L[ittle G[reen] F[ootballs]</a> for the heads up.</blockquote><br />Er ... yes. Easter eggs. That's Logickal, if you're an Inquisitor doggie. Which makes perfect sense if you feel as though you've fallen down a rabbit hole.<br /><br />And look! A doggie named Wizbang has dug one up. Turns out someone from the (GASP) <em>New York Times</em> has CHANGED the Condoleeza Rice entry to alter "pianist" to "penis," thus resulting in the hilarious sentence "At age 15, Rice began classes with the goal of becoming a concert penis."<br /><br />Juvenalia, right? The kind of stuff you remember from grade school. But NOT to the Logickal attack dogs. No, with dogged determination, they will hunt down their prey. They must track and tree the infamous PENIS Writer, the Pianist Enhancer at the NYTimes. <a href="http://wizbangblog.com/content/2007/08/15/wikipedia-defacing-linked-to-new-york-times-building.php">Wizbang writes</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Interestingly there are several edits from that address for specific New York Times employees. By frequency the most updated entry is the one for Nick Bilton, who was hired at the Times via Jeff Koyen. Koyen had a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=24692651">nasty departure from the Times in 2005</a> and edits from inside the Times building <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=33742668">after he left</a> suggest that Bilton may have been the author editing Wikipedia from the 199.181.174.146 address.<br /><br />Only The New York Times knows for sure if that's the case. We've sent an inquiry to the Times and will report their response...</blockquote><br />As the attack dogs of the Rightie Blogosmear go mad in the August heat.<br /><br />Courage.<br /><br /><em>Now, for a completely hilarious posting -- and don't be drinking liquids when you read it -- please go directly to <a href="http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/6778.html">Sadly, No! </a> Read the short post <strong>AND </strong>the comments. Do not pass "GO." Do not collect $200. (Well, OK, collect the $200.) Good luck.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-4877832454303055097?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-36160129746134193472007-08-14T07:47:00.000-07:002007-08-14T10:45:57.657-07:00The Carolina Fabulist<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/wp-content/madhatter.gif" alt="The Mad Hatter" /><br /></div><blockquote>[<strong>OUR STORY SO FAR</strong>: This refers to the ongoing <em>New Republic</em>/Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp "controversy" that has raged in the Rightie blogosmear since the Rupert Murdoch-owned, William Kristol-edited <em>Weekly Standard</em>'s <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/07/">BLOG</a>, run by Michael Goldfarb, called for, <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/07/">on July 18</a>, "Fact or Fiction? A mission for milbloggers:" and then used the blog as a central clearing house for the top Rightie blogs -- <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/03/the-scott-thomas-beauchamp-saga-the-fallibility-of-tnrs-fact-checkers/">Michelle Malkin</a>, <a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26444_CJR-_Milbloggers_=_Chickenhawks&only">Little Green Footballs</a>, <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/08/018108.php">Powerline</a>, Captain's Quarters, etc. -- to pile on to a series of "Baghdad Diaries" written by an anonymous soldier. First, they disputed whether the 'soldier' even existed. Then, when the soldier revealed himself, dug up every old blog posting they could find on the internet. They found that he had been for Howard Dean at the University of Missouri in 2004. They "found" that his wife worked at the magazine. They catalyzed an Army investigation of the soldier, who is currently either being held incommunicado -- if you believe the magazine that his wife works for -- or else is incommunicado by choice, if you believe <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/post_8.asp">the chief PR officer in theater</a>, Col. Boylan, whose confirming letter that, supposedly, Beauchamp <em>had recanted all</em> <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/the_us_army_vs_the_new_republi.asp">was received by Bob Owens,</a> the Confederate Yankee, trumpeted by Michael Goldfarb, and <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/the_baghdad_fabulist.asp">was the basis for both</a> the <em>New York Times</em> and the <em>Washington Post</em> stories on this sordid mess last week. Now, <em>the story continues</em> ...]</blockquote><!--more--><br />Well, they tried. Really they did. Yesterday, amidst the complete slam that the Rove resignation put on the blogosphere, <em>The Weekly Standard</em>'s blog (Michael Goldfarb) and The Confederate Yankee, Bob Owens, tried to buttress their increasingly shaky declaration of victory.<br /><br />Five days shy of their first month of hyper-parsing and ultra-critical textual reading of The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" Private Beauchamp, the Yanker thought he'd caught a <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/another_beauchamp_story_debunk.asp">BIG LIE in a prior article</a> According to <em>The Weekly Standard</em>'s blog:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>(Updated) Another Beauchamp Story Debunked<br /></strong><br />Bob Owens, the Confederate Yankee, <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/236955.php">had debunked another claim</a> made by Private Beauchamp in his columns for the New Republic. This is from Beauchamp's second dispatch, titled "Dead of Night":<br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">As we slowly started moving back toward the Humvee, we could hear the dogs filling in the space behind us. I turned around and saw their green eyes flashing in the deep shadow where we'd left the body. Part of me thought we should have shot the dogs or done something to keep them from eating the body, but what good would it have done? We only would have been exposing ourselves to danger longer than we needed to.</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Back in the Humvee, Hernandez started talking to me without looking in my direction. "Man, I've never seen anything like that before," he said.</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"What? A guy killed by a cop?" I asked.</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"No, man, zombie dogs. That shit was wild," he said, laughing.</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Something inside of me fought for expression and then died. He was right. What else was there to do now but laugh?</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"I took his driver's license," I said.</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"You did?" questioned Hernandez.</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"Yeah. It said he was an organ donor."</strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">We chuckled in the dark for a moment, and then looked out the window into the night. We didn't talk again until we were back at our base.</span><br /></strong><br />Owens sent a couple of quick emails and was able to discover that the Iraqi DMV does not, in fact, provide driver's with the option of donating their organs. Owens quotes from an exchange with Hassan Elsaadaoui, a CPATT liaison with the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad:<br /><br /><strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);">I think in the Iraqi or Muslim tradition they don't accept this practice of donating organs. Maybe in the future, it will be possible. There is no indication now on the back side of Iraqi driver's license. Also our medical system and doctors are not ready for this type procedure, because of the situation. They do not have the equipment and many of the very good doctors are now outside the country.</span><br /></strong><br />Owens has other experts saying the same thing...organ donation is not common in Iraq, and there is certainly no indication of organ donation status on the Iraqi driver's license. Go read the whole thing. Was Beauchamp's buddy just joking? Was the whole story a joke?<br /><br /><strong>Update:</strong> Owens now wonders if the whole thing isn't a joke...I read it that way, too. But I think his update pretty much captures my sense of the thing:<br /><br /><strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);">I think in the Iraqi or Muslim tradition they don't accept this practice of donating organs. Maybe in the future, it will be possible. There is no indication now on the back side of Iraqi driver's license.</span> </strong></blockquote><br />[Gee, you suppose that Owens could debunk THIS? Here I'll start it out: <em>These three soldiers stop at an Iraqi farmhouse. The farmer says, you can spend the night, but you'll have to sleep with my daughter. Now, the first soldier .... </em>]<br /><br />All right, there is serious intent here. Bob Owens is now the "point man" for the debunking squad, the fellow who Petraeus' top PR officer, Col. Boylan sent the "confirming" email that led to the declaration of victory last week that the blogosmearers seem to feel increasingly needs buttressing like, oh, debunking jokes. (It WAS a joke, for those of you, like Goldfarb and Owens, who are paranoid and utterly lacking any sense of humor, or the gallows humor that characterizes extremely stressful situations ... like combat, for instance.)<br /><br />And Owens himself must be held the the standard that he holds up so proudly. Let's see how <em><strong>he</strong></em> scores.<br /><br />In late 2005 Crooks and Liars named Bob Owens, The Confederate Yankee for the prestigious <a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/01/02/worst-post-of-the-year-2005/">WORST POST OF THE YEAR</a>* non-award for what can only be described as paranoid rightie fabulism. (* tip o' the hat to Scott Lemieux at <a href="http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/08/advantage-blogosphere.html">Lawyers, Guns and Money</a>)<br /><br />Bob Owens' winning post? "<a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/145981.php"><strong>Google Mocks Christ on Christmas Eve</strong></a>." (12-24-05)<br /><br />Again, there is serious intent here. Remember, Owens is now the "Woodward & Bernstein" of Goldfarb's vendetta, and the vendetta is about "fabulism." Let's see how he stacks up as a fabulist. Putting two and two together, Owens comes up with five:<br /><br /><blockquote>While trying to find a nativity image for my last post before Christmas, I did an (sic) search for "baby jesus" on Google.<br /><br />This is the result. (<a href="http://static.flickr.com/37/76892114_9a00a36dbf.jpg">Screen capture</a>).</blockquote><blockquote>Notice that the top search result is for a sex toy that mocks Jesus. [<span style="font-weight: bold;">NB</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Baby Jesus Butt Plug"</span> -- HW]<br /><br />Other results on this search results page have more link traffic. A quick review of page's code shows no HTML meta information that should give it a favorable ranking. The page itself has a raw relevance ranking (search word divided by total words) of less than five percent. The only conclusion I can draw is that this page position ranking was done manually by a Google staffer.<br /><br />Google's message to the Faithful seems obvious:<br /><br />"Merry Christmas, assholes."</blockquote><br />Google? Right. Like the search engine consciously intends to alienate a huge segment of its audience, lose money and market share, just to serve their master, Satan. This is rather insanely paranoid, but now that Bob's got the bad idea in his cranium, he can't seem to get it out, and becomes increasingly defensive and paranoid:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Update:</strong> Some folks have made the argument that this is the result of Googlebombing or other SEO tricks. Others say that it is merely the result of Google's search programs. They would absolve Google of all responsibility.<br /><br />I do not.<br /><br />Google's algorithms are man-made, coded by human programmers, as are any exclusionary protocols. These<em> people</em> ultimately decide if search results are relevant. I think it is fair to say that a butt plug is not a relevant search result for 99-percent of Google users searching for information on Jesus Christ as a baby.<br /><br />So either Google has manipulative coders, or a fouled algorithm in their baseline technologies that suggests their massive capitalization is based upon a a house of cards. (sic) I'll leave individual readers and investors to make the call.</blockquote><br />Yes, the 'baby Jesus butt plug' is the result of manipulative liberal algorithm coding. Er ... really? (I admit that the techno-mumbo is hard to follow. But the braiding in of paranoia and preconceived conclusion is present as well.) OK. <a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/01/02/worst-post-of-the-year-2005/">Crooks and Liars points out </a>the inherent absurdity of this fabulism. Bob's response?<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Update 2:</strong> <em>Crooks and Liars</em> calls this post <a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/01/02.html#a6548">2005's Worst Post of the Year</a>. Coming from such a den of delusion and paranoia (not to mention abject political failure), I consider it a compliment.<br /><br />Also, I guess he didn't <a href="http://www.bet.com/News/personoftheyear_farrakhan.htm?wbc_purpose=Basic&WBCMODE=PresentationUnpublished&Referrer=%7B03CE5360-2620-42CB-AD7E-77E4249C5FB7%7D">see this</a>, though technically it isn't a blog post, just the worst idea of the year.</blockquote><br />I'll save you the click. Some group named Louis Farrakhan their 2005 "man of the year." This, to racist and/or religious bigot Bob, is so incredibly, laughably absurd (since Farrakhan is both Black AND Muslim) that he offers it as an absolute DEFENSE of his insane post. Which is, in itself, a rather stunning self-indictment of Bob's objectivity, his powers of analysis, his deep paranoia, and steadfast refusal to admit that -- no matter how absurd his proposition -- he CANNOT be wrong.<br /><br />And he's accusing Beauchamp of ... what? Fabulism?<br /><br />But it gets worse. Bob is also DOGGEDLY wrong. He can't let this go, and finishes this masterpiece of paranoid misinterpretation with this, evidently from the following spring (and HE QUOTES HIMSELF):<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Good Friday Update:</strong> As I said previously:<br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Google's algorithms are man-made, coded by human programmers, as are any exclusionary protocols. These<em> people</em></strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> </span><strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">ultimately decide if search results are relevant.</span><br /><br /></strong>A current Google search reveals that Google has changed their search algorithm to exclude the sex toy site from at least their top 50 results in a unfiltered search. (sic) I was right, <em>liberals were wrong.</em><br /><br />Not that this comes as a shock to anyone...</blockquote><br />"I was right, <em>liberals were wrong."</em><br /><br />Which is exactly what Owens is trying to maintain today, <em>vis-à-vis</em> his attacks on Beauchamp. But there's enough blame to go around. Goldfarb, the primary source and svengali of all the media hoohaw thus far, NOW uncritically quotes the Confederate Yanker's latest absurdity, even <strong>adding</strong> Owens' increasingly paranoid and weird formulations, 'analysis,' and justifications -- even though they now <strong>ADMIT IT WAS A JOKE.</strong> It is an almost pathological need to be 'right' -- even after the premise of the attack is proven false, somehow, the attack is still justified, and <strong>WE CONTACTED THE IRAQ DMV, you GOT THAT?!!??!</strong><br /><br />Oh.<br /><br />So who are the REAL fabulists here? And, can they stand the sort of rigorous critical scrutiny that they demand from <em>The New Republic</em> and Private Beauchamp?<br /><br />Don't make me laugh.<br /><br />Courage.<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE: 10:10 AM PDT:</strong> Old Bob's at it again. If it weren't enough that he's a <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/bob-owens/2007/08/08/new-republic-refuses-retract-thomas-reports">"Newsbusters" media "critic"</a> <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/237012.php">today's posting screams</a> about lies, and why <em>The New Republic </em>owes an apology or a firing, or execution at dawn by a firing squad. Increasingly, the shrill tone of these posts belie any belief in the so-called "repudiation" theory allegedly advanced by the Army. I thought they said they'd "won." Hmmm.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-3616012974613419347?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-67282156462949186402007-08-12T15:30:00.000-07:002007-08-12T15:32:40.010-07:00Never Let Your Right Wing Know What Your Other Right Wing Is DoingFunny. After yowling like coyotes on a full moon, the literary micro-parsing has continued in the blogosmear. <em>The New Republic</em> and Private Beauchamp continue to be the favored whipping boy of the fake media, as the attempt to port the 'controversy' into the mainstream media continues, with Rush Limbaugh vacation fill-in host and ex-Canadian arts critic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steyn">Mark Steyn</a> writing in his syndicated colummn (From <em><a href="http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/nationalcolumns/article_1804986.php">the Orange County Register</a></em>):<br /><br /><blockquote><em><strong>Warm-mongers and cheeseburger imperialists</strong></em><br />by Mark Steyn<br /><br />... According to <em>the Weekly Standard</em>-, army investigators say Pvt. Beauchamp has now signed a statement recanting his lurid anecdotes.</blockquote><br />Gee. The Rupert Murdoch-owned, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kristol">William Kristol</a>-edited <em>Weekly Standard</em>, whose blogger Michael Goldfarb's anonymous confirmations and Army PR Officers' emails seem to have provided the basis for <strong>both</strong> the <em>Washington Post</em> and the <em>New York Times</em> pieces? THAT <em>Weekly Standard</em>?<br /><br />Well, suddenly and for the first time, Saturday, A DIFFERENT staffer posted a letter from Col. Stephen Boylan, General Petraeus' InfoWar officer (the one responsible for making sure the right stories get in the right places, for "embedding" journalists, etc.)<br /><br />Funny that the <em>Weekly Standard</em> continues to be the central clearinghouse for this story, after literally CALLING for the blogosmear to rip the THR/Beauchamp story to shreds. But I guess that they want to diffuse the personal vendetta against Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, whose head is specifically being called for as the specter of a scandal is raised that took place NINE years ago, BEFORE Foer ever had anything to do with the magazine? (The <em>Stephen Glass</em> scandal.) Er, how is he responsible, or culpable for a scandal that occurred before he began working for the <em>The New Republic</em>? Why they even got the story onto <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12590953&sc=emaf">NPR (NationalPublic Radio</a>) Thursday. Complete with reference to the Glass scandal. Hmmm.<br /><br />And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the first time, ever,S OMEBODY else posted this excerpt from a letter to HIM from Colonel Boylan. Gee, the <em>Times</em> and the <em>Post</em> could only get Maj. Lamb, Boylan's deputy to talk to THEM. And the AP could only get a sergeant that one of their reporters knew from Kansas. But <em>The Weekly Standard</em>'s BLOG and private "Laz-Y-Boy" blogger Bob Owens get the Commanding General's P.R. Deputy making semi-official statements on the case. What's wrong with this picture?<br />Here's <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/post_8.asp">from Saturday</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Posted by Bill Roggio<br /><h3 class="entry-header">The Army Responds</h3><br />I recently emailed Col. Steve Boylan asking for whatever information he could provide regarding the status of the investigation of Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Here is his response:<br /><br />His command's investigation is complete. At this time, there is no formal what we call Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) actions being taken. However ... (sic)</blockquote><br />Hmmm. The gist of it -- aside from Boylan's appalling use of syntax -- is that Col. Boylan specifically denies <em>The New Republic</em>'s statement of Friday that the Army wasn't allowing Pvt. Beauchamp to speak with them. And, for the first time, SOMEONE else posted, perhaps to cover the tracks of a very personal-seeming vendetta. After all, the media shell game of quoting either the reviewer's name or the reviewer's newspaper is well known to all critics. <em>The Weekly Standard</em> sounds so much more authoritative than "Michael Goldfarb." Or, now, his amanuensis du jour, Bill Roggio.<br /><br />One, naturally wonders what "recently" means, since "recently" as in "I emailed Gen. Petreaus' PR Officer as soon as TNR's latest statement came out on Friday" would mean one thing. And if "recently" means "I received this reply but have been waiting for the propitious time to publish it," I suppose that would mean something else.<br /><br />And, Saturday, naturally, <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDhiMzE2Mjk5NjE5ZTc0MTNmZGRiMjBjYzhmYWI3NmQ=">the piling on</a> <a href="http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2007/08/quick-tnrscott-thomas-uodate.html">talking-point</a> of the Rightie blogosmear was now about how the "liar" Pvt. Beauchamp was in the final phases of the kind of lying scandal the way that the Stephen Glass scandal had been played out and was refusing to answer his phone, the lying weasel. (The serpent bites its tail.)<br /><br />(Oh, and that other talking point: Beauchamp will now get a book deal and a best-seller, which, by implication, had been his nefarious scheme, or, as has been noted before, the awesome spectacle of Republican ideologues being against capitalism, the free market, and the profit motive. If, as when Justice John Roberts used the same argument <a href="http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=6098">to prove two opposite conclusions</a> in two cases at the end of the last Supreme Court term, surely "capitalists against capitalism" isn't that much more of a stretch. Sort of like the anti-global warming "scientists against science." In this case it's that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth">old Roman army tactic</a> of killing the inhabitants, poisoning the wells and salting the earth so that no one could live there again. The campaign to destroy Private Beauchamp is now personal. <a href="http://www.julescrittenden.com/2007/08/11/hurtful/">Jules Crittendon deserves censure</a> by all professional journalists for his most egregious attempt at this practice.)<br /><br />No focused talking points. No specific targeting of Franklin Foer by <em>the Weekly Standard</em>'s blog. Certainly no test run of a disinformation machine prior to a presidential campaign. That's for damn sure.<br /><br />But, as I said, having declared victory they will have to move on. The other half of Mr. Steyn's column today is the gleeful and uncritical acceptance of the refutation of global warming last week. (<a href="http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/global-warming-is-the-same-as-y2k/">Others have dealt at length</a> with the "refutation"). This, naturally belies last week's <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/page/0/"><em>Newsweek</em> cover story</a> on the denial campaign.*<br /><br /><blockquote>[* Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth ... <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/page/0/">MORE</a>]</blockquote><br />Which, in turn, has nothing to do with <em>the Weekly Standard</em>'s campaign against <em>The New Republic</em>, Michael Goldfarb's stealth vendetta against Franklin Foer or the Army's campaign (OK, General Petraeus' campign) against Private Beauchamp.<br /><br />Which remains a secret, according to their latest press release.<br /><br />Denying Friday's TNR statement that the Army was holding Beauchamp incommunicado.<br /><br />Etcetera.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Beauchamp, who the Army's TOP Information/Disinformation Officer in Iraq said could be reached for comment couldn't be reached for comment.<br /><br />Those are the facts, as nearly as I can recount them. Happily, if I made ANY errors, I'm sure to hear about them.<br /><br />Courage.<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE:</strong> The National Review Online -- which has been happy to go along with The Weekly Standard in this -- has Col. Boylan's letter <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDhiMzE2Mjk5NjE5ZTc0MTNmZGRiMjBjYzhmYWI3NmQ=">excerpted today in their blog</a>. The author? Mark Steyn.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-6728215646294918640?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-76081838276961500082007-08-10T16:44:00.000-07:002007-08-10T17:25:25.008-07:00Sadists On Parade<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-size:85%;" >[<strong>Language Warning:</strong> <em><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">If easily offended, please stop reading now. OK, you've been warned.</span> </em>-- HW]</span><br /><br />If ever the casual viciousness of the Right were on public display for all to view -- and gape with astonishment at -- it is now. With all the self-awareness of the sadistic boy who delights in pulling the wings off of flies and butterflies, sticking firecrackers in frogs' mouths and bludgeoning prairie dogs to death, the Right is now piling onto the Beauchamp story, having declared victory, so that pussies like Charles Krauthammer can come along and "discover" the story -- as if it weren't all-but-plagiarized on Page A-13 of today's <em>Washington Post</em>:<br /><blockquote><br /><h2><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080901900.html">The Baghdad Fabulist</a></h2><!--more--><span style="font-size:85%;">By <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080901900.html?hpid=opinionsbox1" title="Send an e-mail to Charles Krauthammer">Charles Krauthammer</a></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Friday, August 10, 2007; Page A13</span><br /><br />For weeks, the veracity of the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/New+Republic+Inc.?tid=informline">New Republic</a>'s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Scott+Thomas+Beauchamp?tid=informline">Scott Thomas Beauchamp</a>, the Army private who has been sending dispatches from the front in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Iraq?tid=informline">Iraq</a>, has been in dispute. His latest "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Baghdad?tid=informline">Baghdad</a> Diarist" (July 13) recounted three incidents of American soldiers engaged in acts of unusual callousness. The stories were meant to shock. And they did....<br /><br />After some commentators and soldiers raised questions about the plausibility of these tales, both the Army and the New Republic investigated. The Army issued a statement saying flatly that the stories were false. The New Republic claims that it had corroboration from unnamed soldiers. The <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+Weekly+Standard+Magazine?tid=informline">Weekly Standard</a> quoted an anonymous military source as saying that Beauchamp himself signed a statement recanting what he had written.<br /><br />Amid these conflicting claims, one issue is not in dispute. When the New Republic did its initial investigation, it admitted that Beauchamp had erred on one "significant detail." The disfigured-woman incident happened not in Iraq, but in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Kuwait?tid=informline">Kuwait</a>....</blockquote><br />Alas! Krauthammer's descriptive powers fail him. His "<em>After some commentators and soldiers raised questions about the plausibility of these tales...</em>" deserves an "Honorable Mention" in the Palace of Lies' <em>Hall of Shame</em>.<br /><br />More accurately, the Jingo Monkeyhouse went bugfuck CRAZY, with the shrieking of the chimps at a fever pitch, and feces being flung in all directions. But I don't need to tell YOU that, gentle reader. I've chronicled the "raising of questions" by those "commentators." and the vitriol that's been spewing nonstop for almost a month now. We expect this sort of puling, plagiaristic "me-too"ism from fading roué of the Right Krauthammer. The casual sadism and phony self-righteousness are nothing new, so we turn instead to the <em>Washington Post</em>-owned SLATE "Magazine" (quotations since it only exists online) <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2171840/pagenum/all/#page_start">for this</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>I am deeply skeptical about the veracity of Beauchamp's dispatches, particularly the last one, but disinclined to offer definitive pronouncements at this time. Partisans on both sides of the political spectrum seem to harbor no such doubts. Based solely on the content of these dispatches, some were happy to leap to conclusions about the author's veracity without regard for the facts. And as the argument grows louder, each side turns toward the troops, using them to stand in for their own preconceived ideas about this war...</blockquote><br />Gee, you think you could bee MORE effete? Stare down your nose at EVERYBODY a little more? (But watch out, your eyes might permanently lock in the crossed position that this article seems written from).<br /><br />The author is one "Phillip Carter" a fellow who seems to think that standing by, effetely 'tsk tsk'ing that "this isn't cricket, boys" while the witchburning continues in all of its obscene glory. 'Flaccid' is the term that comes to mind.*<br /><br />[*To be fair, according to his tagline "<em>Phillip Carter,</em> <em>an Iraq veteran, is an attorney with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP and a principal of the Truman National Security Project.</em>" One presumes from his prose that he served in the Tea Service Division, enforcing 'extended pinkie' regulations.]<br /><br />Excuse me, but has <strong>ANY</strong> literary work of the 21st Century received this kind of microscopic examination and "semiotic analysis" by would-be literary critics, sleuths and folk-with-axes-to-grind? Could ANY author withstand this sort of agenda-driven parsing?<br /><br />What is most disturbing is that the effete, Olympian distancing, the "I'll only touch this with surgical gloves on" prissiness of the prose is exhibited by <strong><em>BOTH</em></strong> Krauthammer and Carter. Literary Viagra™ seems in short supply -- within the "mainstream media," at least, who are only NOW rousing themselves from comatose somnambulism with a "what's all this then!" red-nosed snort and belch.<br /><br />A month has passed, idiots. Where were you? (And they wonder why respect for the MSM <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070809222839.jzdcwmy8&show_article=1">has fallen to new lows?</a>) The tail wags the dog.<br /><br />And that's a <strong>huge</strong> part of this story. This tale was ginned up in the Rightie blogosmear, and, as it emerges into the mainstream, it does so WITHOUT an opposing viewpoint. The Right has all their ducks in a row, and the Left is left to their traditional position on such questions: ducking. (And were taken by surprise as it emerged, fully formed).<br /><br />Why? Because TNR and Beauchamp aren't PERFECT.* And, therefore can't be defended without long, fey sniffs, a la Mr. Carter, et al, etcetera, <em>ad infinitum, ad nauseum</em>. They expect us to pussy out, and, fulfilling those expectations, we do.<br /><br />[Could the Righties live up the standard they push forward? One doubts it.]<br /><br />For a solid month, now, <em>The Weekly Standard</em> (A News Corporation publication) and Michael Goldfarb's minions -- by whose open soliticitation , the blog-attacks on TNR began, and were then PUBLICIZED in Goldfarb's official TWS blog -- have been stomping on Beauchamp, have been looking under every stone and stoning every dissenter to crucify Beauchamp and <em>The New Republic</em> and its editor Franklin Foer. Indeed, the drumbeat for Foer's firing is so widespread and so insidious, one wonders what girlfriend Foer stole from Goldfarb in a D.C. bar that such a stealth campaign to wreck his career is being pursued.<br /><br />Because, make no mistake, this whole episode bears the overt stamp of a personal vendetta against Foer by Goldfarb, and an attempt to destroy <em>The New Republic</em> by <em>The Weekly Standard</em> -- which seems odd, given that their audiences overlap not a whit.<br /><br />Fortunately, one puff of wind in this fartstorm has arisen today, in the form of The New Republic's statement 2 hours ago (as I write this), which attempts to present the other side of a story that no one's willing to even lend creedence to. The sheer weight of numbers (and oh-so-precious sniffers, like Mr. TK and his "disinclined to offer definitive pronouncements at this time" -- who gives a FUCK what you think, pal? Talk about an Olympian overestimation of one's own place in the Universe!) merely confirms what I told you two days ago:<br /><br />The lie that "TNR lied" is now a "fact" and the piling on has begun in earnest. In this battle for rhetorical "reality," two plus two now equals five, and Beauchamp continues his assignation at the Ministry of Love, while the Ministry of Truth gleefully tears off another gossamer wing.<br /><br />Here is what the editors <a href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070806&s=editorial081007">of <em>The New Republic</em> wrote</a> in defense:<br /><br /><blockquote>... we continue to investigate the anecdotes recounted in the Baghdad Diarist. Unfortunately, our efforts have been severely hampered by the U.S. Army. Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, <strong>it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What's more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants "to protect his privacy."</strong><br /><br />At the same time the military has stonewalled our efforts to get to the truth, it has leaked damaging information about Beauchamp to conservative bloggers. Earlier this week, <em>The Weekly Standard</em>'s Michael Goldfarb published a report, based on a single anonymous "military source close to the investigation," entitled "Beauchamp Recants," claiming that Beauchamp "signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only 'a smidgen of truth,' in the words of our source."<br /><br />Here's what we know: On July 26, Beauchamp told us that he signed several statements under what he described as pressure from the Army. He told us that these statements did not contradict his articles. Moreover, on the same day he signed these statements for the Army, he gave us a statement standing behind his articles, which we published at tnr.com. Goldfarb has written, "It's pretty clear the New Republic is standing by a story that even the author does not stand by." In fact, <strong>it is our understanding that Beauchamp continues to stand by his stories and insists that he has not recanted them. The Army, meanwhile, has refused our requests to see copies of the statements it obtained from Beauchamp--or even to publicly acknowledge that they exist.</strong> [<em>emphasis added</em>]</blockquote><br />But those technically correct debate points are meaningless in a rhetorical arena driven by the paranoid fantasies and 'fan fiction' of the true fabulists of this story. Listen to the triumphalism posted at 5 AM (EDT) by <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmM1YTEzYmU5YmFkNDY4NWY1NjA2NzZkYTgyZGFhYjU=">the <em>National Review Online</em></a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong><span class="articletitle">Embedded Hostility</span></strong><br /><span class="articlesubtitle">A case of “Beauchamping.”</span><br /><span class="articlesubtitle">By Jeff Emanuel</span><br /><br /><em>Baghdad</em><em>, Iraq</em><em> — </em>The Scott Thomas affair has, for all intents and purposes, come to a close.<br /><br />Questionable from the very start, the stories penned by the then-pseudonymous Scott Thomas Beauchamp<span> have now been declared false.</span> <em>The New Republic</em>, which published the pieces by the Baghdad Diarist, defended them vigorously when their author came under fire. But according to Mjr. Steven F. Lamb, the deputy public-affairs officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad, “an investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate [his] claims.” ...</blockquote><br />Remember what I said? They'll declare victory and move on AS IF the issue were resolved? Well, call me Cassandra. Listen to the patently bullshit "magnanimity" of the "victors" as the Declaration of Victory continues:<br /><br /><blockquote>What they published was shown not to be simply “inaccurate” or “exaggerated,” but false — and<em> TNR</em>, along with its defenders, went to the mat for it.<br /><br />The motivation for this is likely not as sinister as some ascribe to <em>TNR</em> — it is highly doubtful that they went to press with a story that they knew to be false, from a source they thought untrustworthy. In all likelihood, they simply found a story that validated their views <span class="articlecontent">about the “morally and emotionally distorting effects of war,” which also served as “a startling confession of shame about some disturbing conduct, both [the author’s] and that of his fellow soldiers.” Thinking the source unimpeachable, they ran with it.</span><br /><br />A massive part of the problem with <em>TNR</em> and others who seek to run to press with the first available scandal is that, to them, such behavior is the <em>rule</em> in the United States military, rather than the <em>exception</em> (as it is in reality).</blockquote><br />Oh, and the tag? Why, this Jeff Emmanuel is Mr. Macho! (And not some faggoty little puke like me):<br /><br /><blockquote><span class="q"><span>— <span> </span><em><a href="http://jeffemanuel.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Jeff Emanuel</a>, a columnist and special-operations military veteran, is currently embedded in Iraq and will be reporting from “<a href="http://jeffemanuel.blogspot.com/2007/10/in-iraq-reporting-from-within-surge.html" target="_blank">Inside the Surge</a>“ throughout August and September</em></span>.</span></blockquote><br />OK, let's get this straight. WHO says that Beauchamp was lying? The Army. You know, the same Army in which Beauchamp's theater Commanding Officer says that 190,000 weapons that are <em><strong>missing in Iraq</strong></em> are the result of "clerical errors," according to Gen. Petraeus. (110,000 AK-47s and 80,o00 pistols, IIRC).<br /><br />The same Army who's covering up the death of Pat Tillman by "friendly fire" in Afghanistan with a blizzard of "I don't knows" and this bizarre situation:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Censured_general_evades_subpoena_to_appear_0801.html"><strong>Censured general evades subpoena to appear before Tillman hearing</strong></a><br />Michael Roston<br />Published: Wednesday August 1, 2007<br /><br />Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed in a Wednesday hearing that Lieutenant General Philip Kensinger, who was censured Tuesday by the Army for deceiving investigators regarding the announcement of the death of Army Specialist Pat Tillman, has evaded a subpoena issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.<br /><br />"General Kensinger refused to appear today," Chairman Waxman said in his opening statement. "His attorney informed the committee that General Kensinger would not testify voluntarily, and if issued a subpoena would seek to evade service. The committee did issue a subpoena to General Kensinger earlier this week, but US Marshals have been unable to locate or serve him."</blockquote><br />Whose lawyer, <a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Attorney_for_censured_General_Waxman_told_0808.html">today, sent RAW STORY an email excuse </a>that sounds <em>eerily </em>like what I reported yesterday in "<a href="http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=6368">Wrong is Right</a>"? THAT Army is the "credible" one, and <em>The New Republic </em>is the INcredible one? Gee, Righties. What happened to that microscopic parsing? That stratospheric high bar for accuracy? Where did all that skepticism go? Hmm. The Army is lying to congress, stonewalling, has admitted to a cover-up in the death of Tillman, and NOW their leaks and statements (without any details, and with Beauchamp in information blackout) THOSE are credible, but TNR is full of it?<br /><br />Good God.<br /><br />Now, I will reiterate the charge that "<a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/bob-owens/2007/08/08/new-republic-refuses-retract-thomas-reports">Confederate</a> <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/235806.php">Yankee</a>" (and first recipient of Iraq Central Command emails claiming Beauchamp lied) Bob Owens so "witheringly" <a href="http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=6363#comment-626955">attempted to debunk</a>: this sort of focused, agenda-driven story doesn't appear by accident. And, if not by accident, then certainly not without a specific PURPOSE.<br /><br />And it doesn't enter the mainstream via "military leaks" without the direct complicity of the White House. If only because they'd shut it down, otherwise.<br /><br />A solid month has been spent on this non-story.*<br /><br />Is Beauchamp Hemingway? Because that's the kind of literary attention that's been given to his prose. Sadly, a writer receiving that kind of universal, negative acclaim often commits suicide. As a soldier serving as a private in one of the heaviest combat zones in Iraq, if he got killed by, say, one of those AK-47s that are missing, we'd all understand.<br /><br />These pricks, these would-be defenders of fucking freedom have decided that Beauchamp is "dishonoring" the defenders of fucking freedom, and focus every possible energy at killing the kid. THAT is what we're talking about, after all. Jesus H. Christ what insane and sadistic crap has been focused on him, on his writing, and on his wife. And he's in the fucking Army in fucking Iraq with the fucking Army PISSED off at him.<br /><br />If Private Beauchamp survives this shit, he will have the biggest balls of anybody who's ever lived. I'm with you, kid. It doesn't matter what you wrote. You never deserved to be treated like this.<br /><br />And these pricks call themselves "Christians."<br /><br />Jesus H. Christ.<br /><br />Let me say that again: this information is not released to the media without the direct complicity of the White House. Oh, there may be "plausible deniability," but in the court of public opinion, I put it to YOU, jurors: Could this transpire without White House approval? Would the fingerprints of anonymous officers and confirmations and the insistence on "secrecy" and "privacy" come from the Pentagon or from the West Wing?<br /><br />When the malefic muppets of the Right are finally reduced to the hands that moved the lips, the buck stops at the top. Not with Michelle Malkin. Not with Michael Goldfarb or even William Kristol. Not with Charles Krauthammer or with Major Lamb, <span>Colonel Steven Boylan</span> or General Petraeus.<br /><br />The "frame" is precisely what the White House wants to push, it's a classical "<a href="http://www.chessboss.com/chesstactics.php">forking attack</a>" (As I noted <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/zug/2007/08/air-on-g-string.html">HERE</a>), pinning Democrats as "defeatocrats" and no one on the Left dare touch it. It was "confirmed" via official Army leaks at the highest level, but is being STONEWALLED by claims of "confidentiality," and concern for the "privacy" of the silenced soldier, Private Beauchamp.<br /><br />Where did TNR make their mistake?<br /><br />First of all in "outing" Private Beauchamp (whether by his decision or by theirs). Nothing has come of it, save for attacks on his character, a microscopic analysis of his life, his blogs, and even the accusation that something was "WRONG" because his fianceé (now wife) worked for TNR*.<br /><br />[*This implicit charge of nepotism was, weirdly, repeated by Howard Kurtz in the <em>Washington Post -- </em>a newspaper who have never had the slightest public problem with the fact that columnist Sally Quinn was sucking Editor Ben Bradlee's COCK while everyone pretended that the office affair wasn't going on, and then MARRIED the sonofabitch and are now the Regal Couple of D.C. Where were the nepotism charges then? Implicitly OR explicitly? If there were any, I sure as hell haven't seen them. And no comment AFTER the couple outed themselves! I apologize if this seems gross, or grotesque, but I would suggest that you take your high dudgeon to Bradlee, Quinn and the <em>Washington Post</em>, whose slimy, sorded business it either is, or else, whose mouth OUGHT to remain shut on such matters. Journalists, I have found, NEVER hold themselves to the same sort of scrutiny that they would hold others to.]<br /><br />Secondly, by getting TNR to "fact check" and they, stupidly and honorably, admitting to an error of PLACE (which may have been intentional on the writers' part to PROTECT THE perpetrators and the victim), they opened themselves up to amateur literary analysts like Krauthammer who use the "error" as a brush to tar EVERYthing with.<br /><br />And we must ask: was this an abberration? A fluke? A "weird" story that showed up in the traditional summer's season of slow news days and low readership?<br /><br />No: this either came from the top (remember, the White House and/or Rove has been in open collaboration with bloggers and talk show hosts -- calling both last week for pow-wows on how to defang the Alberto Gonzales perjury charges), or else it was ENABLED from the top. Keep your eyes on the pea.<br /><br />As usual, the shells move with bewildering speed.<br /><br />This is coordinated. This relies on Usual Suspects (Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin, et al). This is being run THROUGH a Rupert Murdoch right-wing rag that happens to be run by a FAUX NOOZ regular, William Kristol, and is aided and abetted by OTHER FAUX NOOZ regulars -- Michelle Malkin, Matt Sanchez, etc.<br /><br />It covers up the Pat Tillman affair. It provides a smokescreen for the rape-murder convictions of several soldiers regarding a 14-year-old girl, and her family. It raises the red flag of "Lefties don't support the troops!" It silences Beauchamp. At a minimum, it chills TNR, and -- they seem to hope -- gets Franklin Foer, TNR's editor fired (as they are, increasingly and openly calling for).<br /><br />And while you're at it, Google "Franklin Foer" if you want to see who's being set up to take the fall. (Google news: 200 hits) Hugh Hewitt's lackey Dean Whatsisname even posted this vile piece of tripe three days ago on Hewitt's Townhall dot com blog:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/1-0&fp=46bc48f48d34beac&ei=Q-C8RrD3EoOUrgPb8ZGJDw&url=http%3A//www.townhall.com/blog/g/011a7552-fdc7-414d-8513-ef882640fba4&cid=0" id="r-1_0">Place Your Bets! Introducing the <strong>Franklin Foer</strong> Dead Pool!</a><br /><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(111, 111, 111);">Town Hall, DC -</span> Aug 7, 2007</span><br /><span style="">SO WHAT ELSE HAVE WE to do but form a <strong>Franklin Foer</strong> Death Pool?</span></blockquote><br />At this point, I don't care about whether or not Beauchamp was utterly truthful, or pulling it all out of his ass. The response has been disproportionate, unfair, uncivilized and filled with a casual viciousness that makes one question whether these sadists are actually human beings at all, or merely demons from the pits of hell sowing destruction, disease and death.<br /><br />The death of truth, that is: the "reality by assertion" riff that's killing democracy in the USA. Or, as Tomm writes (<em>reproduced with permission of</em>):<br /><br /><blockquote>There is supposed to be a "disaster fatigue," where too many catastrophes -- the Utah mine disaster, the Manhattan flooding (which I barely missed during my visit last month), the missing weapons in Iraq (who was in charge? Why, General Petraeus!) -- but the outrage fatigue is greater. We are doomed. Television is again beating the drum for war and persists in refusing to expose the level of filth and malice and evil from these bastards. They go on Fascist Radio to score their points. They organize smear campaigns against ordinary soldiers and translators and other citizens trying to do their jobs.<br /><br />And meanwhile, power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few and fewer and the middle class is wiped out, tuition is unafordable, health care is destroying our morale and misery is rising around us like the temperature at the North Pole as hope evaporates like ice at the North Pole and we are all polar bears drowning....</blockquote><br />OK, Krauthammer, why don't you finish this all off <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080901900.html">with a pissy tagline</a>?<br /><br /><blockquote>We already knew from all of America's armed conflicts -- including Iraq -- what war can make men do. The only thing we learn from Scott Thomas Beauchamp is what literary ambition can make men say.</blockquote><br />Good attack dog; here's <a href="mailto:letters@charleskrauthammer.com">your Scoobie snack</a>.<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-7608183827696150008?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-15894165426265214932007-08-09T13:51:00.000-07:002007-08-09T17:09:04.394-07:00Mitt Gott Spin, Truth Gott Zip<h5 style="margin-left: 40px; font-weight: normal;font-family:georgia;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">"</span><span style="font-size:100%;">And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."</span></h5><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: center;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" ><strong>-- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death"</strong></span></p><br />I lied to you, yesterday. OK: No I didn't. But, in the interests of the sort of clarity that our "new media" and "old media" are now addicted to, you can have it both ways, either way, or no way at all. It doesn't matter.<br /><br />Because, hell, truth doesn't matter. Only spin matters, only assertion matters, only fabulism about fabulists (the new buzzword of the neocons) and can I no longer can see this as a matter of "facts," and "information." Why buck popular opinion?<br /><br />Rather, it is a literary festival, and should be approached as a literary critic. Fortunately I have the chops for this.<br /><br />Remember Beauchamp? Welcome to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Beauchamp, an enormous balloon filled with helium and floated above the adoring fans as the Romney parade passes by. Hugh Hewitt, one of the Mittster's biggest fans (and author of the quasi-official Mitt apologia <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mormon-White-House-Things-American/dp/159698502X"><em><strong>A Mormon In The White House?</strong></em></a>) has PERSONALLY weighed in on his TownHall dot com blog (he usually leaves daily posting to lackey Dean Barnett).<br /><br />Let us dip into <a href="http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/15bd900d-ac6d-439c-9314-ed3f557038ed">the prose stylings of Hugh Hewitt</a>, and ask ourselves the literary question ... well, I'll be back after the blockquote for that:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Wednesday, August 08, 2007<br />Romney Ambushed By Anti-War Activist, Abetted By AP, To No Effect</strong><br />Posted by Hugh Hewitt 6:47 PM<br /><br />The AP, with lefty bloggers in tow, is trying to make an issue out of an ambush question at a Romney campaign forum today. Rachel Griffiths, a member of the "Quad City Progressive Action for the Common Good" asked the "why are your kids chickenhawks" question: "Thank you so much for being here and asking for our comments and I appreciate your recognizing the Iraq War veteran. My question is how many of your five sons are currently serving in the U.S. military and if none of them are how do they plan to support this war on terrorism by enlisting in our U.S. military? Romney responded:<br /><br />[video & transcript]<br /><br />AP left out both the text of the question and all of the italicized comments. Nice reporting, eh?<br /><br />The Romney campaign quickly released the YouTube video of the exchange, though given the fundamental inability of the chickenhawk meme to move the average American voter, and the widespread rejection of such logic by the uniformed military, it might have been better to let the "controversy" play out a bit as a way of demonstrating how in the bag the AP is to the anti-war fringe.<br /><br />A question for lefties in love with this meme: Have you denounced The New Republic's and Private Beauchamp's slanders? Have you talked up the virtues of serving in uniform in time of war? Or do you dispute that we are in a war, and find it convenient to focus on alleged war crimes and other misdeeds of the military? Do you accuse the Administration of fighting for oil, or of misleading us into war? Are you tearing down the military and yet condemning people for not serving in it?<br /><br />Just wondering.</blockquote><br />Ah. So BEAUCHAMP is the reason that Mitt's sons aren't serving? Huh?<br /><br />BRILLIANT argument, Hugh. Now, go and clean your bong. It must be clogged from all the use it got in ginning up THIS weird defense.<br /><br />But, because this wasn't enough for Hugh -- who probably sobered up, read what he'd written and made a frantic phone call -- evidently, he sent his lackey to post further "logical" arguments to defend Mitt this morning:<br /><br /><blockquote>Thursday, August 09, 2007<br /><a href="http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/af9a3979-e53d-469d-9d86-efef5a7a36c6"><strong> Campaign Update</strong></a><br />Posted by Dean Barnett | 10:51 AM<br /><br />SPEAKING OF CANDIDATES OF CHOICE, it’s been an interesting week for mine, Mitt Romney. Last Thursday, he went into talk show host Jan Mickelson’s studio and engaged in a heated discussion over “the Mormon issue.” I thought Romney came across great in that exchange, and so did most other bloggers and commentators. The YouTube has been viewed over 170,000 times, something that probably makes the Romney campaign very happy.<br /><br />On a less sunny note, yesterday, at an “Ask Mitt Anything” session, Romney was asked to defend his five sons against the charge that they’re chickenhawks. Romney started out extremely well by saluting our volunteer army and mentioning his niece’s Reservist husband who had just been activated, and then concluded rather clumsily by saying his sons are serving the country by trying to help him get elected president. Generally speaking, volunteering and sacrificing for political campaigns is a noble thing and shows a level of civic involvement that most people respect. But there was something a little off about Mitt saying his sons were serving the country by serving his campaign, especially in the context of discussing military service. Listening to the tape, it seems Romney intended it as a joke and the crowd did laugh. But it wasn’t a particularly good joke, and it definitely was an ill-advised one. It was exactly the kind of comment that the press would replay as a “Gotcha!” moment. (Here’s the entire clip if you’re interested.)<br /><br />Obviously this isn’t a big deal. The chickenhawk thing is a Democrat obsession, not a Republican one. And family members, even if they’re involved in the principal’s campaign, are widely considered civilians by everyone except the left-wing blogging community and sometimes Mike Wallace. I’ve never heard a single Republican complain that the Bush twins aren’t in Iraq....</blockquote><br />OK. 'Chickenhawks' is meaningless. It's OK to send other people's children (like my son) to die, but you feel no patriotic need to send YOUR children. That's what POOR people are for!<br /><br />[For more <a href="http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=6362">go HERE</a>.]<br /><br />Again, no debate only smear and slur and insult and belittling. That's where we've come to. The only serious task left is to criticize the literary aspects of the insults. OK: They're not that good. As to being specious, well, they're not too good.<br /><br />As I noted yesterday, the swiftboating of Private Beauchamp and TNR has moved mysteriously to "fact" without ever becoming fact. Today, the AP piled on (as predicted) and, well, if you cared for the "truth" of the matter, don't worry about it. It isn't your ass on the line. It isn't your home they'll burn the cross on the lawn of. It isn't your family that will be stalked. Go back to sleep. I know I intend to:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080900008.html"><strong>New Republic Iraq Stories Questioned</strong></a><br />By JOHN MILBURN and ELLEN SIMON<br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, August 9, 2007; 12:00 AM<br /><br />NEW YORK -- A magazine gets a hot story straight from a soldier in Iraq and publishes his writing, complete with gory details, under a pseudonym. The stories are chilling: An Iraqi boy befriends American troops and later has his tongue cut out by insurgents. Soldiers mock a disfigured woman sitting near them in a dining hall. As a diversion, soldiers run over dogs with armored personnel carriers. Compelling stuff, and, according to the Army, not true.<br /><br />Three articles by the soldier have run since January in The New Republic, a liberal magazine with a small circulation owned by Canadian company CanWest Corp. The stories, which ran under the name "Scott Thomas," were called into question by The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine with a small circulation owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The Standard last month challenged bloggers to check the dispatches.<br /><br />Since then, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, of the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry, has come forward as the author. The New Republic said that Beauchamp "came to its attention" through Elspeth Reeve, a reporter-researcher at the magazine he later married.</blockquote><br />I guess I still wonder what that last crap is supposed to mean? That you DON'T get jobs in publishing through WHO you know and not WHAT you know? Thirty-one years in this business belies that bullshit. Publishing is nepotistic as hell, and any writer who would advance this as a "slur" obviously hasn't had their head out of their ass for a long, long time. Besides, with so much to crucify Beauchamp/TNR with, why do they keep harping on THIS meaningless detail? And, more tellingly, HOW is it that the NYT, WashPo and AP stories all feature this fact, minus any context. Two words: Press Release. The AP story even quotes the "news" source of THE WEEKLY STANDARD as if it were some uninterested observer, and not the "official" blog driving the story.<br /><br />Facts be damned. The story goes on:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Army said this week it had concluded an investigation of Beauchamp's claims and found them false.<br /><br />"During that investigation, all the soldiers from his unit refuted all claims that Pvt. Beauchamp made in his blog," Sgt. 1st Class Robert Timmons, a spokesman in Baghdad for the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., said in an e-mail interview.</blockquote><br />We are now down to interviewing Sergeants. Long drop from Petraeus' PR/psywar officer, ain't it? (I'm still waiting for my "official" response from the Army, BTW.) The story lurches on ...<br /><br /><blockquote><em>The Weekly Standard</em> said Beauchamp signed a sworn statement admitting all three articles were exaggerations and falsehoods.<br /><br />Calls to Editor Franklin Foer at The New Republic in Washington were not returned, but the magazine said on its Web site that it has conducted its own investigation and stands by Beauchamp's work.<br /><br />Sgt. 1st Class Robert Timmons, a spokesman in Baghdad for the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., said in an e-mail interview.</blockquote><br />Well, there you go. The AP has resolved the controversy, based on one of their reporters' contact with a Kansas soldier that the Wichita, Kansas AP writer John Milburn knows -- the tag reads "Milburn reported from Topeka, Kan." The story lurches forward, like the undead collection of parts that it is (get the torch, Igor! IGOR!!)<br /><br /><blockquote>The Associated Press has been unable to reach Beauchamp, and the Army said details of the investigation were not expected to be released. "Personnel matters are handled internally; they are not discussed publicly," said Lt. Col. Joseph M. Yoswa, an Army spokesman.<br /><br />Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., said granting a writer anonymity "raises questions about authenticity and legitimacy."<br /><br />"Anonymity allows an individual to make accusations against others with impunity," Steele said. "In this case, the anonymous diarist was accusing other soldiers of various levels of wrongdoing that were, at the least, moral failures, if not violations of military conduct. The anonymity further allows the writer to sidestep essential accountability that would exist, were he identified."<br /><br />Steele said he was troubled by the fact that the magazine did not catch the scene-shifting from Kuwait to Iraq of the incident Beauchamp described involving the disfigured woman.<br /><br />"If they were doing any kind of fact-checking, with multiple sources, that error -- or potential deception -- would have emerged," Steele said.</blockquote><br />Well, now we have a pompous press guru weighing in. In a fictional note of historical (novel) irony, it was his preincarnation who weighed in, in Seville, Spain on August 8, 1498, regarding Chaim Levi:<br /><br /><blockquote>If only he'd have accepted Christ and the Holy Teachings of the Church, Torquemada wouldn't be forced to burn him at the stake. Clearly, Levi had every chance to stop this and didn't.</blockquote><br />I'd like to thank Sister Toldjah for naming me <a href="http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2007/08/04/moonbat-of-the-week-harto/">her "<strong>Moonbat of the Week</strong>"</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>8/4/2007 - 2:59 pm<br /><strong>Moonbat of the week: “Harto”</strong></blockquote><blockquote>Didn’t have one for the week before, believe it or not, but we’ve got a live one for this week >:)<br /><br />In response to my link to his post at the Democratic Daily blog about the revelation that TNR screwed up big time with their ‘military blogger’ Scott Thomas, blogger Hart Williams writes:</blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong>Your thesis is laughable — that an “internal investigation” reported through a blogger who claims “insider connections” to know the outcome of the investigation before any official information has been released.<br /></strong></blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong>Oh, and it clears the Army and discredits Private Beauchamp (who you didn’t believe was a real person when Goldfarb began this witch hunt on July 21?</strong></blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong>Sure. THAT’s credible.</strong></blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong> Your question is a rhetorical monstrousity. The only persons who “believe” that way are the straw men you’re obviously trying to set up. So let me ask YOU a question:</strong></blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong>ince you want to ignore the various ‘military lies to us’ scandals, WHY did you decide to endanger the life of a soldier fighting in the sandbox? Because you didn’t like what he said? Is THAT “supporting the troops”?<br /></strong></blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong>Or are you still laboring under the delusion that we’re “spreading democracy” and that endangering MY son because you don’t have an exit strategy, refuse to discuss an exit strategy, and would rather be right and watch more of our soldiers die than admit that this war has been a disaster and end it?</strong></blockquote><blockquote style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><strong> Must be amazing to know it all. Kinda makes you like God, don’t it?</strong></blockquote><blockquote>Naw. It’s not about being a “know it all” (we leave that to the Democratic ‘leadership’ in Congress) - it’s about knowing how to spot liberal demagoguery that people try to pass off as being the ‘real truth’ a mile away. Careful, Hart. Yours and the left’s transparency on ’supporting the troops’ is starting to show.<br /><br />Kinda sad when people who claim to ’support the troops’ in reality are hoping that the negative stories they read about the military are true, and furthermore go out of their way to try and spin them as true, even when it turns out they’re not. These same types of people want us to give accused murderers here at home the benefit of the doubt, but don’t extend that same courtesy to the men and women who put their lives on the line so they can have the right to spout their idiotic, troop-hating nonsense.<br /><br />Scratch “sad.” It’s actually sick. Very sick.</blockquote><br />Well, me being "very sick" and all, no one should mind that Sister Toldjah still hasn't figured out what "Scott Thomas"es' actual name is. After all, she has all the facts. She and her yowling band of baboons have been having quite a bit of fun debating arguments that they've hallucinated I made. You can check it out HERE: <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2007/08/07/moonbat-of-the-week-harto-responds/" rel="bookmark">Moonbat of the week “Harto” responds</a>. (But please don't bother commenting or defending me in any way. Your words would be wasted on them anyway-- at least the multi-syllabic ones. Enjoy the bar-b-que!)<br /><br />And, finally, Confederate Yanker and "sore winner," Bob Owens weighs in on <strong><em>The Democratic Daily</em></strong> to "debate" my last post in that polite manner that this whole "Baghdad Diarist" matter has been conducted in (even <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/236527.php">as he "piles on" to his own story</a>, just in case Beauchamp/TNR hasn't been stomped into the mud completely. I'm honored that he could take time from his busy character assassination schedule to pay attention to l'il ol' moi):<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=6363#comment-626955"># Bob Owens Says:</a><br />August 9th, 2007 at 4:41 am edit<br /><br />harto,<br /><br />I’m still trying to figure this out. Are you shooting for a sophisticated parody like the guys over at “Blame Bush,” or are you really serious?<br /><br />If you are serious… well, then I’m a bit concerned for your psychological well-being.<br /><br />Either way, I’ll reveal my big secret: I made contact with a PAO some months or a year ago (I don’t even remember which one or what the story was), and asked intelligent questions no one else was asking. From that, I was able to network a little bit, with the old, “Captain Smith, I got your name from Major Jones at FOB blah-blah-blah…”<br /><br />I’ve also been able to contact some civilian contractors, some Iraqi citizens, and some NGO officials and journalists in both countries. That is how I get my info; good old, old school, rubbing elbows and establishing relationships, like reporters have done for decades… but digitally, of course.<br /><br />You could probably make the same sort of contacts yourself if you were willing to, but it takes a tremendous amount of personal time to do so, and you’d have to stop running the half-baked conspiracy theories in every other post.<br /><br />Gee, if I was an Army PAO with a full plate of media requests sitting in front of me and a very limited amount of time in my 12-hour day, who do I choose?<br /><br />Do I go with the the guy who says he knows m buddy Steve and who has a reputation as being fair with what we give him,<br /><br />-OR-<br /><br />Do I respond to the crank that last week accused General Petraeus of running a “rogue operation” and is batty enough to think that the President is running a media campaign through a small blog run from a La-Z-Boy sofa in Raleigh, NC?<br /><br />Try hard, harto, and you might just see why you aren’t taken very seriously, or why some don’t even know if you’re trying to be taken seriously.<br /><br />Keep up the great work, “Superfan.”<br /><br />Respectfully,<br /><br />Bob</blockquote><br />I love that "respectfully" part. It sort of floats there like an anti-turd in the septic tank punchbowl of rightie discourse. You've got to admit that, after writing a comment like that, it takes <em>a supreme degree of unselfconsciousness</em> to cap the slurs with "respectfully."<br /><br />Hate to think of what Bob would have said if he WASN'T being respectful. (Or actually knew what that word means).<br /><br />Mitt Gott Spin. Hugh Hewitt Gott an amenuensis. Harto Gott slammed. Truth Gott zip.<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-1589416542626521493?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-18515289175771189052007-08-09T00:11:00.000-07:002007-08-09T14:09:00.678-07:00Embedded Journalists and Inbedded Bloggers<span style="font-size:85%;">[<strong>Correction 2PM PDT 9AUG07</strong>: <a href="http://v10.pajamasmedia.com/site/articles/staffrsimon/">Pajamas Media co-founder Roger L. Simon</a> is NOT, as noted below, connected with Powerline. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tip of the Harto Chapeau to J. Rosen</span>.]</span><br /><br />This will probably be my last post on the subject of the coordinated attack on <em>The New Republic</em> magazine and Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp by Michael Goldfarb and his employer, the Rupert Murdoch-owned publication, <em>The Weekly Standard</em>.<br /><br />Not because I have ceased to be interested in this almost textbook smear campaign, nor because I believe that the blogosmearers' camp has either lived up to the bar height for truth that THEY demanded, nor because I am convinced that any stunning new information has "nailed it" -- as nearly as I can tell, in the epistemological sense of truth, of proof, of facts, the issues still stand at deuce -- but mostly because I get the feeling that you don't give a shit, that progressives don't give a shit, that journalists don't give a shit, and, frankly, because there's nothing I can do to stop this lynching any more than Henry Fonda's character could in 1943's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ox-Bow_Incident"><em>The Ox-Bow Incident,</em></a> which is what this all reminds me of -- minus, of course, any remorse.<br /><br />Except that a crime had actually been committed in the movie and book. They just strung up the wrong men. Here, we just have the lynching. (By the usual suspects.) And they are stringing up EXACTLY who they intend to lynch.<br /><br />Oh, I understand why the pussified mainstream press has ignored the story until today. And I understand why, when the <em>New York Times</em> and the <em>Washington Post </em>declare "game over," the "common wisdom" will now claim that the smear is now "fact."<br /><br />I learned that lesson with Gary Webb:<br /><br /><blockquote>On <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_18" title="December 18">December 18</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997" title="1997">1997</a>, <em>The Washington Post</em> and <em>The New York Times</em> reported that CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz's investigation found no links between the CIA and the cocaine traffickers.<br /><br />Webb alleged that the 1997 backlash was a form of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation" title="Media manipulation">media manipulation</a>. "The government side of the story is coming through the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, the <em>New York Times</em>, the <em>Washington Post</em>," Webb stated. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as the <em>New York Times</em> saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA."<br /><br />James Aucoin, a communications professor who specializes in the history of investigative reporting, wrote: "In the case of Gary Webb's charges against the CIA and the Contras, the major dailies came after him. Media institutions are now part of the establishment and they have a lot invested in that establishment." [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb">Wikipedia</a>]</blockquote><br />But, like I said, you don't seem to give a damn, so why should I?<br /><br />Here's what the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/washington/08diarist.html"><em>New York Times</em> says</a> :<br /><br /><blockquote><strong> Army Says Soldier’s Articles for Magazine Were False</strong><br />By PATRICIA COHEN<br />Published: August 8, 2007<br /><br />An Army investigation into the Baghdad Diarist, a soldier in Iraq who wrote anonymous columns for <em>The New Republic</em>, has concluded that the sometimes shockingly cruel reports were false.<br /><br />“We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message. “The allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.”<br /><br />The brief statement, however, left many questions unanswered. Just last week <em>The New Republic</em> published on its Web site the results of its own investigation, stating that five members of the same company as Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who had written the anonymous pieces, “all corroborated Beauchamp’s anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one soldier, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)”<br /><br />...Private Beauchamp is married to a reporter-researcher at the magazine, Elspeth Reeve. <strong>[NOTE:</strong> <em>WHY this is important, I don't know. Kurtz in the Washington Post ALSO seems to find this valuable, indicating, perhaps they're reading the same press releases --<strong> HW</strong></em><strong>]</strong>.<br /><br />Michael Goldfarb, the online editor at <em>The Weekly Standard</em> who had initially raised doubt about the columns, wrote yesterday that <em>The Standard</em> had learned from a source close to the Army investigation that ... *</blockquote><br />[From <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/07/16/rll_back.html">NYU Professor of Journalism, Jay Rosen</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>In fact, there is a gentleman’s agreement among journalists not to investigate each other’s confidential sources. Whenever I have asked about this, I have never heard a reporter try to justify the arrangement. (I don’t think it can be done) Nor do they deny it. Good question for Howard Kurtz to ask on “Reliable Sources.” ]</blockquote>And, speaking of Howard Kurtz, the rather gullible "media critic" at <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080701922.html"><em>The Washington Post </em>chimes in</a>, completing the two-paper trifecta:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Army Concludes Baghdad Diarist Accounts Untrue</strong><br />By Howard Kurtz<br />Washington Post Staff Writer<br />Wednesday, August 8, 2007; Page C01<br /><br />Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth.<br /><br />The finding, disclosed yesterday, came days after the Washington-based magazine announced that it had corroborated the claims of the private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except for one significant error.<br />"An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false," an Army statement said. "His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."<br /><br />But New Republic Editor Franklin Foer is standing his ground. "We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account," Foer said. The magazine granted anonymity to the other soldiers it cited.<br /><br />A military official, <strong>who asked not to be identified because the probe is confidential</strong> ...</blockquote><br />Whooh. SOME confidential. Can you say "intentional leak"? Naw. No media manipulation here. Move along. Move along.<br /><br />Besides the heaping helpings of quotes from Michael Goldfarb (in both newspapers, you'll note), in the story, here's a FAUX NOOZish paragraph in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080701922.html">Kurtz' story</a> that neatly accuses TNR through another's words (for you collectors) , AND snarkily <em>revives</em> the old Glass scandal that the blogosmear is HOT to tar TNR with, anew:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Army probe provides ammunition to conservative critics who have accused the liberal magazine of publishing Beauchamp's "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Baghdad?tid=informline">Baghdad</a> Diarist" essays without adequate checking and being too quick to believe that American soldiers would engage in questionable conduct. It also revives fading memories of the magazine's 1998 fabrication scandal involving writer Stephen Glass.</blockquote><br />But even Howard Kurtz is uncomfortable with this whole mess (and it's 'confirmation'), so he stages a little "debate," acting as puppeteer:<br /><br /><blockquote>[<em>New Republic</em> Editor Franklin] Foer said the <em>New Republic</em> had asked Maj. Steven Lamb, an Army spokesman, about the allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, and that Lamb had replied: "I have no knowledge of that." Before going incommunicado, Beauchamp "told us that he signed a statement that did not contradict his writings for the <em>New Republic</em>," Foer said.<br /><br />"Thus far," he added, "we've been provided no evidence that contradicts our original statement, despite directly asking the military for any such evidence it might have."<br /><br />But <em>Weekly Standard </em>writer Michael Goldfarb said: "We have full confidence in our reporting that Private Beauchamp recanted under oath."<br /><br />It is not clear whether investigators might have pressured Beauchamp into disavowing the articles...</blockquote><br />But Kurtz wants us to understand how an inquisition works, so he tosses this charge and this explanation into the Punch & Judy Show:<br /><br /><blockquote>The <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+Weekly+Standard+Magazine?tid=informline">Weekly Standard</a>, the conservative magazine that has led the charge against Beauchamp, cited an unnamed military source yesterday as saying that Beauchamp had signed an affidavit acknowledging that his three articles were filled with exaggerations and falsehoods. That could not be independently confirmed, but it is common practice for the subject of an investigation to sign a statement confirming or denying the conduct in question.</blockquote><br />And he concludes with the old trick of having <em>someone else </em>come to a conclusion:<br /><br /><blockquote>Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+George+Washington+University?tid=informline">George Washington University</a>, called the Army's refusal to release its report "suspect," adding: "There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there's one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests."</blockquote><br />[<strong>NOTE:</strong> this is not a 'Fisking' of Kurtz. But considering the "weight" that the appellation '<strong>The Washington Post says</strong>' carries, it's worth taking a moment to look at the writing critically. It's still a "he said/she said" story, advanced not a whit, but now is taken as THE GOSPEL, because of the two papers.]<br /><br />Of course, behind the scenes, the media manipulation continues, now that they've got the brand names to bash with. Here, from Brent Bozell's "Newsbusters" ("Exposing and Combating Liberal Bias in Media"):<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/bob-owens/2007/08/08/new-republic-refuses-retract-thomas-reports" id="r-16_1119076215">New Republic Refuses to Retract Thomas 'Reports'</a><br />NewsBusters<br />By Bob Owens | August 8, 2007 - 13:37 ET<br /><br />In an e-mail message, Mr. Foer said, "Thus far, we've been provided no evidence that contradicts our original <strong>...</strong></blockquote><br />Gee. That's funny. Bob Owens, who supposedly received the first Army email from General Petraeus' official mouthpiece, P.R. Officer Lt. Col. (now Col.) Stephen Boylan (but the <em>New York Times</em> and <em>The Washington Post</em> and <em>The New Republic</em> only get Major Lamb, Boylan's deputy) which forms the BASIS of this story, along with Michael Goldfarb's evident pushing in BOTH the media and the blogosphere (remember, he CALLED for this firestorm, back in mid-July). Bob Owens, "Confederate Yankee," calls for, I guess, the public castration of <em>The New Republic</em> by quoting the NYT and WashPo stories -- stories in which he's not mentioned, but of which he was an architect, and Newsbusters has the GALL to talk about "liberal bias"?<br /><br />So, is Owens a partisan,* or is he a journalist, or is he engaging in media manipulation? None of the above? Or all of the above?<br /><br />[*A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajamas_Media">Pajamas Media</a> blogger -- Pajamas Media having been founded by Little Green Footballs' <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Johnson_%28blogger%29">Charles Johnson</a> and mystery writer (e.g. "Fabulist") <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_L._Simon">Roger L. Simon</a>, a Powerline(blog) partner. LGF is proud of his part in a similar smear on Dan Rather. Powerline is prominent in this smear, as were they prominent in MY smearing last month at about the time this whole Beauchamp affair was whipped up.]<br /><br />But then, Col. Stephen Boylan, General Petraeus' top Public Relations flak answers HIS emails. So he's got to be SOMEbody. (As opposed to the NYT, WashPo and TNR, who only get his deputy Maj. Lamb).<br /><br />Gee, do you suppose that this campaign was looking for a victim, jumped over me (after finding out that I was "an obscure blogger") and landed on <em>The New Republic</em>? Naww. Or perhaps this was a campaign looking for PR cover for the Pentagon, what with the rape-murder convictions, continued Gitmo controversies, and the Pat Tillman story? You know, if they could push THIS story into the news cycles, it would help obscure the aforementioned scandals? Of course not! That would smack of media manipulation, and, as we all know, NOBODY in the Bush administration engages in active manipulation, disinformation and intimidation of the press. Heaven forbid the very notion! Why, just today, General Petraeus attributed the 190,000 missing weapons in Iraq <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080701726.html">to "clerical errors</a>. (And "Bookkeeping deficiencies" according to <a href="http://http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080701726.html">the <em>Washington Post</em>'s story</a> on "in an interview broadcast last night on Fox News Radio's 'Alan Colmes Show'.")<br /><br />But it's kind of strange how we find Brent Bozell's looking-glass version of MediaMatters less concerned with "accuracy" in reporting than in advancing the ball up the field.<br /><br /><a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/bob-owens/2007/08/08/new-republic-refuses-retract-thomas-reports">The "article"</a> on liberal bias that ends with this tag:<br /><br /><blockquote><em>Cross-posted at <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/" rel="nofollow">Confederate Yankee</a>.</em></blockquote><br />The article that reads like the final Affirmative rebuttal in a debate. Except that this hasn't been so much a debate as an inquisition. (Which quotes the NYT and WashPo articles as its PROOF that the case is true. The case that was shoved down the NYT and WashPo's throats, it should be noted.)<br /><br />[Old Bob's a busy 'journalist' today. In addition to his summation of the Case Against Heretic Beauchamp, he's going after Reuters <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/236410.php">for 'falsely' reporting a massacre</a>, aided by, mysteriously, <a href="http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenewstribune.com%2Fnews%2Fmilitary%2Fstryker%2Fstory%2F92397.html" title="Fort Lewis, Washington">Maj. Rob Parke</a>, an Army Public Relations officer in Iraq:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ho-Hum: Yet </span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/236410.php">Another False Media-Reported</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Massacre In Iraq</span><br /><br />On Sunday, <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05682223.htm">Reuters reported</a> that the scene of a large massacre had been discovered near Baquba:<br /></blockquote><blockquote><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> BAGHDAD, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Iraqi police said on Sunday they had found 60 decomposed bodies dumped in thick grass in Baquba, north of Baghdad. </strong><strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">There was no indication of how the 60 people had been killed, police said. Baquba is the capital of volatile Diyala province, where thousands of extra U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have been sent to stem growing violence. </span><br /><br /></strong>Why did the police have such a hard time providing an indication of how the 60 people had been killed? Probably because there were no bodies to examine.<br /><br />Via email from Major Rob Parke, U.S. Army:<br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Bob, </strong><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">This story is false. We have had coalition soldiers looking for the last two days at the locations that IPs reported these bodies. We've asked all the locals in the area and they have no idea what we are talking about. We've gone to areas that might be close, gone to suspicious locations, all turned up nothing.</strong><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Most of the news stories all say the report stated decomposing bodies which would indicate if it was true, it happened before we arrived. Considering we discovered an Al Qaeda Jail, courthouse, and torture house in western Baqubah, it wouldn't surprise me if there were 60 bodies buried out there somewhere. Bottom line is we have done some extensive looking and found nothing.</strong></blockquote><blockquote>This is the second large-scale massacre reported in major wire services in less than six weeks that seem utterly without merit; both Reuters and the Associated Press were duped by insurgents posing as police officers who claimed 20 beheaded bodies were discovered near Um Al-Abeed on June 28.<br /><br /><a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/07/a_matter_of_trust.php">That was also false</a>.</blockquote><br />As we can all clearly see, Bob Owens "private citizen" is a completely independent voice, whose veracity is beyond doubt. Glad to know that Reuters is lying to us. Good catch Bob! Onward.<br /><br />So, since I'm finished with this story, like you, I will just note that on Sunday, I went to the official <a href="http://www.mnf-iraq.com/" title="Sourcewatch">Iraq Coalition webpage (Army*</a>) and got <a href="http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=1&id=4&Itemid=21">the official press</a> contact (a generic address, and <em>not very easy to find</em> on the "press" website) and I wrote them this:<br /><br />[* For some <em>weird</em> reason <a href="http://www.mnf-iraq.com/">the website for the Coalition</a> is a DOT com, <a href="http://about.tucows.com/">registered through Tucows</a>. <em><strong>What?</strong></em> The Pentagon <em>has their own Top Level Domain!</em> (.mil). They INVENTED the bloody internet. So WHY are they paying for a dot COM registered site? What the hell kind of insanity is that?]<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>from:</strong> Hart Williams Aug 5 (3 days ago)<br /><strong>to: </strong> cpicpressdesk@iraq.centcom.mil<br /><strong>date:</strong> Aug 5, 2007 12:08 PM<br /><strong>RE: </strong>Investigation policy<br /><br />To whom it may concern:<br /><br />I am a freelance journalist in the USA. What is official policy on releasing the results of internal investigations?<br /><br />And,<br /><br />What information can you release to me regarding the investigation of Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp vis a vis a "Baghdad Diary" published in THE NATIONAL REVIEW, and the subject of much press speculation stateside?<br /><br />Bests,<br /><br />H. Williams,<br />journalist</blockquote><br />Oddly, unlike blogger Bob Owens, and Michael Goldfarb at <em>The Weekly Standard</em>, I have received no response to my query. I was under the impression, of course, that the U.S. Army responds to ALL media requests in an equitable manner, but I guess maybe blogger Bob Owens and Michael Goldfarb's clearly stated agenda --to punish <em>The New Republic </em>and, oh, now that we know who he is, to crush Pvt. Beauchamp in the press, a sort of "anti-Jessica Lynch" -- more closely conforms to the Administration's agenda than does the modest query of one freelance journalist. That's ungentlemanly of me. I'm sure that Owens and Goldfarb aren't in <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Combined_Press_Information_Center">cahoots with the Pentagon</a>. They've got nothing to hide, and certainly <a href="http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_408.shtml">don't manipulate the press </a>as part of their mission.<br /><br />No reply. Three days later and counting on a "hot" story that the Army recognizes is hot ENOUGH that they've been burning through the tubes of the internets to get their confirmations (that refuse to divulge details) and via anonymous Army sources that the story has been RECANTED.<br /><br />It is entirely fit and proper that we use the language of inquisition to denote this result. Beauchamp has RECANTED. His statements "exaggerations and falsehoods — fabrications containing only 'a smidgen of truth'," according to <em>New York Times</em> writer Patricia Cohen QUOTING Michael Goldfarb's blog report on his orchestrated and ofttimes self-referential story.<br /><br />The point being that I was curious as to how come it was that this North Carolina blogger, Bob Owens, was getting earth-shaking emails from the Army officer in charge of <a href="http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10215&Itemid=144">ALL embedded media</a> in Iraq, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Combined_Press_Information_Center">Col. Stephen Boylan</a>? I would have settled for less.<br /><br />And how come the story has now been shuttled down the chain of command to Public Relations officer Major Stephen Lamb?*<br /><br />[*See <a href="http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_408.shtml">Online Journal's report</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>The Pentagon's 'thought police'</strong><br />By Linda S. Heard<br />Online Journal Contributing Writer<br />Jan 11, 2006, 02:16<br /><br />The Pentagon's "Media Engagement Team" has set up shop in the region. Its members, consisting of military personnel and contractors approach various publications and ask for an appointment, whereby owners and editors are urged to publish "positive" stories concerning the US military's activities in the area.<br /><br />On some occasions, the team receives a polite hearing. On others, it is shown the door. I find this Orwellian behaviour offensive on many different levels...</blockquote><br />Mostly because you <em>won't hear a WORD</em> questioning the Pentagon in all of this.]<br /><br />What was the news today? Only a confirmation that Goldfarb and Bob Owens' quoted letters were real, and not forgeries (which, you'll note, I did not question in my prior posts as authentic, even though the sheer concord between the Army emails and the bloggers' agendas EXACTLY coincided.0<br /><br />Which tells us nothing new, except that the <em>Washington Post</em> and the <em>New York Times</em> have now drunk the Koolaid, and the story has achieved the status of "fact."<br /><br />NOTHING new has transpired, except that 'anonymous' Army officers confirm, and, perhaps the Goldfarb letter was sent to the New York Times reporter who either confirmed its contents with the official Pentagon Press Officer, or else didn't. (The NYT, remember, has been <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair">guilty of journalistic crimes</a> at LEAST as egregious as <em>The New Republic's</em> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass" title="Wikipedia article with links">Steven Glass scandal</a> -- which the Goldfarbs and Owenses are harping on as "proof" of some nefarious intention of TNR to fake stories between 1998 and 2007. )<br /><br />Howard Kurtz, on the other hand, sounds like a bit like a reporter who's drunk the Koolaid only after his jaws were pried open and a tube shoved down his esophagus. But, with the WRITER of the piece in question SILENCED and unable to defend himself, the debate can now conclude. Fair and Balanced. Balanced and Fair.<br /><br />Sure am glad that those "Newsbusters" are there to expose and combat bias in the media. Liberal bias, I mean. Good going, Brent Bozell. And I'm glad that Michael Goldfarb can orchestrate a three-week concerted effort to silence, expose, smash and humiliate a young writer serving in the Iraq war. And I'm really proud that a thousand Rightie bloggers can strut and preen and posture and, being the sore winners that they are, swagger into mainstream blogs to bitch-slap non-complicit journalists:<br /><br />From <a href="http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/the_beauchamp_affair_and_a_not.php">The Atlantic [Magazine] Online</a>:<br /><blockquote><strong>The Atlantic Online</strong><br />Ross Douthat<br /><br />Of my conversation with Jon Chait this morning - in which I argued that TNR probably shouldn't have run the Scott Thomas Beauchamp pieces, but also contended that the right-wing blogosphere's reaction has often run well over-the-top - <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/234789.php">Ace of Spad</a>es <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/236191.php">writes:</a><br /><ul><br /><li> Okay, Ross.You keep earning your reasonable stripes by basically <strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">kissing your liberal pals' asses</strong> while meanwhile saying nothing at all -- except to the extent <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">you just agree with what your betters have figured out</span> before you did. On the other hand, it gets rather good here. Here Douthat notes what was pointed out to him by the "ludicrous" "Michelle Malkin slash Ace of Spades front" -- namely, that Beauchamp seems to have most likely lied, and not made an "error," in claiming the Burned Woman mockery occurred in Iraq rather than Kuwait -- and Jonathan Chait admits that it does seem reasonable to conclude Beauchamp did not make an "error" but rather deliberately lied. Remember, though, Douthat, who did nothing on this story, is superior to any of us rightwing crazies<span style="font-weight: bold;"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">simply by parroting what we have written</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">.</span></li></ul><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><br />Equally ludicrous is the amount of attention - thousands upon thousands of words of speculation and vituperation - paid by right-wing blogs to a story that, while interesting and worth investigating, tells us nothing all that significant</strong> about the media except the obvious truth that magazines often run ill-chosen, under-vetted pieces, particularly in the less-frequented pages of an issue, particularly when the author of the piece has a personal connection to someone on staff, and particularly when the subject matter is largely "on author" and therefore difficult to fact-check. (I tried to make this point in the dialog with Chait, but I'll make it again: a lot of people in the blogosphere seem to think that magazines have infinite time and resources with which to fact-check their pieces, when in fact there wouldn't be any political magazines if they all lavished the kind of care on fact-checking that the<em> Atlantic </em>and <em>New Yorker</em> can lavish on a story.) TNR certainly deserved to be called out, by Mike Goldfarb and others, for running a piece that seemed fishy, and nothing that's followed has altered my sense that Beauchamp's tales seemed at least touched by exaggeration. On the other hand, nothing that I've seen has convinced me that he's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass">Stephen Glass</a>-style fabulist, either, and <strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I don't think that Beauchamp's recantation to his superiors settles anything one way or another</strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">; </span>given the threat of court-martial involved in standing by his stories, he seems at least as likely to be lying to his superiors as to be lying to TNR...<br /><br />[<strong>HW note</strong>: links and emphasis added]</blockquote><br />Media manipulation? Perish the thought. The rightie blogosmear being held to the same bar of truthfulness that their victims are held to? Don't make me laugh.<br /><br />Like I said, nobody gives a damn. But, if you read "<a href="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/2007/08/07/air-on-a-g-string-part-iii/">Air On A G-String</a>" you might recall my citation of <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/07/16/rll_back.html">Jay Rosen's essay "Rollback."</a> The thesis is important here:<br /><br /><blockquote>No more honest brokers; claims take the place of facts. Disguised by the culture war’s ranting about media bias, these very things are happening all around us today. Limits on what liberties could be taken with the factual record without triggering a political penalty are being overcome.... I should add that rollback intersects with trends in journalism that, as Tom Rosenstiel notes, are promoting a 'journalism of assertion' (cheap, easy, safe) over the discipline of verification (expensive, hard, and certain to spur more attacks as the culture war wears on.)</blockquote><br />But now the event has acquired the authority of the printed word (e.g. the NYT and the WashPo) and thus, the battle is over. NOW they crush those that opposed them, and force the editor of <em>The New Republic</em> to walk <a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank" title="The New Republic's blog">The Plank</a>.<br /><br />As the sharks rejoice.<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-1851528917577118905?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-65315224271201017152007-08-08T04:04:00.000-07:002007-08-08T06:21:09.256-07:00FISA - Ask The Next QuestionThere's not any evidence or news here. Just some inductive logic and my mentor's prescription for evolution: "Ask the next question."<br /><br />Theodore Sturgeon used to preach a little evolutionary trick that he believed created innovation and new discoveries. He even had a little symbol for it: a "Q" with a rightward facing arrow through it. Here's his <a href="http://www.physics.emory.edu/%7Eweeks/misc/question.html">1967 Cavalier magazine article</a> explaining it if you're interested further.<br /><br /><p align="center"><img src="http://www.hartwilliams.com/images/asknextquestn.jpg" alt="Ask the next question" /></p><!--more-->Now, let's apply that to the FISA vote, and see what we come up with.<br /><br />First, Democrats aren't stupid. (I know you've heard this a lot from Republicans, but it's just an ugly rumor.) They're not naive. And they're not dishonorable,<br /><br />Second, the congressional Democrats KNEW what they were voting for.<br /><br />Neither of those propositions are particularly controversial or difficult.<br /><br />So: WHY did they hand a demonstrated gang of criminals such incredible discretionary (and unconstitutional) power? Especially considering that Alberto Gonzales is the direct functionary exercising this imperial power?<br /><br />A few have hit on the only logical explanation that makes sense (and, given the partisan nature of the exercise of "justice" as revealed in congressional hearings over the last month, the likelihood approaches certainty):<br /><br />The Bushies have dug up blackmail material on the congresspersons in question.<br /><br />OK. Nothing earth-shattering here. You're all still way ahead of me.<br /><br />But the next question that isn't asked (that Randi Rhodes squeamishly squirmed about on the radio yesterday) is WHAT sort of blackmail was it?<br /><br />That is where the logical bus has stopped. But I'll ask you to take it just one more stop down the political highway.<br /><br />WHY do we assume that the blackmail material was dirt<em> on</em> those representatives?<br /><br />Think of Superman. You can't hurt him. You can' t coerce him. But you CAN threaten Jimmy Olson and Lois Lane. They've used that plot trick literally a gazillion times.<br /><br />So, too, our congresspersons. Rather that assume that they're "dirty," isn't it just as reasonable to presume that they have friends, loved ones, prominent supporters whose lives AREN'T strictly saintlike? And can we put it past blackmailers to apply pressure in ANY manner that might prove effective?<br /><br />So: it is an inductive conclusion with a high degree of probability that the FISA vote was coerced at metaphorical gunpoint. The blackmail material need NOT have been on the representatives in question, and it is ignoble of us to be suspicious of them, given who they were dealing with.<br /><br />I think that this is a classic case of forcing our Democrats to vote horribly, and THEN to sit back and laugh as we pillory the victims for their insane vote.<br /><br />I have a feeling that THEY know it was insane, too. But they've <em><strong>got </strong>to keep their mouths shut.</em> It is in the very nature of the blackmail.<br /><br />And while that breeds suspicion in US about THEM, I believe it is perfectly logical to accept that they voted in favor of the crazy new FISA law as the <em>lesser</em> of two evils.<br /><br />And we all know WHERE that evil proceeds from. Let's keep our focus on who the bad guys really are.<br /><br />One would think, after eight years of Rovian sleaze, that we'd be a little more sophisticated than to say: WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH THOSE DEMOCRATS? WERE THEY CRAZY?<br /><br />Well, were they?<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-6531522427120101715?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-64868249777462305732007-08-07T00:01:00.000-07:002009-07-27T13:03:12.978-07:00Air On A G-String (part iii)It is a peculiarity of my muse that whenever vital information is still in transit, she will not allow me to create. I am invariably dumbfounded by her immense wisdom.<br /><br />I was writing about the state of writing -- the profession -- and journalism -- the profession -- and publishing -- the profession. And, in my wordy way, I was telling you that a job in publications these days was less preferable than a job in the domestic textile industry. And I stalked the oeuvre of the working male writer of the post World War II era -- men's magazines that paid the rent in a guilty 'devil's bridge' to provide 'redeeming social value,' i.e. to keep the publishers and their employees out of jail. (More the former than the latter).<br /><br /><!--more-->And I was going to tell you why I'd suddenly decided NOT to attend the Willamette Writers' Conference this weekend. But there was another convention this weekend that riveted the focus of the media and the blogosphere, the YearlyKos Convention. And, all weekend, I was trying to explain the dual-pronged smear of <em>The New Republic</em> and the YearlyKos convention through the use of a diabolically conceived <a href="http://www.chessboss.com/chesstactics.php">forking attack</a> (from chess*), in which a uniformed soldier was "censored" at YearlyKos in the presence of two Army officers for making political speech IN uniform (one officer was retired General Wesley Clark, former commander of NATO) and an anonymous "diarist" for <em>The New Republic</em> was simultaneously -- literally -- silenced by the Army in Iraq, while a "full investigation" was undertaken).<br /><br />[ * From <a href="http://www.chessboss.com/chesstactics.php">Chess Tactics</a>: "Knight fork is quite common and confusing to novice opponents as its move is difficult to comprehend."]<br /><br />And this morning, in the continuing attempt to belittle/besmirch/bedevil dat bad ol' blogosphere, that the well-recompensed Rightie blogosmear terms "nutroots," Jose Antonio Vargas reported in the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501580.html">Washington Post</a>:(I will simply report the relevant language, Vargas DOESN'T actually write like Louis Ferdinand Celine):<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/jews.htm"><strong>A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators</strong></a><br />At the Yearly Kos Bloggers' Convention, a Sea of Middle-Aged White Males<br /><br /><em>By Jose Antonio Vargas<br />Washington Post Staff Writer<br />Monday, August 6, 2007; C01</em><br /><br />CHICAGO, Aug. 5 ... Cooper sees a problem. "It's mostly white. More male than female," says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. "It's not very diverse."<br /><br />There goes the open secret of the netroots, or those who make up the community of the Internet grass-roots movement ... the rock stars are mostly men, and many women bloggers complain of sexism and harassment in the blogosphere.<br /><br />Walking around McCormick Place during the weekend, it became clear that only a handful of the 1,500 conventioneers -- bloggers, policy experts, party activists -- are African American, Latino or Asian. Of about 100 scheduled panels and workshops, less than a half-dozen dealt directly with women or minority issues ... "How many of the women in the audience blog?" asked a panelist.<br /><br />Nearly three-fourths of those present raised their hands."How many of you get harassed?" [<em><strong>HW NOTE</strong>: no indication as to WHO does the harassing, but the implication seems clear</em>] The hands stayed up. They complain of being harassed online for their views on issues such as abortion rights. ... She's black ... She's white. "Yes, this is a problem. A big problem." [she] is part Latina ... and said one reason she came to Yearly Kos was to get an answer to this question: "Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?"<br /><br />Everyone agrees it's a problem ... worried about generating more "inclusion," using the word no less than six times in 15 minutes. "I hate using the word 'diversity.'... The big question is, how do we include everybody?" ... a white blogger ... an African American blogger from Atlanta ... "I was completely surprised -- shocked even. The political blogosphere isn't as white as the people in this convention."<br /><br />... Blogads Reader Survey found that the median political blog reader is a 43-year-old male who ... judging by the number of middle-aged men who attended one panel after the next here, it's hard to argue with that. ... half-jokingly says that the netroots community is full of "white liberal men," then quickly points out that Moulitsas is part Latino. (The other half is Greek.) "It's important to remember that African American and Latinos already had their alternative media before white progressive bloggers ...</blockquote><br />Notice anything there? I invite you to read my slightly re-emphasized version of the same piece<strong> <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/jews.htm">HERE</a></strong>. (I've created a special web page just for this post.)<br /><br />I want you to take a moment and consider that marginalizing, stereotyping and marginalizing on the basis of race, gender and/or sexual preference is NEVER all right.<br /><br />And while you're considering that, I want to take you back for a moment into the Wayback Machine to a brilliant essay that NYU's professor of journalism Jay Rosen wrote back in 2005, which has, seemingly, come true in spades.<br /><br />Because, we are talking not only about rhetoric, but about the viability and visibility of rhetoric in the political arena. And its REAL WORLD consequences (including the loss, as you'll see, OF that Real World). These strands will all come together at the end, I promise.<br /><br />It is called the "<a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/07/16/rll_back.html">Rollback</a>" and I highly advise that you <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/07/16/rll_back.html">read Rosen's ENTIRE piece</a>. But this much is sufficient for our needs here:<br /><br /><blockquote>Press rollback, the policy for which [White House Press Secretary Scott] McClellan signed on, means <strong>not feeding but starving the beast</strong>, downgrading journalism where possible, and reducing its effectiveness as an interlocutor with the President. This goes for Bush theory, as well as Bush practice. The President and his advisors have declared invalid the "fourth estate" and watchdog press model. (See my earlier posts <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/04/25/bush_muscle.html">here</a> and <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/02/25/wht_prss.html">here</a> on it.) They have moved on, and take it for granted that adversaries will not be as bold.<br /><br />The old notion (still being taught in J-school, I’m afraid) had the press permanently incorporated into the republic as one part of the system of checks and balances— not a branch of government, but a necessary, vital and legitimate part of open government and a free society. The First Amendment was interpreted as protection for that part of the system, and this is the grand thinking behind which Judy Miller has gone to jail.<br /><br />... as Larry Speakes, fomer press secretary to Ronald Reagan, once put it: "You don’t tell us how to stage the news, and we don’t tell you how to report it."</blockquote><br />Now, here is the crucial point, the one that needs to be borne in mind as we discuss the state of journalism (part i), the profession of the writer (part ii) and the current marketplace FOR writing (this part):<br /><br /><blockquote> was getting at in a celebrated passage from his 2004 article in the New York Times Magazine, 'Without a Doubt.' Today it is mocked by the Right as crackpot realism. I think the passage, which adds little to the documentary record since the official who speaks is unnamed, is a parable about recent innovations in executive power.<br /><br />[author Ron] Suskind, as you may recall, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?pagewanted=7&ei=5090&en=890a96189e162076&ex=1255665600&partner=rssuserland">wrote</a> [in the 2004 article in the <em>New York Times Magazine</em>, 'Without a Doubt'] of a meeting with a 'senior adviser to the President,' who expressed his displeasure with an article Suskind had written about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes (one of the architects of rollback.) 'Then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend-- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.' The parable:<br /><ul><br /><li>The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That’s not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'</li><br /></ul>Today the prosecutor is studying what they do, and there’s no way to roll that back. In a Salon interview after the Times article came out, Suskind (whose sources were mostly Republicans) was asked whether the Bush forces were indeed trying to 'eliminate a national point of reference on facts.'<br /><ul><br /><li>Absolutely! That’s the whole idea, to somehow sweep away the community of honest brokers in America -- both Republicans and Democrats and members of the mainstream press -- sweep them away so we’ll be left with <strong>a culture and public dialogue based on assertion rather than authenticity, on claim rather than fact.</strong></li><br /></ul>No more honest brokers; claims take the place of facts. Disguised by the culture war’s ranting about media bias, these very things are happening all around us today. Limits on what liberties could be taken with the factual record without triggering a political penalty are being overcome. Joseph Wilson interfered with this, forcing the White House to pay a penalty: the so-called sixteen words in the State of the Union speech that had to be withdrawn after his op-ed. So he had to pay. And that’s how rollback, freedom over fact, culture war, and the naming of Valerie Plame connect to one another.... [emphasis added]</blockquote><br />That's right. The basis of reality now resides almost exclusively with words. The YearlyKos convention was utterly about words. The coverage (including the sexist, racist, ageist Vargas) is utterly about words. In the "pro" spin and the "anti" spin, we exist in "a public dialogue based on assertion" and "claim."<br /><br />Am I the only one who sees the shameless irony of the current smear of Private Beauchamp and the TNR by conductor <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/beauchamp_recants.asp">Michael Goldfarb</a> and his gang of blogging goons about the "factual" nature of the reports, and <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/08/018142.php">how they're "fabulists"</a>?*<br /><br />[*<strong> UPDATE</strong>: This paragraph is cited HERE as "<a href="http://urbangrounds.com/2007/08/07/beauchamp-recants/">Sigh. So predictable it hurts.</a>" See <a href="http://urbangrounds.com/2007/08/07/beauchamp-recants/#comment-93720">my comment</a> — assuming they don't remove it.]<br /><br />Why, old Satan himself, the Father of Lies, must be, as Hubert Horatio Humphrey used to say, "pleased as punch."<br /><br />And what opposes this? Journalists?<br /><br />They're losing their jobs faster than faster than Okies in a citrus orchard.<br /><br />Authors? The <a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/index.html">entire 'mid-list' class of writers</a> (always by far the largest class, from whence best-selling authors tended to emerge after a few books, like, say, John Irving and Steven King, etc.) has been essentially gutted.<br /><br />Bloggers? Well, OK, but, according to the Vargas version of the <em>Washington Post,</em> they're all middle-aged White males. So that's no help.<br /><br />Which brings me to WHY I didn't attend the Willamette Writers' Conference. (I didn't attend YearlyKos because it was prohibitively expensive. Jane Hamsher noted on <a href="http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/06/yearly-kos-and-the-myth-of-the-white-male/">Firedoglake this morning</a> that just her HOTEL bill was nearly $1000.)<br /><br />I thought I could attend WWC, and I DID have the money in the bank for it. I went to their website, and after swallowing hard at the sticker shock (one day, which was all I intended attending) cost $260. (Which instantly meant that I couldn't pay for myself AND my wife to attend. She's got a book-and-a-half to sell, too, after a publisher and an agent stole two years of her life in getting the manuscript back to her. The agent's letter, revealingly, confirms the "mid-list" author thesis, above.)<br /><br />WHAT?<br /><br />I don't know what kind of writing these folks is doing, but that's mighty steep for the likes of me. I've attended scads of science fiction conventions, a World Horror Convention, World Fantasy Convention and others -- none of which cost that much for <em>the entire convention</em>! But this conference had two other nasty little surprises:<br /><br />One: out of 33 "literary consultants" (agents and editors) 26 were women. One, in fact ,came from a press that ONLY publishes women. (Ironically, I have a feeling that did some press try to send a representative that ONLY published White males, they would be politely disinvited from the event):<br /><br /><blockquote> ... a senior editor at ** Press, publisher of women's nonfiction books, written for women, by women. ** Press is fueled by the radical thinking and daring work of its authors, and its list includes books on women's health, parenting, outdoor adventure and travel, popular culture, gender and women's studies, and current affairs.</blockquote><br />Of course, 'taint no big thing to YOU. You don't exist in a profession in which blatantly discriminatory policies, the specific targeting of stereotypes and the EXCLUSION of entire classes are <em><strong>perfectly legal and acceptable</strong></em>.<br /><br />It's sort of like the way the movie industry is run, which I note is EQUALLY discriminatory in the OTHER direction! (Why do you think that minorities have still made so little penetration into Hollywood)<br /><br />Of 26 "film consultants" listed, only 7 are women. Given the weird numbers, <em>both ways</em>, I have to interpret it based on what I know of both industries: My agent in New York through the 1990s (until he was indicted by Elliot Spitzer -- don't ask) often bemoaned the utter takeover of the New York publishing industry by women. (He used rather more crude terms.) Now before you get upset with me, please recognize that he KNEW what he was talking about: he had started in the 1960s, and had discovered several male best-selling authors (whom I won't name here).<br /><br />He had married, and relocated to the Midwest with his partner/wife, who, upon their divorce took most of the agency business, and he moved back to NYC to resume his career, which had been grievously harmed by NOT living in New York. (Little tip to those of you looking for agents: if you wanna do films, the agent BETTER live in LA, and if books they'd better live in NYC. Painful experience has confirmed that agents living elsewhere lose that little "edge" that comes of not being able to take the Industry schmucks to lunch. FWIW.)<br /><br />He was astonished at how much a stranger in a strange land he'd become in just a couple of years. The entire staffing of most of the publishing houses with which he was familiar with were now women. And, he confessed to me on more than one occasion, they were openly hostile to men's interests in books. I've heard it theorized that at some point publishers decided that since w0men had become the majority buyers of books, they should tailor the market to them, and the "men's" fiction and interests categories have been steadily dwindling since the late 1970s.<br /><br />But even knowing that, I wasn't prepared for the sticker shock of so many women and so few men in publishing. Film? Well, I lived in Hollywood for a decade and a half, and I know how MCP the business is. And the disparity in the number of men and women among the "film consultants" is EQUALLY appalling. There is no excuse for it.<br /><br />I have spent my lifetime (pre- and post- "progressive") absolutely committed to the equal rights of all humans, be they men, women, black, Native American, Hispanic, Gay, Lesbian, all of the above, none of the above, etcetera. It has always been a core value for me (even after my mother, who taught me the progressive ideals of equality and meritocracy <em>turned her back on them</em> to become an extreme Fundamentalist bigot).<br /><br />In good conscience, I would not attend, whether I was the target of this prejudice or not.<br /><br />Now, to be fair, there were a FEW crossovers between the two sets. But even one of the male literary agents wrote this in his "mini-bio":<br /><br /><blockquote>[He] is looking for breakout mainstream, highly commercial women's fiction, horror, suspense/thrillers and selected commercial nonfiction projects right now.</blockquote><br />There is no point in repeating the soul-crushing avalanche of WOMEN ONLY language in the mini-bios. Now, the only two novels that I have in print, <em>Christina's Hideaway </em>and <em>Christina's Craving</em> ( as "Blakely St. James") were written AS a woman, and in first-person female, -- and are currently selling used on Amazon dot com USED for $49.98 and $63.65 today, respectively, although I've seen them as high as $200USD+ on Amazon dot UK -- so I don't have a problem with producing reverse-George Sand novels, but at this point, to <em>WHAT</em> point? I would like to think that after half a century I might be valued for something other than my fictional vagina and breasts. Just ONCE, you'd think, they might let me write a book as a man.<br /><br />So, when Vargas wrote his vile little slam against White Males in the<em> Washington Post </em>this morning, I wasn't all that surprised. Just glad I hadn't begun writing this post on Sunday, which was when I'd INTENDED to do so (so that I wouldn't deny the WVWC and "business." Even while I found their prices exorbitant and their practices vile, there's no point in harming anyone with one's words if one doesn't have to -- a bit of advice that Michael Goldfarb at <em>The Weekly Standard</em> OUGHT to take to heart.)<br /><br />But, even then, at an absurdly high price and with a female bias against my writing (which is not exactly a new experience for me, professionally, alas), I was STILL willing to bite the bullet. Until I got to the last portion.<br /><br />You see, they "sell" time for you to "pitch" your project to these consultants. You can pick five "one on one" encounters, and multiple "group" encounters (where you pitch in front of a room full of similarly predicamented ... er, "writers").<br /><br />For only $15 a shot, in addition to your conference fee.<br /><br />And the sad thing that hit me (remember that I'm a former contributing editor to OUI and PLAYERS) was that the price was more or less what you'd pay for a lap dance in any strip joint around LAX. You'd get about the same amount of time, and the stripper would be just as "interested" in you as the "literary consultant" ....<br /><br />They'd more than likely be most interested in how many five dollar bills were stuffed in their metaphorical g-strings.<br /><br />Which brings me to my final point.<br /><br />As I have noted before, this battle, this political war is a war of words. Whoever has the best words wins, and, at least since the limousine arrived for Ted Sturgeon at the Philadelphia World Science Fiction Convention in the early 1960s, wealthy Republicans have been more than willing to pay and pay well for good writing. For professional rhetoric for their professional orators. I've written the story elsewhere, and if not, perhaps I'll tell it some time in future.<br /><br />But the important point is this: The reason that the Right is kicking "We The People's" ass politically is because they nurture, pay and recruit writers -- the best writers they can find. And they pay them well. They pay them for Rightie books, for Rightie columns, for Rightie speeches. Hell, they even pay Rightie bloggers and Rightie trolls.<br /><br />There was a time in the 1990s that every daily posting on the Heritage Foundation's website seemed to "mysteriously" show up as a special order speech that night on CSPAN, all paid to writers from "charitable" donations, written off and completely deductible, just like the Red Cross, or the March of Dimes.<br /><br />Only, in this case, it's the March of Slimes. Since you and I have to make up the difference in taxes, it's almost like WE were paying for the Rightie speeches.<br /><br />The full explication doesn't concern us here. What does concern us is this:<br /><br />"Progressive" writers are starving because nobody's paying them. The whole "men's magazine" market dried up and nothing took its place in a literary sense. (<span style="font-style: italic;">Knight Magazine</span>, back in the mid-1960s was publishing Jacques Cousteau back when the mainstream wouldn't touch him as some kind of conservationist kook; there were many others).<br /><br />And Rightie writers have a vast wealth of sources to tap for funds (pun intended).<br /><br />I noted a year ago in "Objective Journalism" (<a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blog/2006/07/unlimited-terms-of-endearment-part-vii.html">part I</a> and <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blog/2006/07/unlimited-terms-of-endearment-part-vii_30.html">part II</a>) how the biggest Rightie publisher uses a foundation (one of the judges is Robert Novak) to pre-pay young journalists to write long pieces and features on spec (the publisher gets first right of refusal) for publication in the greater media. <em>WorldNetDaily</em>'s founders, fresh from the disastrous collapse of <em>The Sacramento Union </em>financed their own "Vince Foster Murder" investigation to the tune of five and six figures' worth of "charitable" dollars from the "Western Journalism Center," and their investigator founded NewsMax in 2000.<br /><br />Indeed, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Journalism_Center"><em>WorldNetDaily</em> came OUT of the Western Journalism Center</a>, as their tax returns have noted in black and white.<br /><br />As Darrell pointed out in an earlier comment on the origins of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajamas_Media">Pajamas Media</a>, "The Matt Drudge of Porn," Luke Ford was originally hired as a blogger before his background disqualified him. But they were paying, and he was willing to Rightie Blog for Hire.<br /><br />Virtually the entire Clinton impeachment came out of endless <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project">Richard Mellon Scaife dollars being poured</a> into investigators and writers, and even the underwriting and subsidizing of <em>The American Spectator</em> to disseminate the information.<br /><br />Get it? They PAID for their writing, and they have results to show for it.<br /><br />There is no Progressive equivalent. We do NOT pay for our writing, and have damned little to show for it. Meantime, journalists and their support personnel are being fired at an incredible pace (<a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/zug/2007/08/write-stuff.html">see part i, The Write Stuff</a>). As Jay Rosen points out: we are being moved into a "real world" in which ALL that matters are the words, and we're losing that battle because we neither honor nor pay for our own words.<br /><br />So, if you're a middle-aged, White male progressive author, there is evidently no point in going to YearlyKos, and no point in going to the Willamette Writers' Conference: they don't want you. And nobody's going to pay you, either. Because Progressives and Liberals DON'T HONOR THE WORD or the wordsmith.<br /><br />Progressives think that rhetoric is as natural as breathing, and they don't NEED writers. Especially writers like me ... just like the New York publishing houses.<br /><br />What does this mean?<br /><br />I guess it means that I probably can't afford to blog anymore -- certainly not much more. And until I can come up with a business model that allows me to survive, and/or publish one of the seven books that are in the can,* but can't seem to find a publisher for, I don't know what to do.<br /><br />[* I gave myself the freedom in 2004, <em>just this once</em>, to write the way I wanted to write, without editorial interference, and some great things have transpired, but it has brought in not a thin dime over half a million words. You heard me: five hundred thousand words. Plus. But then, I know: I'm obviously a crappy writer. Right? Sure.]<br /><br />The state of the profession sucks. I have blogged,<em> pro bono</em>, since early 2004, and wrote on my website before blogging began. But I really can't afford to give it away for free any more. I can't afford health insurance. We were thrown under THAT bus last year, after fighting to keep our heads above water for over a decade and accepting worse and worse and worse health plans. Now, nothing.<br /><br />The red ink is piling up, and if some catastrophic illness were to appear right now, it would probably be "Game Over." Because writers like me were supposed to invest "up front" for the royalties that would tide us over in our old age. But if there isn't any place to publish, then the effort was merely wasted.<br /><br />The Right pays its writers. And its track record since 1964 speaks for itself.<br /><br />Until the Left starts doing so, we can expect the endless smear campaigns and the rhetorical frameups to continue ... UNOPPOSED by our side. Except by the endless amateurs of the DailyKos variety, who spend as much time backbiting as they spent biting back.<br /><br />Do you hear me, Lefties?<br /><br />And I sure as hell can't afford to stuff five dollar bills in the g-strings of "consultants" in return for literary lap dances.<br /><br />I've still got a scintilla of pride, even if they don't. And I don't cotton to prejudice and bigotry against ME anymore than you do against YOU. Fair's fair. And "equality" means just THAT.<br /><br />And that's why I didn't go to the Willamette Writers' Conference last weekend.<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-6486824977746230573?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-2633075805895468432007-08-06T05:39:00.000-07:002007-08-06T05:44:12.307-07:00Burke's Law<em>The New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?ex=1344052800&en=5e759f9bfd611cd7&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">reports this morning</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping </strong><br />By JAMES RISEN<br />Published: August 6, 2007<br /><br />WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 -- President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.<br /><br />Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.<br /><br />They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.<br /><br />'This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,' said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation...</blockquote><br />Edmund Burke famously stated "<span style="font-weight: bold;">All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.</span>"<br /><br />He was wrong. The proper quotation SHOULD read:<br /><br />"<span style="font-weight: bold;">All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for Democrats to oppose it.</span>"<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-263307580589546843?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-54359196079326151602007-08-05T15:45:00.000-07:002007-08-05T16:12:26.964-07:00The Assault on Beauchamp, KOS, Reason, et alWas the West Wing of the White House the originator of this multi-pronged attack against a private serving in combat in Iraq?<br /><br />Bob Owens, the current torch-bearer in <em>The Weekly Standard</em>'s* blogger-cum-editor Michael Goldfarb's orchestrated attack on <em>The New Republic</em>, is now getting to the real meat of the crucifixion: bloodying and perhaps destroying <em>The New Republic</em> -- who will have to, at a minimum, either fight back against this swiftboating, or else sacrifice editor or editors. One is named in today's "exposé" -- horrifically reminiscent of what they did to Dan Rather (Little Green Footballs, who led that charge, is <a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26553">in on this one, HERE</a>). From <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/236011.php">the Confederate Yankee</a> (sic, I believe he means "Yanker"):<br /><br />[*owned by Rupert Murdoch]<br /><!--more--><br /><blockquote>It's quite interesting that in publishing the findings of an investigation in which the magazine's very reputation hangs in the balance, that The New Republic somehow forgot to cite the names and positions of the experts who corroborate their magazine's printed claims. Typically, the providing of such information is viewed as lending credibility to the organization attempting to defend itself.<br /><br />Fortunately for The New Republic, I was able to find one of their experts, and the conversation I had with her was enlightening, to say the least.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />In a response posted on August 3rd, [Major Renee D. Russo, Third Army/USARCENT PAO at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait] stated:<br /><br /><span style="color:#800000;"><strong><em>Mr. Owens,</em></strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#800000;"><strong><em>We have received other media queries on the alleged incident, but have not been able to find anyone to back it up. There is not a police report or complaint filed on this incident during that timeframe. Right now it is considered to be a Urban Legend or Myth.</em></strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#800000;"><strong><em>I am still researching the incident and will have to get back with you later with any new developments.<br /></em></strong></span><br />This statement was viewed by many as quite problematic for the credibility of The New Republic and Beauchamp; not only had they been put in a position where they felt compelled to retract a key element that established the tone of narrative in "Shock Troops"--and one that fatally undermined Beauchamp's premise that the horrors of combat had caused him psychological trauma, as he had not yet been to war--it also cast serious doubts on the claimed event having occurred at Camp Buehring as well, or perhaps at all.<br /><br />After publishing the information above, that the Beauchamp story is "considered to be an urban legend or myth," I asked Major Russo if she had been contacted by Franklin Foer or any other reporter or editor from the New Republic attempting to verify their new Camp Buehring claim.</blockquote><br />Gosh! Too bad the Confederate Yanker can't live up to his own high standards of truthiness, but that's not the point. Having erred in their claims that the soldier in question did not, in fact, exist, they press shamelessly on, perhaps needing a coordinated attack to smokescreen this, reported today:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/04/AR2007080401631.html">By Ryan Lenz<br />Associated Press</a><br />Sunday, August 5, 2007; Page A14<br /><br />FORT CAMPBELL, Ky., Aug. 4 -- A soldier convicted of rape and murder in an attack on a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family was sentenced Saturday to 110 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.<br /><br />The sentence was part of a plea agreement ... Spielman, 23, of Chambersburg, Pa., received the longest sentence of four soldiers who have been convicted. Three other soldiers pleaded guilty under agreements with prosecutors for their roles in the assault and were given sentences ranging from five to 100 years... The case stemmed from the March 12, 2006, rape and slaying of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, 14, and the killings of her parents and sister in Mahmudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad.</blockquote><br />Or, this, from today's <a href="http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070805/OPINION/708050307/1048"><em>Salem (Ore.) Statesman-Journal</em></a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Anyone who joins the Armed Forces gives up a lot and risks a lot. That certainly was true for Pat Tillman, who left a lucrative career in the National Football League to join the Army Rangers.<br /><br />Tillman was killed by his fellow Rangers in Afghanistan in 2004. Three years later, his family still is trying to find out what really happened.<br /><br />Their fight is America's fight.<br /><br />In the days after Tillman's death, the military placed him on a pedestal, lauding him as a courageous hero in battle against the Taliban and awarding him the Silver Star -- while concealing what actually took place that day. ... Was this a homicide, not a tragic accident?<br /><br />Three bullet holes in Tillman's forehead indicated that he was killed by M-16 fire from only 10 yards or so away, according to Army documents obtained by The Associated Press.<br /><br />There was no evidence of a Taliban attack -- or any enemy fire -- on Tillman's unit. The very placement of his platoon should have raised suspicions.<br /><br />Medical examiners tried to get the Army to investigate his death as a crime. The military initially stalled, finally conducted a criminal inquiry and declared that Tillman died of accidental friendly fire.</blockquote><br />The irony in all of this, is that the Rightie blogosmear has been hounding <em>The New Republic</em> over a story in which the anonymous Baghdad soldier, outed and exposed to the hazing of the locker room, <a href="http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/15466/" title="Return Of 'Fragging' Echoes Earlier War">to fragging</a>, to the displeasure of his chain of command via the blogosmear's yowling, delineates THREE incidents that the Righties insist OUR soldiers couldn't have possibly engaged in:<br /><ol><br /> <li>The taunting of a disfigured woman</li><br /> <li>A soldier's macabre play with the skull of a dead child</li><br /> <li> A humvee driver running over dogs for fun</li><br /></ol>That's nothing close to the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman, nor of the horrific rape and murder of a FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL and then the murder of her family in their home. So I guess I don't understand what all the outrage was about. Our soldiers rape and murder underage girls. What's so "scandalous" about running over dogs? Unless, of course, it's another disinformation scam. Like the "uniformed soldier" at the YearlyKos convention, which has made it to <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/5/3940/86488" title="what really happened at the military panel?">the front page of DailyKos</a>, and has become the "controversy" that the selfsame Rightie bloggers (many of whom teleconferenced with the White House last week, to coordinate) intended.<br /><br />And it's an astonishing "burden of proof" to lay on TNR, when every blogger who has attacked has severe-to-unbelievable credibility problems of their own.<br /><br />It's the same strategy -- using more sophisticated means -- that they used to hamstring the Clinton White House, and, therefore OUR governance for eight years. (Aided and abetted by <strong>The Wall Street Journal</strong>'s editorial page, among others.)<br /><br />Without asking "Freedom Rapture," since I have no way of doing so, I'll quote from his/her comment on my <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/8/4/164149/6720/45#c45">DailyKos posting yesterday</a> on the concerted smear of YearlyKos that's <strong>simultaneously</strong> under way.<br /><ul class="cm i0"><li><h3> <a class="de"> </a><span class="cu">I noticed the attack spearheaded by Drudge </span> <span class="crd ntb"></span></h3>(from "FreedomRapture"):<br /><p class="ct">These guys are fanatical. I noticed Drudge was hyping the story and then Malkin and all the other nuts went berserk. First they literally threatened Beauchamp's life. Now they want to lionize this Bush soldier for violating UCMJ. No doubt gay porn star Matt Sanchez will join in soon enough.<br /><br />Sadly, the right-wing own the media framework simply because people respond to hate. I could find a homeless hispanic immigrant living under a freeway overpass, and he could be hyped up to join these freaks because racism, scapegoating, and prejudice are so juicy and invigorating. The whole Right-Wing blogosphere is buzzing with delight at the confrontation and the soldier is going to be featured all week on FOXnews.<br /><br />Why the hell can't our side get dirty like these Republican pigs. I'm telling you, it's the only thing to combat their viscousness. (sic) We have got to get black ops specialists, propaganda geniuses, and dirty-tricksters. The Repukes will win again and again and again because they know how to slime someone in an instant. I will never forget what they did to Howard Dean - over one goddamn weekend - over an enthusiastic holler. Unbelievable!<br /></p><p class="cb">by <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:129307">FreedomRapture</a> on <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/8/4/164149/6720/45#c45">Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 08:50:57 PM PDT</a></p><ul class="cm i1"><br /> <li><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" class="cu" >You're prescient, but late </span><br /><p class="ct">(<em>my reply</em>)<br />Matt Sanchez jumped in with both feet, traveling to FOB Falcon (?) the base that Beauchamp is at. While Beauchamp had been stripped of cel phone, internet or any ability to communicate with the outside world, Sanchez was interviewing soldiers there, putting video on his BRAND NEW blog site (Mattsanchez.com) switched over from <a href="http://mattsanchez.blogspot.com/">http://mattsanchez.blogspot.com/</a> on July 1, and was touted on ALL the Pajamas media sites, Malkin, Malkin's "HOT AIR," etc. and, I'm fairly sure, on FAUX NOOZ.<br /> </p></li><li>(from <a href="http://mattsanchez.com/">mattsanchez.com</a>):<br /><blockquote>July 31, 2007<br /><strong> Beauchamp</strong><br /><br />After a helicopter ride around Baghdad, this afternoon I arrived at Forward Operating Base Falcon, where the mood was somber. The Army has begun an official investigation into The New Republic articles of the "Baghdad Diarist", Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Officials at the Army Public Affairs Office (PAO) pointed out that until the initial allegations are investigated, there will be little or nothing to add to what has already been pubicly released. Still many questions about facts, accountability and credibility remain.<br /><br />Update: Nice to see how others report the story,<br /><br /><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp">The Weekly Standard</a><br /><br /><a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/31/blogging-from-baghdad-matt-sanchez-checks-in-at-fob-falcon/">Michelle Malkin at Hot Air</a></blockquote><br />Michael Goldfarb of <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp"><em>The Weekly Standard</em>*</a> (owned by Rupert Murdoch), you will recall, STARTED and has orchestrated the attack on <em>The New Republic</em>, as their fellow print media have stood by, dumbly, in the way that all television newsmen and newswomen stood by and watched Dan Rather crucified.<br /><blockquote><strong>First they came for Bert and Ernie</strong><br /><br /><strong>and I said nothing<br />because I was not a Muppet.</strong><br /><br /><strong>Then they came for Tinky Winky<br />and I said nothing,<br />because I was not a Teletubby.</strong><br /><br /><strong>Then they came for SpongeBob<br />and I said nothing,<br />because I was not an asexual cartoon sea creature.</strong><br /><br /><strong>Then they came for me<br />and there was no one left to speak up.<br /></strong><br />— Bugs Bunny (<em>attributed</em>)</blockquote><br />Will the KOSsacks do the same? Or continue to belie their name?<br /><p class="sig"><span style="color:#ff0000;"><em>Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. -- Thomas Carlyle</em></span></p><br /><p class="cbar">by <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:22250">harto</a> on <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/8/4/164149/6720/50#c50">Sun Aug 05, 2007 at 01:02:56 PM PDT</a> • <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/4/164149/6720">Permalink</a></p></li></ul></li></ul><br />The disinformation attack is finally, laughable, when you consider that two years ago <a href="http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/fox-news.cfm">FAUX NOOZ won an appeal </a>of a jury award to two reporters who were <span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>fired for REFUSING TO FABRICATE FACTS!<br /><br /></strong></span><blockquote><a href="http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/fox-news.cfm"><strong>Fox News Continues Persecution of Reporters Who Exposed Network Lies on Monsanto's rBGH</strong></a><br />8/23/2004<br /><br />(TAMPA) ... After a five-week trial in 2000, a jury decided unanimously that [fired reporter] Akre was fired solely because she threatened to blow the whistle to the FCC the broadcast of a false, distorted or slanted news report. The panel that found in Akre's favor awarded nothing to [fired reporter] Wilson who represented himself at trial.<br /><br />The Fox appeal was largely on an argument that it is not technically illegal for a broadcaster to deliberately distort the news on television.</blockquote><br />See? <em>The New Republic </em><strong><em>doesn't HAVE to print the truth at all</em></strong>, if it doesn't want to. <em>Fox has proven THAT in court.</em> TNR can, legally, say anything it damned well pleases unless it prints libelous or other actionable material (e.g. "wilful malice"). Get that? The facts <strong>DO NOT matter</strong>. So it's a question of ethics. And thems what gots none OUGHT to keep their cake holes shut about thems what do.<br /><br />As Rightie Blogosmear current torch-bearer Bob Owens proves. Who will bear the torch next? And how soon before Michael Goldfarb CITES this latest posting on his <em>Weekly Standard</em> blog? (The serpent, as I've noted, loves to bite his own tail.)<br /><br />But, finally, this is all about coordination, and I've got to ask this, in light of Bob Owen's seemingly-cozy relationship with the Iraq military public relations machine, and in light of the endless cross-linking of this whole, artificially whipped up firestorm: Was the West Wing of the White House the originator of this multi-pronged attack?<br /><br />Who would have read <a href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070723&s=diarist072307">the <em>New Republic</em>'s piece</a>, had this tempest in a teapot not been whipped into a fine froth by Michael Goldfarb at <em>The Weekly Standard</em>? Because it "<em>didn't 'smell good' the first time we* heard it</em>." Unquote.<br /><br />[*The "we," one presumes, being Twain's editorial tapeworm: Goldfarb wrote the words. But FAUX NOOZ regular William Kristol IS the editor of <em>The Weekly Standard</em>, so he might be the actual tape worm. And we all know how completely disconnected FAUX NOOZ is from the White House, what with Tony Snow being the press secretary after serving as a FAUX NOOZ anchorman, and undoubtedly to serve as one AGAIN after he's either fired or Bush leaves the White House.]<br /><br />Since Michael Goldfarb undoubtedly knows jack shit about serving in combat, one presumes that the smell was detected by his masters as a means of deflecting attention from Tillman and the rape/murder of a teenaged Iraqi girl. No! Our soldiers don't do that kind of Abu Gharib, Guantanimo Bay stuff. This soldier's a FAKE! OK. He's real. But he's a LIAR! OK, the ARMY PR officer serving under General Petraeus tells Rightie blogger Bob Owens the the formal investigation turned up NO soldiers who were willing to tell the Army that they'd committed the crimes (under Army rules) delineated in the anonymous Baghdad Diary.<br /><br />That's every bit as credible as the principal of your high school questioning the football team about the "mooning" incident. Do you really think that any of them would do other than deny everything? And do you think Beauchamp is now in physical danger for his life in combat in Iraq? Because that's where Goldfarb's plea for this firestorm has put him.<br /><br />Did the White House initiate this attack on <em>The New Republic</em>?<br /><br />Because that would mean that a private in the army, serving in combat, is being bitch-slapped (back door) by the White House so that it can "get" <em>The New Republic</em> magazine, like they "got" Dan Rather at CBS News.<br /><br />Or do you believe that Little Green Footballs was acting completely on his own in muddying the waters about George W. Bush's shameful dereliction of duty during the Vietnam War?<br /><br />Didn't General Patton get in trouble for something like this?<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-5435919607932615160?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-61587804003922868292007-08-04T12:01:00.000-07:002007-08-04T12:33:32.591-07:00As The Mask Slips, The White House ShowsAs you in the blogosphere might know, and as you in the blogosmear are fully complicit in, Confederate Yankee ("Bob Owens") now claims that Pvt. Beauchamp is <a href="http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/235889.php">completely discredited</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Col. Steven Boylan, Public Affairs Officer for U.S. Army Commanding General in Iraq David Petraeus, just emailed me the following in response to my request to confirm an earlier report that the U.S. Army's investigation into the claims made by PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp made in The New Republic had been completed.</blockquote><br />I know that's what they WANT to prove, and the coordinated blogs (wonder how many were included in the "Executive Privilege"strategy conference call from the White House last week, called for by Captain's Quarters blogger Ed Morrissey?*) have all jumped on the "story."<br /><br />[* <a href="http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=6299">'White House, Bloggers Plot Privilege Defense'</a>]<br /><br />Except: WHY is a private citizen (with a very specific agenda) receiving emails straight from General Petraeus' Public Affairs officer, UNLESS this is all of a whole cloth?<br /><br />Let's take this a step further: WHY would Petraeus' Public Affairs officer respond to a blogger's email request for information that discredits a private in a political scandal with a pro-Administration spin unless the Administration was in on it? Does anyone seriously think that if I emailed for confirmation of the opposite I'd get a reply? No: the lid would be clamped down if the opposite result had been "revealed" by that internal investigation. It's entirely too political for the Pentagon to touch, UNLESS they were playing politics with full White House approval.<br /><br />The Army does NOT make its internal investigations public without a court order, as a rule, and it CERTAINLY doesn't release the information through a sympathetic blogger ... <em>unless this is being coordinated from the top</em>, and is a White House policy.<br /><br />Or, do you believe that Petreus is running a "rogue" operation?<br /><br />Come on. There is a scandal here, all right.<br /><br />Tinker to Evers to Chance: White House to Petreus to Confederate Yankee and blogosmear.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the swiftboating of Private Beauchamp by the commanding general of the Iraqi forces, almost undoubtedly on direct orders from the White House. Let them answer the charge, or stand convicted by their very silence.<br /><br />Because commanding generals in theater DO NOT pursue their own media campaigns, at least since Douglas MacArthur.<br /><br />So, <em><strong>either</strong></em> they've screwed up and let the mask slip, or else Confederate Yankee is a pathological liar, and the rightie blogs that cite him are credulous and gullible as hell. (Which might explain their almost rabid defense of an illegal, failed Iraq war.)<br /><br />And <em>The New Republic</em> has credibility problems?<br /><br />More to come.<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-6158780400392286829?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-9495729396477148102007-08-03T16:13:00.000-07:002007-08-03T17:58:04.440-07:00Torquemada Goldfarb and the Fatwa Against BeauchampThe freelance McCarthys and Torquemadas of the Rightie blogosphere are literally in a feeding frenzy. From the roiling of the waters, you'd think someone was dumping chum into a tank of piranhas that hadn't eaten in a week.<br /><br />Except that I have far too much repect for piranhas to humiliate them with a comparison to the Rightie blogs, led by Michael Goldfarb (of Murdoch's <em>Weekly Standard</em>) and Michelle Malkin (a regular and paid contributor on Murdoch's FAUX Nooz). Piranhas deserve some scintilla of respect. They do not do what they do from malice, evil, or the delight in killing. They kill to eat, in contrast to Goldfarb, Malkin and their (usually anonymous) ilk, who eat to kill. Character assassination builds a powerful appetite, one is forced to conclude.<!--more--><br /><br />Check<a href="http://www.memeorandum.com/070803/h1610"> this archived page from Memeorandum</a>. You would think that the THIRD MOST IMPORTANT STORY IN AMERICA* was the Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair, and that the very future of the republic was at stake. This is less important than the near-breakdown of the House, and a ginned up "scandal"about John Edwards, but FAR MORE important than the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Priorities? What priorities? It's all about the hate, you know.)<br /><br />[* <strong>UPDATE: 4PM PDT 7PM EDT</strong>: It is now the NUMBER ONE STORY, <a href="http://www.memeorandum.com/070803/h1900">the MOST IMPORTANT story</a> in the blogosphere. Er, the Rightie blogosphere.]<br /><br />The Righties have issued <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwa#Some_contemporary_fatawa">an unstated <em>Fatwa</em></a> against Private Beauchamp, except, were this <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie#The_Satanic_Verses_and_the_fatwa">Salman Rushdie</a>, he'd be working in the Ayatollah Khomeni's circle, in Tehran, with no possibility of escaping or hiding. How long do you think Rushdie would have lasted in that environment with Khomeni's call for his death hanging over his head?<br /><br />And how long can Beauchamp survive in a war zone, after the Rightie bloggers -- who screamed for a week with UTTER CONVICTION that <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/anonymous_in_iraq.html">Beauchamp DID NOT EXIST</a>, that he was a liberal back here in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK1A3L4YEO74C19">states ginning up a completely fictional story</a> -- after Rightie bloggers have turned their entire attention to him. I've been watching Memeorandum for some time, and I've rarely seen ANY story <a href="http://www.memeorandum.com/070803/h1610">get the kind of coverage </a>this one has. Hungry demons in a feeding frenzy couldn't be worse to watch than these.<br /><br />Except it's all from the Right. There are virtually no leftie blogs or journals defending our potentially doomed soldier. At best, there's the "objective" "What's all this then?" from Howie Kurtz, and other MSM'ers. However, the (very) brave blogger Libby Spencer has injected some of the only sense in this nonsense and is well worth reading on the subject, as she addresses that sleazy, cowardly Bob Owens who calls himself <strong>The Confederate Yankee</strong>:<br /><br />from <a href="http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/08/dear-confederate-yankee.html">Newshoggers,</a> Spencer writes:<br /><br /><blockquote>... We've had this conversation before. You won't take the word of a publication that has largely been on your side about the occupation and has no known history of outright fabrications but you're willing to take as gospel, the spokespeople of the military brass? As if the military has never lied to us? Are you forgetting something as recent as Tillman?<br /><br />Sorry, but you guys were wrong when you said Beauchamp wasn't a soldier and you made a huge deal out of something that doesn't even matter -- one can only think to avoid talking about the things that really do matter. Like how badly this surge is failing. Nobody would have read the stupid piece if you folks hadn't made a federal case out of it.<br /><br />I'm even willing to believe the guy made the whole thing up, out of thin air. So effing what? What have you accomplished here except making trouble for one soldier who is fighting in the sandpit, no matter what his political views are?</blockquote><br />And the stunning clarity of Libby's argument will be IGNORED. Why? Because she is stolidly clear-eyed sane. And, as sad experience dictates, sanity is not welcome in this rhetorical dog pit. Only blood is.<br /><br />Alas, a breath of sanity in this <em>auto-da-fé </em>is a mere fart in a windstorm. As per usual, the malicious Michael Goldfarb is head cheerleader for the lynching frenzy he seems to delight in having whipped up. (Goldfarb had better pray that karma is a complete fiction. Because in any just Universe, he would have a price to pay for this sheer malevolence that few would be willing to pay. I note that Goldfarb doesn't face death every day from his enemies -- <em>let alone from his friends</em>. How 'brave' you are, Goldfarb. What an example you set for all writers, everywhere!)<br /><br />Listen to his <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/lets_try_this_again.asp">WEEKLY STANDARD blog</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>We now know that, at the very least, the New Republic's Scott Beauchamp lied about the timing and location of the ridiculing of a disfigured woman in a U.S. mess hall--the incident, if it happened, took place in Kuwait, Beauchamp now says, before he had the opportunity to experience the "morally distorting" effects of war. But the New Republic, for some reason, finds Beauchamp's new story just as credible as the old one. We continue to have our doubts.</blockquote><br />The Righties are out to<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/02/AR2007080202348.html"> smash <em>The New Republic</em> </a>magazine (a magazine that NONE of them read, have read, or <em>EVER WILL</em> read) over a supposedly fictional author who turns out to NOT be fictional, and, having made <em>MORE factual errors in their attack</em> than they can claim in the story, their hypocrisy yet knows no bounds. As they know no shame.<br /><br />Because we have to be PERFECT, or else they, whose errors are so manifest that no one can even KEEP UP with them, they, moral pricks will CRUCIFY us if we make the slightest error, or, worse, say anthing that can be MISCONSTRUED.<br /><br />Right, Ted Nugent? Mere weeks before implicitly <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289227,00.html">accusing me</a> of terrifying his family and explicitly:<br /><br /><blockquote><span><strong>COLMES:</strong> ... you said, for your own purpose (ph), it makes you feel important that some guy wants to assassinate you. He doesn't want to assassinate you. You don't really believe that, do you?</span><br /><br /><strong>NUGENT:</strong> Yes, I do. My family takes it very seriously. They're very concerned about it. And I think just the use of the word assassination. And the hate speech that this guy spews is of great concern.</blockquote><br />Nugent was saying in an interview that he was in favor of dog fighting. He waves a rifle over his head at an NRA convention and screams forget the police! Shoot crooks! Shoot child molesters! Shoot Shoot Shoot!<br /><br />HE gets to parse me?<br /><br />It's their technique, and now Private Beauchamp is in extraordinary physical danger. He is under a complete communications blackout, while his command's Public Relations Officer -- a National Guard Lt. Col. from Colorado -- gets to say whatever he's told to say by Pentagon/Administration brass.<br /><br />Do you get it? Do you understand why these little Joe McCarthys MUST be opposed? Do you understand the danger that Michael Goldfarb and his self-appointed inquisitors have placed Scott Thomas Beauchamp for having SPOKEN? For telling us about a war whose COFFINS are shrouded less in flags than secrecy, because this "government" doesn't want us to see the children, the sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers that are being killed an a relentless fashion by the inhabitants of a country that we invaded to suppposedly return to them, after removing Saddam Hussein.<br /><br />So why in hell are we STILL there? And what is our moral justification for anger at THEM for killing their occupiers. Were the situation reversed, I'd be killing occupying troops, too. No matter whether their propaganda machine called me an "insurgent," a "rebel," a "guerilla," a "terrorist," a "christianist" or whatever. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but IUDs are really tough to stop.<br /><br />Sorry if that's too real for some.<br /><br />THEIR <em>outrageous</em> errors don't faze them: the errors of their chickenhawks, of their pathetic arm-chair quarterbacks, and, worst of all, their military morons who think that merely because they've worn the uniform, they and THEY ALONE, know anything at all about a war that they've <strong>BEEN COMPLETELY AND CONSISTENTLY WRONG ABOUT FROM DAY ONE</strong>, and continue to be wrong about ... but ...<br /><br />Hey, it was the liberals who sold us good conservatives out on Vietnam.<br /><br />One admission of error in a relatively inconsequential story in a small circulation liberal magazine -- sorry TNR -- is their wedge to crucify <a href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070730&s=editorial080207"><em>THE NEW REPUBLIC</em> and Private Beauchamp.</a> TNR will survive. But if one hair of Beauchamp's head is harmed, it will be upon their heads. Still, TNR thinks it's a Christian in the Coloseum, and refuses to defend itself in any meaningful ways against the trained jackals of the arena.<br /><br />What is this, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz"><em>Zardoz</em></a>?<br /><br />And you still think that we can <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blog/2006/09/house-divided.html">COEXIST with these barbarians</a>?<br /><br />On a humorous note, the depth of these buffoons' hypocrisy can be seen in <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/03/sanchez-army-concludes-beauchamp-investigation/">the defense of Matt Sanchez</a>*, whose credibility some <a href="http://www.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/0-0&fp=46b3a596e7d9ab8c&ei=u56zRrK-J5CWrgO69bX7Aw&url=http%3A//mediamatters.org/items/200708020003%3Ff%3Dh_latest&cid=1118733950">misguided idiots from the Left</a> have attacked for <a href="http://www.matt-sanchez.com/2007/08/beachamp-invest.html">Sanchez</a>' having been a <a href="http://www.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/2-0&fp=46b34fd530557a5c&ei=lqGzRvyxOYeUrgPrqqyCBA&url=http%3A//www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-weekly-standards-rel_b_58977.html&cid=1118733950">GAY PORN STAR</a>, prior to becoming another Jeff Gannon/Guckert darling of the Rightie blogosmear. "Morality" and "truth" and "credibility" only matter, one concludes, when they can be used as offensive weapons. But if the kettle notes that the pot is FAR BLACKER, the mangy hackles rise on their leprous spines, and they screech like banshees that they are not demons, but <em>angels</em>.<br /><br />[* see the <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/03/sanchez-army-concludes-beauchamp-investigation/">UPDATE</a>]<br /><br />YOU are the demon, for having innocently noted that leather wings and claws dripping with blood are NOT standard angelic issue. (Shame on you!)<br /><br />It would seem that many of the same folk who tried <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289227,00.html">to raise the <em>ad hominem</em></a> that my writing <a href="http://northernmuckraker.blogspot.com/2007/07/this-is-rich.html">couldn't be trusted</a> <a href="http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56569">because I worked for HUSTLER 28 years ago</a>, NOW are defending <a href="http://www.queerty.com/queer/matt-sanchez/matt-sanchez-sez-porn-did-this-to-me-20070308.php">Sanchez</a> (who is <a href="http://www.queerty.com/politics/blogger-takes-on-matt-sanchez-20070803/">working for Murdoch</a>'s THE WEEKLY STANDARD and is a face for Murdoch's FAUX NOOZ), even though they <a href="http://www.queerty.com/politics/blogger-takes-on-matt-sanchez-20070803/">"hate" pornography and gayness</a>. But, to paraphrase scripture, "With Fanaticism, all things are possible."<br /><br />Were I not actually watching this, I'd not believe it. And where is the "liberal" press as a U.S. serviceman serving in combat is being fed to the blogosmear dogs? Where is the liberal blogosphere?<br /><br />Somewhere West of Altoona and East of Betelgeuse, I'd imagine. Second star to the left and straight on 'til morning.<br /><br />Courage. ESPECIALLY Beauchamp.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE 5:45PM PDT</span>: There are excellent counterpoint essays relating to this madness by Robert Farley at <a href="http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/08/sensible-and-even-handed.html">Lawyers, Guns & Money</a>, and Josh Marshall at <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/">Talking Points Memo</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-949572939647714810?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-84304673580604106792007-08-03T06:17:00.000-07:002007-08-05T19:13:38.132-07:00Kilgore Trout Fishing In America (part ii)Yesterday, we talked about the mess that American letters is in: thousands of journalists losing jobs, etc. I didn't talk much about the loss of the American publishing industry to foreign overseers and mega-publishers, and to mega-media companies, in whose organizational chart the publishing arm became a mere appendage, anemic and carrying little status.<br /><br />In the modern media economy, a HarperCollins, say, becomes a bargain movie property search mechanism for the much larger overhead of Fox Studios, and the News Corporation (whose wholly-owned subsidiaries HC and Fox Studios are), who can shill the novel and then the movie on their news, movie, sports and cable networks, and in their newspapers and magazines, all without ever having left the "in house" mega-corporation.<br /><br />This alone was worth it to the movie studios (before they were gobbled up by even BIGGER media corporations) in economic terms. Generally speaking, the "screenplay" and literary rights portion of the movie costs less than 2% of the total cost of a motion picture, but Ghod forbid that any writer might earn a decent amount on the deal.<br /><br />After all, the writers might get "uppity," and the Hollywood system was specifically designed to prevent writers from attaining the sort of power that playwrights exercise on Broadway, the studios having originally been subsidiaries of the great theatrical families, the Schuberts, the Lammles, etc.<br /><br />If the book made a little money, well, that wasn't important in the Grand Scheme. The point was to obtain film properties cheap, and then to have a coordinated promotion machine that could follow the story from hardcover to paperback to film to reissue of the paperback with a still from the movie slapped on the cover. Better yet, a "novelization" of the original script, handed out to a hack writer who could have the paperback ready for simultaneous release to the drug store and supermarket racks on the selfsame weekend that the movie comes out.<br /><br />Such is the "coordination" of the mega-media. (We will pass over the marketing of kiddie meal toys, "collectors cups" and other promotional gee-gaws at fast food joints, toys, etc.)<br /><br />Authors were relegated to the back seat of the media bus. (We still await our Rosa Parks.)<br /><br />Because, ultimately, what could one notoriously independent, cranky author hope to accomplish in a deal with a mega-corporation, heralded by a phalanx of corporate lawyers, all determined to see that the author donated as many rights as possible while receiving as little compensation as practible.<br /><br />Perhaps it is this "brilliant" strategy that has debased American letters to near illiteracy, and American writers to penury and the contemplation of suicide. Our very profession seems like an Iron Maiden at every level. The outcome is assured, seemingly; the only question being how slowly the cask is closed.<br /><br />The sad fact is that during the 1980s, movie studios realized that owning a publisher would save them gazillions, since they could make deals with authors for movie and television rights before publication, and BEFORE the writer's agent (writers are no longer allowed to speak to publishers directly, making agents the gatekeepers of book publishing, giving them an unwarranted power over the world of authors, and buttering their bread on the side of the publisher and NOT on the side of the authors they purportedly represent).<br /><br />And, by comparison, the publishers were easy, cheap pickings for the media conglomerates. Most had been founded in the XXth century by one or two businessmen -- Simon & Schuster, for instance, ("notable for its position as one of the four largest English-language publishers in the world" -<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Schuster"> Wikipedia</a>) was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Schuster">founded by two partners in 1924</a> to cash in on the crossword puzzle craze. (One guess what those partners' names were.) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Scribner%27s_Sons">Charles Scribner's Sons</a> was LITERALLY that, and they published Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Heinlein and Vonnegut, among others.<br /><br />Within this structure of rot and cronyism, I determined to attend the Willamette Valley Writers Conference (which starts in earnest this morning).<br /><br />Alas, it was not to be. But first, a pastoral interlude:<br /><br />I am a bastard son of Kilgore Trout.<br /><br />Seriously. I can document my mongrel pedigree and as Walter Brennan used to say in "The Real McCoys," No brag, just fact.<br /><p align="center">«»</p><br />I've <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blog/2006/07/bison-tenniel-origin-story.html">noted elsewhere</a> that I met Kilgore Trout at a science fiction convention on the Bicentennial in 1976. He wasn't going by that name, of course, but I'll let Kurt Vonnegut clear that up:<br /><br />From freelance writer Hank Nuwer's <a href="http://www.hanknuwer.com/vonnegut.html">interview with Kurt Vonnegut</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>1985 <em>Galapagos</em> (novel) publication tour (Dallas, Texas)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">NUWER:</span> I don’t think so; at least he didn’t comment if the thought so. But I thought it was funny. Let’s see--have you ever counted how many books and stories your fictional sci-fi writer, Kilgore Trout, has written in your novels?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">VONNEGUT</span>: The [Bob] Guccione science magazine--what is it?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">NUWER</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">Omni</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">VONNEGUT</span>: Yeah. Omni sent me an essay on Kilgore Trout where they put it all together. Of course I don’t look back in my books to see what Trout was [like] in a previous book, or what I said about him, so he’s different in every book.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">NUWER:</span> Is it true that he was inspired by Theodore Sturgeon, the sci-fi writer?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">VONNEGUT:</span> Yeah. In fact, it said so in his obituary in [The New York] Times.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">NUWER:</span> I didn’t know that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">VONNEGUT:</span> Yeah. I was so pleased. Sturgeon got a nice big obituary in the Times, eight-ten inches, something like that. I was just delighted that it said in the middle of it that he was the inspiration for the Kurt Vonnegut character of Kilgore Trout.</blockquote><br />Sturgeon was to be my book critic at HUSTLER, or, rather, I was to be his editor. We became friends. He told me that he thought I was a good writer. That little bit of praise has taken me through three decades of a paucity of same. But this isn't about dropping a name.<br /><br />"Hart Williams" the writer is very much the son of "Kilgore Trout." Trout, you will recall, was a sort of sad homage to Sturgeon, who Vonnegut met when he was trying to become a writer, selling Volvos and teaching high school English in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod in the 1950s.<br /><br />Kilgore Trout makes his debut in Vonnegut's <em>God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater</em>, where Trout is eccentric zillionaire Eliot Rosewater's favorite novelist. Since all of Trout's novels are filler material in porno magazines*Rosewater's collection represents an amazing act of tracking and detection.<br /><br />[* Vonnegut explains what "beaver shots" are, which were then highly illegal, but are now in any "men's magazine" one would care to purchase. One generation's crime is another generation's yawn. How else to explain the current rage for pubic topiary, at least among female models of the modern pornographic videation?]<br /><br />This was based on a very real world reality of publishing at the time: The men's magazines of the 1950s and 1960s walked a thin legal line. Because of the Supreme Court's decision prior to "Miller v. California" in 1973 -- which entrenched the "community standards" test that led to Harry Reems being prosecuted in Memphis, Tennessee for a movie he acted in in Florida -- the standard of "without redeeming value" created a kind of Devil's bridge: the men's magazines published "serious" writing, articles, interviews, short stories, investigations, as the JUSTIFICATION for showing breastal shots. In 1969, PENTHOUSE shocked, SHOCKED the USA by showing (GASP!) female pubic hair. Etcetera.<br /><br />At any event, Vonnegut was only stretching reality a big about Kilgore Trout being published between beaver shots. By the time I was making a living writing for men's magazines, 1978-1988, my science fiction was LITERALLY published between beaver shots. The first appearance of "Hart Williams" as a pen name came in a quickie knockoff called "CHOICE," which was a "big boob" magazine in the early 80s at a time that "big boobs" had vanished from men's magazines altogether in favor of models with small breasts and pubic hair.<br /><br />(The "big boobs" thing is a peculiarly American fixation, I think. Russ Meyer made a cinematic living off of this peculiar psychological quirk of masculine American fantasy. As they say, the market dictates this sort of thing. We get the fantasies we ask for.)<br /><br />It was a tall tale called "Mountain Mary," and begins with the lie "I wouldn't lie to you. Honest."<br /><br />But it was still only in there to fulfill the old legal prescription "utterly without redeeming artistic, scientific, blah blah value." My short stories, articles, interviews, investigative pieces, science fiction etc. were there to provide legal "value" to the beaver shots.<br /><br />But that was the deal with a generation of authors. Theodore Sturgeon, "Kilgore Trout" put out a collection in the early 70s called <em>Sturgeon Is Alive And Wel</em>l, and virtually all the stories in it had originally appeared in a Knight Publications magazine, KNIGHT and ADAM, mostly.<br /><br />He could sell them stories for "redeeming social value." Kilgore Trout had stepped through the looking glass.<br /><br /><blockquote>"Kilgore Trout, incidentally, is the sad hero of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, a frustrated SF writer reduced to using his work to pad out the space between pictures in pornographic books. It's not strictly applicable here; but I like the name, and Trout's angst - if not his solution - will be recognisable to all writers."<br /><br />-- <a href="http://www.raygirvan.co.uk/apoth/erofic.htm">KILGORE TROUT EROTIC AUTHORS PAGE (UK)</a></blockquote><br />But, Vonnegut was making ANOTHER criticism of American letters and publishing. The "beaver shots" context of Kilgore Trout's science fiction novels was also a sly reference to how science fiction was treated by American publishing.<br /><br />From the time that young Ted Sturgeon returned to find his secret stash of Hugo Gernsback's THRILLING WONDER STORIES torn into "postage-stamp-sized pieces" to the advent of Kilgore Trout in the 1960s, Kurt Vonnegut, as a science fiction writer himself, knew of the shameful and abusive degradation of science fiction, its authors, publishers and readers. That's right, kiddies: science fiction had been considered "pornography" by Argyl Sturgeon, Ted's step-father, in the 1920s, and it was still essentially seen as such in 1965, When "Rosewater" was published.<br /><br />In some ways, science fiction is still marginalized, but at least they're used to it. Increasingly ALL authors are marginalized -- forced to take a back seat whenever the more important publishing event of the memoirs of a transvestite basketball star require the intellectual focus of our Nation of Letters.<br /><br />Onward.<br /><br />Here's the capper: in and around 1986, it had become clear that nobody gave a damn about prosecuting magazines for pictures. Thus, there was no need for "redeeming social value," and men's magazine publishers, ever eager to prop up an ever-narrowing profit margin, eaten up almost entirely by paper costs, pretty much dumped the need for Kilgore Trouts to fill the spaces between the beaver shots. Beaver shots uber alles. Amen.<br /><br />The postwar generation of writers who had been nurtured by the guilty tradeoff of "redeeming social value" was now S.O.L. And making a living became very tough.<br /><br />About that time, I rented an office, wrote a fictionalized "memoir" of my time in the mini-Media of LA porn, covering the transition from film to video, and tried to sell it.<br /><br />No. No one would even consider reading it ... because of the subject.<br /><br />And in a lot of ways that's been the story for the past 21 years. This week marks the 21st anniversary of its completion (the book is now old enough to drink). There was a time in the early 1990s when an agent REALLY liked it and tried shopping it around New York City, but the same irrational bigotry (I won't even READ it) held sway, and, it sat on a DELL editor's desk for several months, while the editor tried to write a "marketing proposal" for the marketing department -- marketing had taken over the publishing world in the early 1980s, and "editors" were reduced to writing proposals denoting WHO is the target audience? WHAT is the sales hook? etc. It was a far cry from Maxwell Perkins editing Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al. But then, so is "Bestselling Author" Paris Hilton.<br /><br />Now, there is one more link in this Kilgore Trout chain that I think is justified, and I'll bet on my career as a book critic and my track record in the good guesses department on it:<br /><br />Kilgore Trout didn't just write science fiction novels. His TITLES are absolutely outrageous, over the top, and remind one INEXTRICABLY of Philip K. Dick, who was utterly shunned during his life by the "bon ton literary" world -- to quote Twain. He died between the filming and the release of the film "Blade Runner" (my second wife and I used to brown bag our lunch on the set at the Burbank Studios, but that's another story). It's such a damned shame that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/0xd5l/">Philip K. Dick</a> never lived long enough to garner any of the acclaim that was his due.<br /><br />But "Kilgore Trout" fictional novel titles like <em>Venus on the Half Shell,</em> parallel such Dickian titles as <em>Our Friends From Frolix 8</em>, and the three Trout novels <em>The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank, The Pan-Galactic Straw Boss</em>, and <em>The Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass</em> seem linked to Dick's <em>Galactic Pot Healer</em>.<br /><br />But then, Sturgeon never quite achieved the fame that was <em>his</em> due. He also "invented" the character of "Spock" in <em>Star Trek -- </em>according to Leonard Nimoy -- and the "Prime Directive" is said to have come from an unproduced script. The Vulcan greeting "Live Long And Prosper" is known all over the world. Its author, Theodore Sturgeon, is not.<br /><br />Kilgore Trout -- Vonnegut's protest at the shabby treatment of more than one great writer -- <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1351/">committed 'suicide' by drinking Drano in 2004</a>, a final protest from Vonnegut. And perhaps an attempt to forestall the literary necrophilia that modern publishers would surely slither forward with: tempting family members with "free money" for licensing the character* to write a series of novels under the 'Kilgore Trout' trademark.<br /><br />[*See James Bond novels, Dune novels, and the post-mortem Asimov ouevre for further illumination of the concept.]<br /><br />I've written about it in "<a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/no1i.htm">The Mark of Cain</a>" which refers to Sturgeon's complaint that without the "sf" label, no one was willing to look at anything else he had written. Well, allow me to bring it full circle:<br /><br />I have seen a copy of the novel that Philip K. Dick wrote in the late 1950s, <em>Confessions of a Crap Artist</em>. He thought it was a great book*, but no publisher would touch it. Few would even bother looking at it. Dick finally had it privately printed himself, as a trade paperback, and he autographed a copy and gave it to Ted Sturgeon.<br /><br /><blockquote>[* "Philip K. Dick longed to be known as a 'serious' writer, and worked on non-SF novels throughout the fifties, in addition to his science fiction novels and short stories. This is the only "straight" novel he wrote to have been published during his lifetime." - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Crap_Artist">Wikipedia</a>]</blockquote><br />I cannot think of it without feeling a bitter sorrow, both were marginalized in the world of letters in their lifetimes, eternally penned in a livestock enclosure marked "sci-fie" and not accorded "human" status by the publishers until AFTER their deaths. Philip K. Dick's self-published non SF novel, autographed to fellow great and fellow sufferer Theodore Sturgeon is a testiment to the inhumanity that we heap upon our best writers.<br /><br />Kilgore Trout speaks for them, with Vonnegut the puppeteer operating the controls. And now, it's even worse than it was in the mid 1960s, when Trout first appeared. It was lousy then, but, by comparison, it was paradise compared to now.<br /><br /><blockquote>"Trout is usually described as an unappreciated science fiction writer whose works are used only as filler material in pornographic magazines."- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgore_Trout">Wikipedia</a></blockquote><br />I didn't ask for this fate, but I got stuck with it, nonetheless: I am a bastard son of Kilgore Trout.<br /><br />And, remembering that, long ago day when I had started my writing career by meeting writers at WESTERCON 29 at the Los Angeles Airport -- the aptly named LAX -- I thought I'd attend a day at the Willamette Valley Writers Conference. I would meet some peers, agents, etc. I could slap together a CD with all the blurbs a kid could ask for, audio, video (Thanks Sean Hannity and Ted Nugent!!), and, say, three completed projects, like, say that book I wrote 21 years ago, and do some business.<br /><br />Simple, right?<br /><br />(ahem)<br /><br />========<br /><br />The SURPRISE ending? This is NOT the ending. Tomorrow will be. I promise. I wouldn't lie to you. Honest.<br /><br />From the OBSCURE REFERENCE DESK: Richard Brautigan, author of <em>Trout Fishing In America</em> came from Eugene, Oregon, which is where Theodore Sturgeon passed away.<br /><strong><br />UPDATE, SUNDAY 7:05 PM PDT:</strong> NASA's Phoenix Lander blasted off yesterday, carrying with it <a href="http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/070803_phoenix_discA_02.jpg">a DVD library of famous science fiction stories, art and radio shows</a> about Mars (including Orson Welles' famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel). It carried, in addition to a virtual Who's Who of science fiction, one Vonnegut story and TWO Theodore Sturgeon stories. Only Bradbury (Martian Chronicles collection) and Isaac Asimov (three stories) were similarly honored. Details <a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://www.space.com/news/070804_phoenix_spacelibrary.html">HERE</a> and <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/messages/vom_contents.html">HERE</a>. I had not been aware of this when I wrote the piece. Synchronicity. (That's the pretentious term for 'coincidence.')<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-8430467358060410679?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-4009245487049669352007-08-02T04:25:00.000-07:002007-08-02T06:01:09.456-07:00The Write Stuff (part i)I am officially a writer. Two things prove this.<br /><br />The first is that I have, on my refrigerator, a PROFESSIONAL DISCOUNT ORDER FORM from Writer's Digest Professional Services Division. The second is that I don't subscribe.<br /><br />Because Writer's Digest is a wannabe magazine. They have to be.<!--more--> They have to have a fundamental base of wannabes (at the time Robert Heinlein gave his famous speech to the graduating class at Annapolis in the early '70s, about 50% of the adult population of the USA wanted to be professional writers. In it, he lays out Heinlein's Five Rules*), or else they don't have a demographic large enough to support the magazine. The actual number of full time writers is very small, and the number of sometimes compensated and "on the side" writers is larger but still <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">minuscule</span> in the larger economy.<br /><br />[*Heinlein's 5 Rules:<br /><blockquote>1. You must write.<br />2. You must finish what you write.<br />3. You must never rewrite except to editorial order.<br />4. You must put your work on the market.<br />5. You must keep it on the market until it sells.]</blockquote><br />Writers Digest has to write about the writer's life as those who want to be writers believe it to be. Since I read my first copy in 1975, loaned from my writing professor, until I saw a copy in a waiting room recently, it hasn't fundamentally changed. But from the point of view of the writer, "7 Tips to Punch Up your Dialogue" doesn't mean spit to me. I need professional information, not <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">fabulist</span> fiction about writing fiction. <em>That</em> I save for my dentist's office.<br /><br />Now a part of that is making a living, or at least earning something. Today, the Willamette Writers Conference begins in Portland. I was going to go. Really I was. But that's getting ahead of the story.<br /><br />These have been tough times for writers. Used to be that you sent in your manuscript, a "slush pile" reader read it and usually rejected it. A few made it to a higher editor who still might reject it. When you became a known quantity, you had access to the editors directly, and your career was in good shape. We saw what happened to Mrs. Muir in that movie about the ghost.<br /><br />Of course, like with "Uncle Neddie" (George Sanders), nothing in writing was what it appeared to be. Publishers have always been a little fly-by-night. And, because writing attracts so many whose vanity makes it easy for publishers to lower the prices, everyone gets paid slave wages.<br /><br />When I started writing for the magazines of the Knight group (Players, Adam, Adam Film World, Choice, Vertex, Knight, etc. etc.) the rates hadn't gone up from the mid-60s when Harlan Ellison could survive on a couple of articles and/or short stories a month to the late 70s, when two pieces wouldn't pay more than about half of a month's rent.<br /><br />That was true throughout the magazine industry. Writers hadn't fundamentally gotten a raise in decades. In fact, much like the "War On Terror" (where every time <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Osama</span> misbehaves, WE get punished), every time that paper prices shot out of sight (which was continual), the publishers came up with NEW ways to NOT pay writers. First, payment on acceptance became payment 30 days after we send out our letter of acceptance. Then it became payment on publication, which finally turned into payment on the 30<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">th</span> day of the month that it says publication happened on the cover.<br /><br />Except that for some weird reason that I've yet to learn, magazines always come out a month early. The Christmas issue comes out the first or second week of November. So, the December issue came out on November 7<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">th</span>, and the publisher got all of his money by December 7<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">th</span> (when the January issue came out), and the writer gets paid for the piece on December 31st. He doesn't actually see the check for the December issue that's now been off the stands for more than a month until the first week of January or so.<br /><br />The publisher has made his money off the writer's work, gotten a month's INTEREST on that money, and then pays the writer. Killing the goose that laid the golden egg.<br /><br />Because, weirdly, we don't value writing. We don't value words. The cheap paperback may cost $6.95 now instead of 75 cents. But the writer probably didn't get PAID much more than the writer who wrote the 75-center back in the "golden age of paperbacks" in the mid-70s.<br /><br />OK. Worse, with the advent of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">internet</span> and the movement away from paper print, the industry started laying off reporters. And reporters (except for sports reporters) are writers, too. I had not known the following shocking fact until recently ... perhaps because I am stupid, but perhaps because it was hard for the media to "pick up" the story because of the "insider baseball" aspect and the conflicts-of-interest involved.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">NPR's</span> Michael <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Goldfarb</span> (not to be confused with THE WEEKLY <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">STANDARD's</span> Michael <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Goldfarb</span>, who may yet succeed in having Private Scott Thomas <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Beauchamp</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">fragged</span> in Iraq) blogged:<br /><blockquote>Wednesday, April 12, 2006<br /><br /><strong>Why Iran Doesn't Fear America & Why America Should Fear Its newspapers being Destroyed</strong><br /><br />Listen closely to these two commentaries:<br /><br />Iran goes nuclear and the Bush Administration rattles its saber. Given the debacle in Iraq, is anyone, particularly the Iranian government afraid of them?<br /><br />And,<br /><br />3000 American journalists lost their jobs last year, and analysts say this year could see just as many reporter and editor positions disappear. Journalism is being shut down ... can democracy survive?<br /><br />posted by Michael <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Goldfarb</span> in London at 8:30 AM 0 comments</blockquote><br /><p align="center"><img src="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/clarkkentfired.jpg" alt="Clark Kent Fired" height="354" width="256" /></p><br /><br />It's gotten worse since. <a href="http://journalism_jobs.tripod.com/">From Reuters</a>:<br /><blockquote><strong>Planned media job cuts up 88 pct in 2006</strong><br />Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007, 12:29 pm ET<br />By Joanne Morrison and Michele <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Gershberg</span><br /><br />WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media sector surged 88 percent last year and that trend will likely continue as readers shift from print to online services, a study on Thursday showed.<br /><br />For all of last year, the media industry announced 17,809 job cuts, up <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">sizably</span> from the 9,453 cuts announced the prior year, according to the job outplacement tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.<br /><br />That was the biggest tally of announced layoffs for the industry since 2001, when the dot.com collapse was under way.<br /><br />The trend is expected to continue this year ...</blockquote><br />That's also the secretaries, research assistants, fact checkers, editors and others not counted as "journalists" but <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">indispensable</span> to the process nevertheless. It's been a rotten time in the print media for the past several years, and my peers, who started out in the post-orgasmic flush of Woodward & Bernstein having brought down a presidency (at least that was how the movie sold it) are now facing a premature retirement with zero prospects for future employment or retraining (they're too old).<br /><br />I worked in Orange County, California in the late 80s, and it was the same with draftsmen. The people who had drawn the schematics, the blueprints, the plans for the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, were now doing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">pasteup</span> for proposals for the space station -- a project that would be designed using CAD (computer assisted drafting) that had put these expert technical draftsmen out of work, men and women. In Whittier, California in 1987, I worked in a shop that typeset supermarket <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">flyers</span> (English and Spanish. The Spanish word for grapes is "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">uvas</span>" which would make a great crowd-chanting-in-square "Evita" scene: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">UVAS</span>! <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">UVAS</span>!) and pasting up "Wonder Bread $1.37" and "potatoes 18 cents/lb." were the same <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">draftspeople</span>. From Command modules to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">cantaloupes</span>, they had fallen a long way.<br /><br />It is what happened in the First Industrial Revolution, as weavers were put out of work by factories. The French peasants threw their wooden shoes into the machinery in a futile attempt to stop the machines, giving us the term "sabotage," from their shoes, "sabots."<br /><br />Now it is hitting the writing trade. Soon, perhaps, we will have machines that crank out all our books. Paris Hilton has had a bestseller. It can't be far off.<br /><br />And, with those cheering thoughts in mind, we return to me, who is a writer according to a writer's magazine that I refuse to subscribe to, and my almost attendance at the Willamette Valley Writers Conference.<br /><br />(ahem)<br /><br />=======<br />Tomorrow: The Senses Shattering Conclusion <span style="font-weight: bold;">With A Special Surprise Ending</span>! No one will be admitted to the blog in the last 10 minutes!!<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-400924548704966935?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-82932332063658155162007-08-01T12:12:00.000-07:002007-08-01T12:18:47.201-07:00Malkin's Mangled Misanthropy MissesSometimes, just as you realize that some of the most rabid, misanthropic lunatic righties would like nothing better than to see you and anyone like you dead, they pull off a stunt that reminds us all of what astonishingly pathetic losers they actually are, and <strong>why they couldn't actually hold a job in the Real World</strong>, unless backed up by cranky zillionaires even more screwed up in the head than they are.<br /><br />I'm speaking, of course, of the Kewpie Doll From Hell™ <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/01/barack-obama-macho-man/">Michelle Malkin</a>. (Sorry, Bill O'Reilly anti-fans!) Having hung this absurd albatross around her own neck, it deserves to be enshrined in the Political Hall of Fame's "Really Really Really Stupid and Pathetic Moves" wing, right next to Jerry Falwell's "Tinky Winky" commentaries, and virtually anything Pat Robertson ever said.<br /><br />From YouTube (tip of the hat to <a href="http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2007/08/michelle-malkin-loves-terrorists.html">TBogg's blog</a>):<br /><br /><br /><p align="center"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt_YcQlYxyY"><img alt="Hall of Fame weirdness" src="http://www.hartwilliams.com/images/malkincheer0.jpg" border="0" height="238" width="317" /><br />WATCH IT HERE!!!</a></p><br />Oh. And if you go to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt_YcQlYxyY">the original YouTube page</a>, the comments are <span style="font-style: italic;">almost</span> as hilarious as the video. The difference being that they MEANT to be funny.<br /><br />Ladies and Germs, I give you the <strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);">single most unintentionally hilarious political commentary made this year by ANY party or persuasion</strong>.<br /><br />I would nominate it for a Razzie, except that I don't think they have a category for "<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);">Shrill Ann Coulter Wannabe Who Desperately Craves Attention But We Don't Think This Is Exactly What She Had In Mind</span>."<br /><br />Laughter at moronic stunts by rightie racist hatemongers who have a much higher opinion of their own intelligence than is warranted by the facts? It's the gift that keeps giving, and giving and giving and giving and ...<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-8293233206365815516?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-42022071468615249412007-07-31T06:58:00.000-07:002007-07-31T07:00:40.730-07:00Back At The Public Trough With Christine Todd WhitmanI wrote the article below without asking WHY Ex-NJ governor and EPA chief Whitman was on the radio this morning. <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span> clarified why (Google: 'posted 6 hours ago'):<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/washington/31nuclear.html?ex=1343534400&en=a86a18dc19cb04e8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">New York TIMES</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>U.S energy bill aids the expansion plans of atomic power plants</strong><br />By Edmund L. Andrews and Matthew L. Wald<br />Published: July 31, 2007<br /><br />WASHINGTON: A one-sentence provision buried in the Senate's recently passed energy bill, inserted without debate at the urging of the nuclear power industry, could make builders of new nuclear plants eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees. ... The nuclear industry is enjoying growing political support after decades of opposition from environmental groups and others concerned about the risks. An increasing number of lawmakers in both parties, worried about global warming and dependence on foreign oil, support some expansion of nuclear power....</blockquote><br />So, they're back at the public trough. <!--more--> Now, the original post:<br /><br />How sick is that?<br /><br />If there were ever any doubt that Republican Barbie-Doll-from-Hell ex-NJ Gov. Christine Todd Whitman was the right person for the "Clean Skies" initiative and the "Clean Water" initiative for Bushco before she jumped ship, well, she's confirmed it with her slimy "buddies" interview on the "liberal" Bill Press Show.*<br /><br />(*<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_Radio_Networks">Syndicated by Jones Radio</a>-- Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller, etc. Rightie hosts, too, like The Neal Boortz Show. Press, the former Chair of the California Democratic Party, and co-host of CNN's late, unlamented "Crossfire," seemingly swings both ways,: Left and Right.)<br /><br />What's astonishing is how sweetly and uncritically Press does this. His "incisive" question about the nightmare of nukes: "Why do we have to subsidize them?"<!--more--><br /><br />Whitman's slimy answer: Environmentalist lawsuits. Oh. This from the former head of EPA under Bush. She supposedly "distanced" herself from the current Administration's environmentally rapine policies, and now is shilling for Nuclear? The rankest of the rank hypocrites, a more palatable version of Ann Coulter, but just as sleazy with the facts. Some highlights:<br /><br />Yucca Mtn. in Nevada "As we all know it's being held up." (By Harry Reid). She "understands."<br /><br />She holds up France and Japan as examples. (Right. Suddenly crapping on France is forgotten.)<br /><br />We need to start doing these things now. (Getting Kyoto permits: "time consuming" and "we've got to get in line now.")<br /><br />Whitman pretends that her assessment of Ground Zero after 9-11 (asbestos and toxins in the air are allegedly responsible for debilitating effects, respiratory diseases, long-term health disasters in 9-11 responders, volunteers, rescue workers ... and are being ignored by the Federal Government) <a href="http://noseconenews.blogspot.com/2007/06/christine-todd-whitman-ive-been-called.html">was "correct." </a>(With nuances, which is the Democratic term for "not just black and white," but which is the GOP term for "I'm a lying sack of crap.")<br /><br />"No higher risk of long-term health problems ... in general." and "We were always concerned [about asbestos, but] ... not in a position legally to be able to enforce it."<br /><br />Which is a lie. She told the people of Manhattan <a href="http://noseconenews.blogspot.com/2007/06/christine-todd-whitman-ive-been-called.html">that the air at Ground Zero was safe</a>. They believed her. Now, they're dying.<br /><br />So we're supposed to believe her about nuclear power?<br /><br />You gotta give her style points for sheer brazen gall. Having aided and abetted in covering up deadly aftereffects of 9-11, and having been the Administration's "point man" on wrecking new arsenic standards in drinking water, wrecking air and water regulation, and assisting in the Bush/Cheney attack on the environment (or, turning the EPA into an oxymoron again, as the Reagan Administration did), she NOW both acts like she's NOT an environmental thug, a murderess and someone who "cares" about the environment, AND pushes the most toxic substances known to man as the "solution" for getting us energy independent.<br /><br />She conveniently forgets that ONE of the 9-11 targets was the Indian Head Nuclear Power Plant on the Hudson River above New York City. HAD they succeeded in slamming one of the jets into that plant, ALL of NYC would now be ground zero.<br /><br />Thank goodness<br /><br />[End interview 4:23 AM PDT]<br /><br />Press invites callers to discuss the question, "Nuclear energy: should it be part of the mix?"<br /><br />[Press continues to rely heavily on his old CNN connections for 'timely' guests. <a href="http://www.billpressshow.com/">From his website this morning</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Guests</strong><br /><br /> * Former Governor and EPA Administrator Christine Whitman<br /> * MSNBC Host Tucker Carlson<br /> * CNN Weekend Legal Analyst Avery Friedman<br /> * Politico's DC Gossip Queen Anne Schroeder<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Gee, that's "liberal." (NOT!) Oh, and this <a href="http://www.billpressmedia.com/?p=2874">weirdly pathetic posting</a> on his blog:<br /><br /><blockquote>July 31, 2007<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bill WINS!!!</span><br />Dan wrote this at 7:13 am:<br /><br />Bill Press is “D.C.’s Hottest Male On-Air Media Type” according to Mediabistro’s FishbowlDC. Thanks to YOUR votes!<br /><br />Now, I (Associate Producer Dan) humbly ask for forgiveness to allegations of giving instructions on how to cheat the contest. Competition was getting tough, and we know for a fact other campaigns were cheating as well - it just so happens we got caught! I ask for forgiveness. Bill has given me my lashings.<br /><br />For the record, Bill took the high road and did not accept the win from FishbowlDC, but they rejected his rejection.<br /><br />Isn’t this what politics is all about? Cheating, then forgiveness? :-) </blockquote><br />No: that's just slimy. I know they think it's "funny," but it's basically disgusting.<br /><br />Just a couple of additional comments, here.<br /><br />Here's the press release where she goes to work for <a href="http://www.cleansafeenergy.org/PressRoom/NewsReleases/NewsRelease2/tabid/132/Default.aspx">her NEW satanic masters</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>WASHINGTON, DC, April 24, 2006 – Two prominent environmental figures today announced that they will co-chair a new coalition designed to add fresh voices from across America to the resurgent movement advocating increased use of nuclear energy. The creation of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition – also known as the CASEnergy Coalition – was announced by Christine Todd Whitman, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and former New Jersey Governor, and Patrick Moore, co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace.<br /><br />Gov. Whitman and Dr. Moore called on Americans to join them in supporting the use of nuclear power as a clean, safe, reliable and cost-effective way to balance America’s energy demands and protect the environment.<br /><br />“Our country’s significant energy needs keep growing. We must diversify our energy sources to meet these needs,” said Whitman. “Nuclear energy should be an important part of this diversification plan, especially since its production generates no air pollutants or greenhouse gases.” </blockquote><br />Oh, disgusting comment (4:36) Bill Press: "I think Christine Todd Whitman can still be counted among the environmentalists."<br /><br />Really, Bill? And Torquemada can still be counted among the non-violent pacifists of the Fifteenth Century.<br /><br />Jesus. They lie to us with a straight face, and Press collaborates with this environmental thug <em>to be polite</em>. This is the liberal problem in a nutshell: we are civil to barbarians, when they only <strong>USE</strong> our civility to accomplish their (barbaric) ends. They DEPEND on it, and we <strong><em>oblige them</em></strong>.<br /><br />[The Nazis depended on the civility of the Jews to get them to march in orderly fashion into the showers, so beware!]<br /><br />But Whitman is "still" an "environmentalist"?<br /><br />Look. I debated nuclear power in college, having to DEFEND it against the many cases that wanted it killed. We never ran an anti-nuke case, so our research specialty was the literature that DEFENDED nuclear energy, of which I read mountains of. At the end of the time -- my cousin worked at Los Alamos for many years, and having been brought up among PRO-nuclear engineers and scientists -- I was <em>forced to conclude</em>* that nuclear energy has been an unmitigated disaster in virtually EVERY case, from weapons to power plants, and that in any sane cost/benefit analysis, we risked everything to gain virtually nothing. (They never mention that uranium is an even MORE limited resource than oil and coal, or that, if you go to "breeder reactors" to produce more nuclear fuel, they produce plutonium in great abundance.)<br /><br />[* Intellectual honesty demands that we embrace the truth, as facts emerge, whether we like the conclusions or not. I would be just as willing to convert back, were there any meaningful new arguments. But there aren't.]<br /><br />Nothing I've seen since has altered that conclusion. Intellectual honesty demands that we put aside the lies and half-truths of an astonishingly dangerous and disingenuous industry ... that now hires "environmental hero" Whitman and "Greenpeace Founder" Moore?<br /><br />Well so what? Al Capone was once an altar boy. People change when lots of slimy cash is waved under their noses.<br /><br />The Nuclear Power industry has huge investments in technology, siting and plant construction that they would rather make back than worry about those laughable nuclear accidents. And they've been hiring big-buck shills like Christine Todd Whitman for years and years.<br /><br />What's HILARIOUS is that she's working for the nuke people because she's supposed to be an "environmentalist.' I guess they didn't bother reading the newspapers from 2001 through 2005, when she ran (into the ground) the EPA. Or perhaps they were impressed by her rationalizations that it wasn't her fault. She was just following orders.<br /><br />Hmm. That sounds familiar. I wonder where I've heard it before?<br /><br />But, of course, if we put nuclear plants everywhere, we wouldn't be dependent on terrorists.<br /><br />See: <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/impacts-of-a-terrorist-attack-at-indian-point-nuclear-power-plant.html">Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant</a> from the Union of Concerned Scientists ( a group, unlike Whitman, that actually has credibility).<br /><br />But I guess terrorists are only dangerous when Republican thugs say they are, and NOT when they say they aren't.<br /><br />Bill Press (4:58 AM): "I'm still not ready to get on board."<br /><br />Gee. And I'm still not ready to get on board with legalizing child rape. But the way I just said it implies that it's a REASONABLE choice. Just like nuclear power.<br /><br />[Here, from the REAL Greenpeace website: <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/nuclear/nuclear-power-s-extreme-makeov">Nuclear Power’s Extreme Makeover</a>]<br /><br />OK in a nutshell, what's wrong with nukes? The fact that we'll have to contain the waste for over 100,000 years for a few years of power. Insane. That plutonium is the MOST TOXIC SUBSTANCE known. Lunacy. That every plant is a target, and that even if ALL accidents could be prevented, they will always be magnets for terrorism, the success of which would functionally make the surrounding area uninhabitable forever.<br /><br />None of this is remarkable, except that this right wing slime shows up on "liberal" talk radio. It's not like the barbarians who dominate the field with their astonishing hatespeak don't have plenty of time to give Whitman's lies, half-truths and criminal rationalizations. But no.<br /><br />There is a special spot in hell for you, Christine Todd Whitman.<br /><br />But take solace in George Bernard Shaw's observation that the damned feel perfectly comfortable in hell.<br /><br />After all, it was made for them.<br /><br />Courage.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">[<strong>NOTE:</strong> 5:15 AM, Tucker Carlson disconnects himself from Bush in classical "rat deserting sinking ship" modality. And "who cares what Dick Cheney thinks?" I shoulda stayed in bed.]</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-4202207146861524941?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-8929703677550162242007-07-30T18:19:00.001-07:002007-07-30T19:20:28.881-07:00Another Day Down The Rabbit HoleA Really Tasteful and Respectful Radio Play About A Completely Fictional Television Show<br /><br /><blockquote><strong style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">DRAMATIS PERSONAE</strong>:<br /><br /><strong>Bill O'Bully </strong>- A famous Right Wing Television Commentator<br /><br /><strong>Mishrill Merkin </strong>- A former reporter turned Internet 2.0 media entrepreneur and blogosphere eyecandy blogmistress. Pronounced "<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><em><strong>my shrill MURR kin</strong></em></span>"</blockquote><blockquote><strong>Barbie Kewpie</strong> - A former Democratic consultant, now makes her money appearing as a "consultant" on the O'Bully Show and writing for periodicals and publishing houses owned by the same people that own O'Bully's Network (and who publish HIS books, syndicate his radio show, publish Merkin's books, etc. etc.).</blockquote><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><strong>VOX NOOZ TRANSCRIPT<br />THE BILL O'BULLY SHOW 30 JULY 2007</strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>O'BULLY:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> And we're back in the 'No Win Zone.' ... Anonymous Left wing hate has been completely ignored by the liberal imperious sovereign media, and here with us to discuss it is our resident VOX NOOZ expert, Mishrill Merkin. What say you, Mishrill?</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong><br />MERKIN:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Wonderful to see you, Bill.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>O'BULLY:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Mishrill, your blog today continues to follow the story of that soldier in Iraq who wrote all those horrible things about our troops. What wrote you, Mishrill?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> We've started a parody writing contest, Bill. It's based on this FABULOUS parody that was written by blogger Slime Seeker on anonymous writing by the left and how hateful it is.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>O'BULLY: </strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;">That sounds hilarious, Mishrill. How laugh you?</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong><br /></strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Oh, we've already had some side-splitting stories. One that comes to mind is PatriotWho KillsLiberals "Why I killed Vince Foster" by "HC." Another zany laff riot is KillAllLiberals' short short story, "Why I want to skull-fuck that soldier puke I don't even think exists in the hole I'd blow in him with my illegal assault rifle."</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>O'BULLY:</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> </span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;">Isn't that a little close to Ted Nugent's most recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal -- "Why we should kill all the liberal writers"? How answer you, Mishrill?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> His Nuge-ifocity [</span><em style="font-family:courier new;"><strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">NOO ji FAAS ih TEE</span></strong></em><span style="font-family:courier new;">] wasn't talking about anonymous liberal bloggers, Bill. He was talking about liberal writers, which is a completely different thing. KillAllLiberals was challenging the cowardly ANONYMOUS bloggers who spew their hate-filled venomous stuff that puts them in league with Al Qaeda terrorists and slits the throats of our brave troops in their sleep.</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Come on, Mishrill. Are the liberal bloggers really any kind of threat? What fear you?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;">Well, if you just look at how they've destroyed the free market with their antitrust laws, their labor unions, their anti-child-labor laws and their health and safety laws, you'll see what a menace that liberals are, Bill. They only look pathetically weak and ineffectual. But so are moths, but they can ruin sweaters if you don't have the balls to deal with them.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>O'B</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> You're of course speaking about moth balls.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> That's right Bill.</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Let's bring in a Liberal Democratic Consultant who is a regular here in the "No Win Zone," Barbie Kewpie, activist and lawyer.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>KEWPIE:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Thank you Bill, I ...</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Barbie, you've stated in the past (now that you're writing for our fine publications and working for us as a consultant) that anonymous liberal bloggers are not the great threat that they're made out to be. How can you defend that? What say you?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>KEWPIE:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Thank you Bill, I ...</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Mishrill?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> That's simply not true, Bill. I've warned again and again of the danger of liberal bloggers. Last week, you'll remember, a rabid blogger bit the announcer at a NASCAR event. And the endless hatespeech from the liberal blogger "Taliban" has deeply hurt Ann Coulter's feelings. What kind of heartless baby-murderers are these anonymous liberal bloggers? They won't be satisfied until they have silenced every other voice, and turned the internet into the moonbat fairyland of Blogistan.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>KEWPIE:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Bill, I ...</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> You'll get your turn, (sarcastic) MIZ Kewpie. What say you, Mishrill Merkin?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> They hate our troops, our Jesus and our way of life. They hate us for our freedom. Their mothers wore army boots.</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> (With naked sarcasm): Miz Kewpie?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>KEWPIE: </strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;">Bill, I ...</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Mishrill, you had something you wanted to say?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> No, Bill. But as long as you're asking, I believe that anonymous liberal bloggers gave Barry Bonds steroids, planted controlled demolition charges in the Twin Towers on 9-11, cause the sinking of Titanic and drown puppies for fun.</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> What say you, MIZ Kewpie?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>KEWPIE:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Bill, I ...</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Well, that's where we'll have to leave it. We're outta time for this segment. What want you, Mishrill?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> [all the "bl"s should lead to semi-babbling incoherence] I just wanted to say that my NEW blook is for sale on my blog, about the dangers of blig government and anonymous liberal bloggers: ALL LIBERALS SHOULD HAVE A HEART ATTACK AND DIE ALREADY. I wrote it in collaboration with my good friends LittleGreasyTurdballs, Hairlessnads and VillanesSumPump. It's must reading for all concerned Christian, Patriotic True Americans.</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Thank you Mishrill. You are, without a doubt, American's favorite Merkin. How reciprocate you?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Thank you, Bill. You are the most incisive voice in television, and the handsomest man on radio.</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> </span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><em>[Drumming fingers on desk]</em></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> AND ....?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> And the O'Bully Method for Kids is just the best book ever, Bill. I've been reading a chapter to my son every night at bedtime, and little Vlad just loves it. He's stopped pestering me for money for his candy and comic books, and I have to thank you for that.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><em>[breathlessly]</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">And for writing that </span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><em>*wonderful*</em></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> book, which I'm also selling on my website along with my new book, . I wish I could carry some of the really AMAZING "no win zone" gear you've got on YOUR site, W W W DOT BILL O'Bully DOT com.</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> This old salty dog thanks you. And thank you Democratic Liberal Consultant Barbie Kewpie. Just because you're from the other side of the aisle doesn't mean that you can't be bootylicious. And you are.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>KEWPIE:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Thank you, Bill, I ....</span><br /><br /><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Myshrill?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>MERKIN</strong></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>:</strong></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> She's completely full of crap, as usual.</span><br /><br /><strong face="courier new"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">O'B</span></strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:courier new;" ><strong>ULLY</strong></span><strong style="font-family: courier new;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">:</span></strong><span style="font-family:courier new;"> There you have it. Balanced and fair. Next up, how pantywaist liberals are threatening anonymous conservative bloggers with "outing." Is this another hellish checklist item on the homosexual agenda?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">And, later in the show, The O'Bully Report takes a "no win zone" look at four-eyed pansy sissy boys in our schools. Are they giving Conservatives their lunch money WITHOUT putting up enough of a fight? Will our next generation of Conservatives be aggressive enough to inherit America's future without the "school of hard knocks" training that guys like me got on the schoolyard playground? God I miss those days.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">What watch you, America? We'll be right back.</span><br /><br /><em style="font-family: courier new;">[<strong>REALLY LOUD </strong>screeching fanfare. Overdone, almost Rococco graphic in Red, White & Blue motif. Various noisy electronic clutter dancing everywhere on the screen. Cut to Commercial.]</em><br /><br /><strong style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">AUTHOR'S NOTE</strong><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">:</span> The aforementioned transcript is completely fictional. To see a Really Tasteful and Respectful picture of a Koran in a toilet, see the Michelle Malkin (no relation) <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/30/which-of-these-is-a-crime-in-america/">blog.</a><br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-892970367755016224?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-76612162393505102302007-07-29T14:54:00.000-07:002007-07-29T15:01:25.493-07:00On The Veracity of StoogesOr, <span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong><em>Red Meat for the Rightie Blogosmear</em></strong></span><br /><br />Here's another "story" that currently only exists in the Red Blog camps.<br /><br />The Australian newspaper<em>The Age</em>, reported yesterday that, seemingly chillingly:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/freed-guantanamo-inmates-take-up-arms/2007/07/27/1185339258055.html"><strong>Freed Guantanamo inmates take up arms</strong></a><br /><em> The Age</em> (Australia)<br />July 28, 2007<br /><br />AT LEAST 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against allied forces following their release.<!--more--><br /><br />They have been discovered mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but not in Iraq, a US Defence Department spokesman told The Age yesterday.<br /><br />Commander Jeffrey Gordon said the detainees had, while in custody, falsely claimed to be farmers, truck drivers, cooks, small-arms merchants, low-level combatants or had offered other false explanations for being in Afghanistan.<br /><br />"We are aware of dozens of cases where they have returned to militant activities, participated in anti-US propaganda or engaged in other activities," said Commander Gordon.... [more]</blockquote><br />Why "seemingly"?<br /><br />Well, I have two reasons.<br /><br />The first, and unimportant reason is that I was interviewed on the floor of the 2000 Democratic National Convention as an Oregon Delegate by a reporter for The Age, and later looked up the article on the internet (when I'd gotten back home). The Age's reporter had quoted me as saying the exact opposite of what I told her. My sound bite was: "We are electing a president, not a talk show host." Her question was, "Isn't Al Gore dull?" Her quote, attributed to me was that, yes, Al Gore is dull.*<br /><br />[* That's agenda-driven reporting, BTW: you have a preconceived notion of what the story is -- from observation, to be fair -- but then you're looking for quotes to fill in the little "VERITAS" spaces in your piece. WHEN you get to this point, stop. You've slipped off of the journalism bus, which is a fearless search for truth, even if you don't like it, even if it's uncomfortable. The other is being a propagandist, the only question being the degree. The difference, the one that FAUX NOOZ and the other newsbusters who claim "Liberal Bias" miss is that there is a vast difference between trying to be objective -- an impossible paradigm, perhaps, but a GOOD paradigm -- and intentionally "fixing the facts to fit the story."]<br /><br />So my personal experience in terms of the veracity of <em>The Age</em> isn't good. And, in my epistemology, what I have experienced directly always carries a lot more weight than something I've read. But you're reading this, so it's just a story.<br /><br />The second, IMPORTANT reason why I said "seemingly," ought to be a no-brainer.<br /><br />The second reason?<br /><br />Look at the SOURCE.<br /><br />"a US Defence Department spokesman told The Age yesterday."<br /><br />End of story. We, AMERICANS know better than nearly anyone that our military lies to us on a regular basis. They did it in Vietnam. They BRAGGED about it after Gulf War I (that Marines were mounting an amphibious assault on a heavily occupied island just off the Kuwaiti shore).<br /><br />And now, with the war and with Gitmo and the "secret CIA prisons" under scrutiny, and the mad yowl of the disinformation arm of the Administration (Note how many screams of "Al Qaeda"! "Al Qaeda"! "Al Qaeda"! "Al Qaeda"! went up after the Congressional subpoenas were openly defied by the White House in the past fortnight), what critical thinker could possibly take a "PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER"s interview with a major non-US newspaper at face value?<br /><br />Doesn't it seem interesting that there was no headline on this with a compliant US media?<br /><br />Now, that doesn't mean that there hasn't been a nice rightie blowback. There has. That Kewpie Doll from Hell, Michelle Malkin was, of course, on the story like white on rice:<br /><br /><a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/29/more-gitmo-catch-and-release/" target="_self">michellemalkin.com</a><br /><br /><blockquote><strong>More Gitmo catch-and-release</strong><br />By Michelle Malkin<br />July 29, 2007 10:46 AM<br /><br />Earlier this month, the US released 16 Saudis from Guantanamo Bay. A total of 77 Saudis have been freed from detention. If you shared my 'Uh-oh' reaction, then you will not be surprised by this latest report in The Age (via Andrew Bolt) about freed Gitmo detainees taking up arms and resuming jihad.</blockquote><br />Other <span class="drhed">Discussion:</span> <a href="http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/07/90-of-released-gitmo-prisoners-are.html" target="_self">The Newshoggers</a>, <a href="http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2007/07/enabling-evil-is-all-in-days-work-for.html" target="_self">Dr. Sanity</a>, <a href="http://mvdg.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/back-to-the-battlefield/" target="_self">Michael P.F. van der Galiën</a>, , <a href="http://wizbangblog.com/content/2007/07/29/this-isnt-a-surprise-except-to-the-detainee-supporting-leftists.php" target="_self">Wizbang</a>, <a href="http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/188872.php" target="_self">The Jawa Report</a>, <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_killers_the_left_wanted_freed/" target="_self">Andrew Bolt</a> and <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2159249.ece" target="_self">Times of London</a> (owned by Rupert Murdoch).<br /><br />Consider what side the PR Officer's bread is buttered on. And consider that such an interview would have to be cleared at the highest levels. Ask yourself what benefit or cover this might give the Commander In Chief in his little problems about illegal wars, Geneva conventions, falsified intelligence, etceter, etcetera, etcetera, et al, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, &c.<br /><br />And then ask yourself: Are these the same "critical thinkers" who were arguing all week about details in the formerly anonymous Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp's report from Baghdad? Who nitpicked the typeface of Dan Rather's 60 Minutes II report?<br /><br />An interesting sort of critical thinking.<br /><br />Here are a couple of other interesting facts:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>The killers the Left wanted freed</strong> (sic)<br /><em>The Herald Sun </em>(Australia)<br /><a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_killers_the_left_wanted_freed/">By Andrew Bolt</a><br />Saturday, July 28, 2007 at 10:58am</blockquote><blockquote>The real scandal isn’t that the US has locked up suspects at Guantanamo Bay, but that it’s let so many of them go free - free to resume their terrorism:</blockquote><blockquote><br /></blockquote><blockquote><span style="color:#008000;"> "AT LEAST 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against allied forces following their release.</span><br /><br /><span style="color:#008000;">"They have been discovered mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but not in Iraq, a US Defence Department spokesman told The Age yesterday.</span><br /><br /><span style="color:#008000;">"His comments follow the death this week of Taliban commander and former detainee Abdullah Mehsud, who reportedly blew himself up rather than surrender to Pakistani forces. In December 2001, Mehsud was captured in Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo Bay until his release in March 2004. He later became the Taliban chief for South Waziristan."</span><br /><br />How many people have now been murdered by fanatics set free from Guantanamo Bay, at the urging of so many civil libertarians and Leftist activists?<br /><br />How many deaths do those civil libertarians now have on their conscience?<br /></blockquote><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herald_Sun">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herald_Sun</a><br /><br /><blockquote><em>The Herald Sun</em> is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia. It is published by The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd (HWT), <span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>a subsidiary of News Limited and owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation</strong>.</span> It primarily serves Melbourne and the rest of the state of Victoria, and shares many articles with other News Limited paid daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.<br /><br /><em>Herald Sun</em> is the highest circulating newspaper in Australia, with a weekday circulation of 551,100 and readership of 1,500,000. (<em>emphasis added</em>).</blockquote><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fairfax_Holdings">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fairfax_Holdings</a><br /><br /><blockquote>[The Age's parent company] In October 2006 speculation began that the company would be bought out and split up began to grow after the passage of changes to Australian media laws. Rival media company News Corporation purchased a 7.5% stake in the company ...</blockquote><br />Oh, and this:<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age#Ownership">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age#Ownership</a><br /><blockquote>Since the 1980s <em>The Age</em>, despite the loss of its corporate independence, has remained a successful and influential newspaper.... Its sports journalism is also extensive, although it does not try to compete with <em>The Herald Sun</em> in volume of sports coverage.</blockquote><br />For the Administration, this story is<em><strong> too good</strong></em>. (Of course, there's an old saying in the news biz: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.)<br /><br />Other than that, though, the story is <em>very credible</em>. Which is why it seems funny that basically only the Rightie sites have picked up on it. Hmmm.<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-7661216239350510230?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-3063216224495774132007-07-27T15:33:00.000-07:002007-07-27T15:40:24.039-07:00The Blogosmear, or It's WAR!<blockquote><span style="color:#0000ff;"><strong>A Visit From Saint Michelle</strong></span></blockquote><blockquote><em><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">T'was the week before August<br />and all were deployed<br />in hothouse Iraq<br />no lives yet destroyed</span></strong></em></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><br />[<span style="color:#003300;"><em><strong>WARNING</strong>: This is a long piece. Read at your own literary peril</em>.</span>]<br /><br />The Battle of the Bulge is under way.<br /><br />Parallel to the melt down of the Bush Administration (and their "High Noon" challenge to Congress, seemingly to FORCE a confrontation that the invertibrates of the two houses have been loathe to accept), a full-scale attack on the blogosphere and the left is under way, via The Usual Suspects.<!--more--><br /><br />The National Review is under a withering, focused attack via that horde of Zombie Kewpie Dolls from Hell that the Right has so carefully cultivated (see "Objective Journalism," <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blog/2006/07/unlimited-terms-of-endearment-part-vii.html">Parts 1</a> and <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/blog/2006/07/unlimited-terms-of-endearment-part-vii_30.html">2 for details</a>).<br /><br />And Bill O'Reilly has launched a successful attack on <strong>DailyKos</strong>.<br /><br />Neither institution seems to appreciate the coordination and zealotry of the forces arrayed against them, which is, frankly, the story of HOW the Left lost control of this country following the election of 1980. No matter how many times you hit these imbeciles in the face, they still don't GET that it's BARBARIANS at the gate, and not some esoteric question of table manners and etiquette.<br /><br />The progressives of the modern era don't seem to "get" that our current mess won't be solved by the extension of the pinkie whilst drinking tea. We go to the mattresses.<br /><br /><strong>Part 1. The Eloi and the Morlock</strong><br /><br />Since I wrote this once before, no need to rewrite it. From the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Valley_Advertiser" target="_blank">legendary Bruce Anderson</a>'s short-lived "AVA Oregon," <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/ava/ava0104.htm">Vol 1 No. 4, November 25, 2004</a>:<br /><br /><strong>What’s For Dinner?</strong><br /><br />According to Mr. H.G. Wells, the true postmodernists can be found in 802,701 A.D. Existing in a world freed from want, the Eloi live without conflict, disease, discomfort or pain, with everything they need to exist provided them. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE creates a future world split between two races, the childlike Eloi and the creatures of the darkness, the underground-dwelling, ape-like, albino, machine-savvy, light-averse Morlocks.<br /><br />The Eloi, the Time Traveler learns, were once the princes of Earth, the aristoi, but without challenges, their powers of reason have atrophied. They are simply childlike, ineffectual, helpless and nearly emotionless. The Morlocks, on the other hand, were the servants, dwelling in darkness, tending the machinery. But things changed. Without broccoli, or other vegetables, the Morlocks became utterly carnivorous, and, turning to the simplest food supply, took the Eloi as their domesticated cattle.<br /><br />Sadly, Mr. Wells was slightly off in his calculations, by approximately 800,701 years. Today, we call the Morlocks 'Republicans' and the Eloi are similarly denoted 'Democrats.' But on most other scores, Mr. Wells was entirely on beam: After generations of rule, utterly controlling the national debate, the Eloi’s Prime Directive, 'Thou Shalt Not Offend,' became 'P.C.' while the Morlocks, living deep underground, plotted their ultimate takeover, as their rhetoric turned increasingly savage and filled with irrational hate.<br /><br />Some say that the Morlocks turned away from reason to instinct, as did Mr. Wells’ creations, vaguely recalling their last triumphant control of the government, in the Eisenhower Administration, when their entire raison d’etre was the hatred of 'Communists,' 'Reds' and 'Pinkos.' The depths of this irrationality can, perhaps, be seen in their gleeful embrace of the concept of 'Red States' -- which would have seemed anathema to their forebears.<br /><br />But, then again, the Morlocks are fueled by even older, half-understood hatreds and irrational grudges. The entire Republican leadership of the House, Senate and White House are [Dixiecrats] from the Old South, the loser in the long-forgotten Civil War, excepting the Morlock [then-Speaker of the House Dennis] Hastert, who comes from Illinois, that state that license plates itself 'The Land of Lincoln.'<br /><br />But, in this case, the Morlock credo is 'With malice towards all, and charity for none.' Like their fictional counterparts, the new Morlocks feed on the ineffectual Eloi -- whose powers of reason seem to have withered entirely, after generations in unquestioned power, just as their ability to counter or contend with the Morlocks seems a mere memory of another stage in their devolution....<br /><br /><strong>Part 2. The Attack on Kos, or The Eloi Fight Back<br /></strong><br /><br />This appeared on the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/26/183529/674"><strong>DailyKos</strong> front page</a> yesterday:<br /><blockquote><strong>Fox Attacks! Blogger Edition Hotlist</strong><br />by mcjoan<br />Thu Jul 26, 2007 at 03:37:25 PM PDT<br /><br />We are all under attack. Daily Kos might be the biggest target, but we're certainly not the only one. But we can fight back.</blockquote><br />Yes, with YearlyKos (the Kos Convention, which all Democratic presidential candidates have accepted invitations to attend, in contrast to the Democratic Leadership Council, the DLC, whose invitation NONE of the candidates have accepted) almost upon us, JetBlue got into a well, let’s let that Kewpie Doll from Hell, <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/19/jetblue-backs-away-from-kos/">Michelle Malkin distort it for you</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>July 19, 2006</strong><br /><br />Just got word that JetBlue has asked the YearlyKos organizers to remove its name from the nutroots convention’s website. For its sponsorship deal, JetBlue apparently donated 10 travel vouchers to YearlyKos. I understand that there are no plans to revoke the vouchers. O’Reilly will be reacting to the decision tonight.<br /><br />In a letter to O’Reilly, JetBlue says it is 'an airline' not 'a political organzation.' Glad to hear it.<br /><br />Guess we can add that other wing back to JetBlue’s planes ...</blockquote><br />"Nutroots," by the by, is the official Right Wing Smear term for us. We bloggers. We who have the temerity to write of Rightie wrongs. We, who might consider us civilized versus them what thinks kindergarten recess name calling is a legitimate debate tactic.<br /><br />They ARE barbarians, and are not amenable to civility. And yet ...<br /><br />And, having been choked by the 'Julia Child of the Morlocks' recipe, what does McJoan of <strong>DailyKos</strong> fight back with?<br /><br /><blockquote>The folks at FOX Attacks are creating the tool to do just that--to build a database and a quick contact mechanism for all of FOX's local and national advertisers. You can help in the project by joining Fox Attacks' effort to not let Fox's lies stand. It's not a boycott, it's an effort to educate Fox's advertisers of just what it is that they are sponsoring. [ibid]</blockquote><br />And What IS "<a href="http://bravenewfilms.org/foxads">Fox Attacks</a>"?<br /><br /><blockquote>Fight back! Become a Fox Attacker.<br /><br />Fox is not a legitimate news channel. They consistently misrepresent facts, manufacture terror, and slander progressives.<br /><br />We're fighting back by identifying and calling all of FOX's advertisers. All of them. Particularly local advertisers who probably have no idea the kind of hatred their money is supporting.<br /><br />Already a FOX Attacker? Sign in here ?<br /><br />This is not a boycott. We are simply calling advertisers and informing them about FOX. And making Bill O'Reilly's life a living hell.<br /><br />Sign up, and get started now:<br /><br />Sign in name (doesn't have to be your real name)</blockquote><br />Hoo boy. That'll scare 'em. They intimidate your advertisers away, so you attack THEIR advertisers. (It's from Robert Greenwald's 2004 website for "Outfoxed" -- his laudably innovative documentary that allowed progressives to hold house parties and fundraisers over the DVD).<br /><br />Except, like "Progressive Talk Radio," the battle is utterly one-sided. Rupert Murdoch was willing to hemorrhage literally hundreds of millions of dollars* before the operation turned any profits. In "Progressive Talk," the top rated show has perhaps 100 stations. The top Rightie talkers? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh">Limbaugh 590 stations</a>. Hannity <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Hannity">over 500 stations</a>. Michael Savage (née Weiner) is syndicated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Savage_%28commentator%29">on over 400 stations</a> by <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2006/wndmasters.html">Talk Radio Network</a> out of Grants Pass, Oregon -- an organization <a href="http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2006/wndmasters.html">eerily coincident with Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily</a>. Or, take a look at <a href="http://www.salem.cc/index.cfm?fuseaction=guide.hosts">THIS page</a>, with the NUMBER of stations under each host's photo.<br /><br />[* "... <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/16/news/companies/pluggedin_arango_cablenetwork.fortune/index.htm">News Corp</a> spent $400 million to launch Fox News ..." ]<br /><br />It never occurs to them that they can afford to carry someone like an O’Reilly WITHOUT advertisers as a sort of ideological loss leader -- good will from Rightie legislators on upcoming antitrust and media regulation legislation. EVEN if they stripped all the advertisers from, say O’Reilly, the impact on the News Corp.’s wide-ranging operations might well be nil.<br /><br />That's fighting back? Well, one begins to understand, as a Progressive, how Lt. Col. G.A. Custer felt on a Montana hillside in the <a href="http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/custer.htm">Summer of 1876</a>.<br /><br /><strong>Part 3. My Sordid Case.</strong><br /><br />We've <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/zug/2007/07/why-seanny-cant-read.html">been there</a>. We’ve <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/zug/2007/07/who-f-is-hart-williams.html">done that</a>. Onward.<br /><br /><strong>Part 4. Michael Moore Gets Subpoena’ed.<br /><br /></strong><blockquote><strong>Michael Moore says he's been served with subpoena</strong><br />John Byrne<br />The Raw Story<br />Friday July 27, 2007<br /><br />Filmmaker Michael Moore revealed on Thursday's ‘The Tonight Show’ with Jay Leno that the Bush Administration had served him with a subpoena regarding his recent trip to Cuba made as part of his new film, Sicko.<br /><br />Moore told the audience that he was notified of the subpoena backstage.<br /><br />‘I haven't even told my own family yet," Moore remarked. "I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me.’<br /><br />Moore declared that the subpoena was unwarranted, saying, "this was a work of journalism.’<br /><br />‘I was there to help them and now I’m going to face this further harassment from the Bush people,’ Moore said, according to a transcript. ‘Aren’t they busy with something else?’ [<a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Michael_Moore_says_hes_been_served_0727.html">more Moore</a>]</blockquote><br /><strong>Part 5. The New Republic Soldiers On.<br /><br /></strong><blockquote><em><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">but me and my messmates<br />securely embunked<br />had no Earthly inkling<br />I was about to be punked.</span></strong></em></blockquote><br />It didn't take long for that Zombie Kewpie Doll From Hell to shift her attentions from embarrassing JetBlue, YearlyKos, and the unseen launch of the Attack of the Rightie Blogosphere (many of which, SURPRISE!, exactly correlate with the Rightie Attack Blogs that attacked me back around the Fourth of July).<br /><br />Her brain-eating minions turned their attentions to an anonymous soldier's column in The New Republic. It is, perhaps, no accident that "Little Green Footballs" is tootled and trumphaled in sheerest braggadacio for its role in the rightie smear of Dan Rather's 60 MINUTES II document that led to Rather's dismissal, and the discrediting of the (true) story about how George W. Bush avoided military service in the Texas, Alabama and Massachusetts Air National Guard(s) even as he avoided ACTUAL military service in that war John Kerry served so disgracefully in.<br /><br />These are MORLOCKS, kiddies. You cannot reason with them. And, as long as you think you can, they prey on you. Indeed, one begins to think that Wall Street Journal guest editorial by Ted Nugent, on July 3 (web-posted 12:01 AM July 4) was the Formal Declaration of War.<br /><br />It began with a nasty fellow at the Rupert Murdoch/News Corp. owned magazine The Weekly Standard, named Michael Goldfarb, who launches an attack on his Weekly Standard blog on the credibility of TNR’s columnist, the anonymous soldier.<br /><br />Within days, various nasty bloggers have ramped up the screeching just like they did on the Rather story.<br /><br />And Goldfarb then cites THEIR citations of his story to show how IMPORTANT his story is. The serpent bites its tail.<br /><br />Get this straight: None of these bloggers would ever bother reading The New Republic. The issue of the story's ‘integrity’ is a MOOT point to them. No: it’s an attempt to harass and intimidate, and a few days later, <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/07/abc_news_who_is_the_baghdad_di.asp">Goldfarb trumpets the intrusion of the ‘story</a>’ into the MSM: an ABC story by Marcus Baram.*<br /><br />[* from Media Bistro’s '<strong>Revolving Door</strong>' June 29, 2006:<br /><blockquote>‘Marcus Baram has been named editor of the Intelligence column at <em><strong>Radar</strong></em>. He had been an editor at <em><strong>The Wall Street Journal</strong></em>.’ ]</blockquote><br />Gee. The Wall Street Journal.<br /><br />And then the flood. In the last 24 hours, the story has exploded into the press. <strong><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/26/politics/animal/main3102174.shtml">CBS</a></strong>:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Jul 26, 2007</strong><br />(Political Animal) SCOTT THOMAS....Have you been following the Scott Thomas story? He's a pseudonymous soldier in Iraq who wrote a couple of columns for TNR describing the ways in which war robs us of our humanity. One soldier dug up a skull and wore it on his head. Another one amused himself by running over dogs in his Bradley. Thomas himself mocked a woman who had been disfigured by an IED.<br /><br />Conservative sites went crazy. Thomas didn't really exist. His stories were made up. The left hates the troops. Etc. etc.<br /><br />The whole thing has been kind of weird. Needless to say, Thomas does exist (he went public this morning on TNR's blog) and so far nobody has any evidence that he's made anything up. ...</blockquote><br />Here’s from one of WEEKLY STANDARD Goldfarb’s<a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/07/scott_thomas_speculation_conti.asp"> recommended blogs; a ‘milblog,</a>’<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/009075.html"><strong>The Mudville Gazette:</strong></a><br /><br />But allow me to shock you: There probably have been dogs struck and killed by vehicles in Iraq. There probably have been people insulted in DFACs. And there are assholes in the US Army. The New Republic wants people to believe those assholes are typical soldiers. I suggest my bottom line comments from my first take on the story might be useful.<br /><br />I for one would like to know whether "Scott Thomas" and his buddies are the sick little pieces of shit described in The New Republic or simply figments of some other sick little piece of shit's imagination.<br /><br />I don't know the answer yet. Of course, if this guy is a soldier he's a pathetic excuse for the real thing, and he's going to face some repercussions for his actions. He either did what he says he did, and is an asshole, or he didn't and is fabricating stories, and is an asshole ... If he's actually in the military and he's lying, then words aren't sufficient to describe the sort of low life scumbag he is.<br /><br />If he (or she) is not in the military and is simply demonizing U.S. Soldiers for fun and profit, then he (or she) is simply doing what so many reporters find irresistible these days - providing gullible Leftists with what they are eager to believe ... So lets make one thing clear. For the record - and for what it's worth - I hereby call on The New Republic to stop covering for this little dirt bag and turn him in to proper authorities. The New Republic's new "war hero" is not exposing bad behavior of others that's condoned by his seniors - he's confessing to that behavior himself. Since the New Republic won't release his identity, we can only conclude that either they support this sort of behavior by US troops or know that he isn't one. Neither option speaks well for anyone involved.<br /><br />I further urge my fellow bloggers - and anyone else interested in the truth in this matter - to follow suit.</blockquote><br />There is something chilling in this. The Righties were screaming for the ‘outing’ of this soldier by claiming that he didn’t actually exist. The implications that fuckwits like ‘Mudville’ in the military would ‘get’ ‘Scott Thomas’ whether via court martial or in a dark alley becomes chilling clear in retrospect.<br /><br />These irresponsible catcalls from hell could well spell death, imprisonment or something in between, should ‘Scott Thomas’ turn out to be real. Certainly, the soldier’s desire for anonymity in his writings becomes grimly understandable.<br /><br />It is a ghoulish comprehension. These bastards not only know that real human beings can be harmed, REALLY harmed via their Morlockian rhetoric, they seem to actually relish the possibility.<br /><br />Here’s from Michelle Malkin’s ‘Hot Air’ videoblog/blog website, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/25/scott-thomas-a-psychological-profile/">by Allahpundit</a><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color:#800000;"><strong>‘Scott Thomas’: A psychological profile;</strong></span><br /><strong> Update</strong>: Rigorous fact-checking, says Foer<br /><strong> Update:</strong> Bryan weighs in on the whole ‘woman in a FOB’ question<br />posted at 1:02 pm on July 25, 2007 by Allahpundit<br /><br />More exactly, a semiotic profile. The link is going around thanks to the author’s hard knock on TNR editor Franklin Foer at the end but the tasty part is in the middle where he dissects Thomas’s style. Verdict: He’s probably a grad student with military but not combat experience who fancies himself the Dangerous Guy with Chops. Heavy on the physical detail, devoid of emotional judgment, he needs you to know that (a) he’s been there and (b) he’s farking crazy, man, beyond good and evil, and he’s willing to use every ‘sinister’ stylistic affectation he can find to communicate those two facts. Which tends to suggest that he’s not beyond good and evil at all or else he wouldn’t be straining so hard to affect evilness.</blockquote><blockquote>Even so, it doesn’t always work out:<br /><br />4) Physical detail is mildly slanted toward the refined senses (sight and sound) rather than the vulgar senses (smell, taste, touch, and kinesthesia); the refined-sense details tend to be more specific, and the vulgar-sense details tend to be alluded to more than specifically named. (I think this is caused by a lack of actual experience; in actual experience the vulgar senses are the strong ones, but in library research the refined senses are the ones easier to paraphrase to avoid being caught in plagiarism).<br /><br />He’s a poseur, in other words, albeit perhaps one with enough experience to make a facially plausible case of combat duty....<br /></blockquote><br />Or, one more ‘reasonable’ Rightie site cited by Goldfarb:<br /><br />Mackubin Thomas Owens (their Military anything-but-Commentator) at <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWQzMWEyY2QwMTQyZTQ4Y2VmNGY2NTc4NzExMzAyNDU="><strong>National Review Online</strong></a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Nonetheless, the ‘Diarist’s’ stories remind me of the sort of shocking and outrageous statements young men like to tell to credulous listeners. As the late Harry Summers, a veteran of two wars once remarked, such stories are intended to have the same impact as the sight of two Hell’s Angels French kissing in front of a group of bystanders: shock and awe. They also remind me of the predisposition of the American press to believe the worst about American soldiers, a predisposition that dates to the Vietnam War...</blockquote><br />And we never saw it coming, as in my case, as in DailyKos’ case, because we HAVE NO WINDOW into the Right Wing Media world. When these stories finally appear, they appear fully grown and armored, like a leprous Athena from the Forehead of a diseased Zeus.*It is a coordinated attack, ginned up by a well-oiled smear machine. Do you doubt it? Check any of the citations in this article for cross connections, and be sitting down when you do.<br /><br />[*case in point: <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/234679.php#234679">Ace of Spades</a>* another WEEKLY STANDARD reccommended post:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>NYT Breaks TNR Lt. Stephen Glass Story, A Week After Everyone Else</strong><br /><br />Just noting it for the record; there's nothing here new or worthy of your time.</blockquote><br />Well old news <strong>INSIDE</strong> the Right Wing Bubble of Derision, perhaps.]<br /><br />And, since you’re probably not a regular viewer, Michelle Malkin has pretty much made herself a regular on O’Reilly’s FAUX NOOZ show. Will FAUX cover this ‘controversy’?<br /><br />Was the Pope a Hitler Youth?<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb-staff/2007/07/24/mrc-nbs-bozell-hannity-colmes-tonight-about-mags-derogatory-soldier-tales"><strong>MRC/NB's Bozell on Hannity & Colmes About Magazine's Derogatory Soldier Tales</strong></a><br />By NB Staff<br />July 24, 2007 - 22:26 ET</blockquote><br /><blockquote>Brent Bozell, President of NewsBusters parent the Media Research Center, appeared Tuesday night on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes. Topic: Swirling questions about the accuracy of The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist," writing under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas," a presumed soldier who has penned derogatory stories about the behavior of U.S. soldiers in Iraq running over dogs, ridiculing maimed Iraqis and playing with the skulls of kids.<br /><br />Bozell pointed out how the New Republic only says ‘they know who he is with near certainty,’ which is like saying you're ‘almost pregnant.’ Noting that the magazine's editors now promise to look into the accuracy of the stories, Bozell wondered: ‘Ought not they not to have done that before?’</blockquote><br />I will pass without comment the fundamental irony of FAUX NOOZ demanding that a jounalistic endeavor be able to quantify their reporting with facts. But <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb-staff/2007/07/24/mrc-nbs-bozell-hannity-colmes-tonight-about-mags-derogatory-soldier-tales">from the same NewsBusters</a> (‘Exposing and Combating Liberal Bias In The Media’) post:<br /><blockquote>The Weekly Standard's "Worldwide Standard" blog has the best day-by-day updates on developments.</blockquote><blockquote>An excerpt from Tuesday's posting by Michael Goldfarb ...</blockquote><br />Well, DUH! The snowball was started and is being pushed <strong>BY</strong> (Murdoch employee) Goldfarb. No wonder it’s ‘<em>the best</em>’! How’s that for ‘liberal media bias’? More importantly, how incestuous is all of this?<br /><br /><blockquote><em><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">When out in the blogosphere<br />there arose such a clatter<br />that I outed myself,<br />to put an end to the matter</span></strong></em></blockquote><br />But what had ‘Scott Thomas’ done?<br /><br />Well, he had reported that all was not peaches and cream in Iraq. And in the face of this unrelenting attack from the Right, The National Review’s Editor did what anyone who wants to jeopardize the life of their undercover reporter does:<br /><br />Outs ‘Scott Thomas.’ (Oh, I suppose the tale that ST wanted the following statement posted might have credibility. But, knowing the Morlockian jeopardy the soldier might be put in, had I been the TNR editor, I’d have insisted that the soldier keep his big trap shut, and told Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Brent Bozell, and ESPECIALLY Michael Goldfarb to GO FUCK YOURSELVES!<br /><br />Ah, but that is not the Eloi Way.<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>07.26.07</strong><br /><br /><strong>A<a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/the_plank?pid=128957"> STATEMENT FROM SCOTT THOMAS BEAUCHAMP</a>:</strong><br /><br />As we've noted in this space, some have questioned details that appeared in the Diarist "Shock Troops," published under the pseudonym Scott Thomas. According to Major Kirk Luedeke, a public affairs officer at Forward Operating Base Falcon, a formal military investigation has also been launched into the incidents described in the piece.<br /><br />Although the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published, we have decided to go back and, to the extent possible, re-report every detail. This process takes considerable time, as the primary subjects are on another continent, with intermittent access to phones and email. Thus far we've found nothing to disprove the facts in the article; we will release the full results of our search when it is completed.<br /><br />In the meantime, the author has requested that we publish the statement below. --The Editors<br /><br /><strong>My Diarist, "Shock Troops," and the two other pieces I wrote for the New Republic have stirred more controversy than I could ever have anticipated. They were written under a pseudonym, because I wanted to write honestly about my experiences, without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, my pseudonym has caused confusion. And there seems to be one major way in which I can clarify the debate over my pieces: I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name.</strong><br /><br /><strong>I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division ...</strong> [<a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/the_plank?pid=128957">more</a>]</blockquote><br />I suggest you <a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/show_comments.mhtml?b=the_plank&pid=128957">read the comments</a> to divine whether the mindset of this fake ‘controversy’ is a clear and present danger to poor Scott Thomas Beauchamp.<br /><br />But, of course, this was pooh-pooh’ed by the screeching Right. And the Leftie blogosphere is ill-prepared and mostly unaware of it. As per usual, the victim of the Rightie slime campaign is exposed, without so much as covering fire. His survival chances just dropped about 75%.<br /><br />But the Editor is going to rigorously RECHECK all the facts! Which means that TNR just lost. You can’t be civil with barbarians. The barbarian won’t like it, and you’ll end up smelling like a pig. The Morlocks successfully intimidated the beleaguered Eloi Editor. No matter WHAT he comes up with, it won’t matter now. And they’ve ginned the ‘Legitimate’ Media into acting like this is a story (205 Google News hits this morning).<br /><br /><blockquote><em><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">And then they appeared<br />their masters called them by name,<br />O’Reilly, and Malkin, and<br />Goldfarb screamed blame.</span></strong></em></blockquote><br />But <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/26/scott-thomas-steps-out-of-the-shadows/">Michelle Malkin</a> could smell fresh brains for supper, and evinced the Morlock equivalent orgasm:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/26/scott-thomas-steps-out-of-the-shadows/"><strong>‘Scott Thomas’ steps out of the shadows</strong></a><br /><strong> Update:</strong> The blog of ‘Sir Real Scott Thomas’<br /><strong> Update: </strong>His MySpace page<br /><strong> Update </strong>The soon-to-be wife of Scott Thomas Beauchamp?<br />By Michelle Malkin<br />July 26, 2007 08:35 AM</blockquote><br />(Privacy? You don't get no stinkin' privacy. We don't like what you wrote, so whatever we can dig up is fair game! What's HILARIOUS is that, on the same DAY, Malkin sniffs self-righteously about how <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/26/about-this-hate-site/">she's NOT a hater</a>. That's just HATEFUL of you, calling her that!)<br /><br />Get it? They don’t just want to ‘out’ our soldier serving in the illegal war in 120 degree summer days. No. They want to dig into every nook and cranny to find anything to smear him. Since he’s serving in a combat zone, I guess the contempt of the Rightie blogosphere is going to make his life safer, right? That’s supporting the troops.<br /><br />(Oh, and from those screaming that a resumption of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ would be tantamount to censorship.) Without shifting gears, Scott Thomas Beauchamp has gone from a ‘fraud’ who doesn’t know what a ‘Glock’ firing pin is to a traitor, and (GASP!!!!) a PRIVATE!<br /><br />(Nothing like a little class war from the <em>Ubermenschen</em>, eh?)<br /><br />Here’s a little ‘proof’ that Beauchamp is AUTOMATICALLY suspect, from Goldfarb the schmeermeister his-own-self:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp"><strong>Thursday, July 26, 2007</strong></a><br /><br /><strong>Beauchamp: "An ideological battle that I never wanted to join..."</strong><br /><br />Just doing a little digging on Scott Thomas Beauchamp and we stumble across this piece from the Missourian:<br /><br /><span style="color:#800000;"><em>‘Glenn is completely submerged in politics on campus. It is honestly impossible to think about politics at MU without thinking of Glenn,’ says Scott Beauchamp, editor-in-chief of Prospectus, a liberal campus news magazine. Beauchamp and Rehn met one year ago while campaigning for Howard Dean. (no close quote= sic)<br /></em></span><br /><br />Riehl World View has more on the connection to Rehn. But I'd encourage readers to read the whole article from the Missourian, there's a lot more there.<br /><br /><strong>Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 04:30 PM.</strong></blockquote><br />(Ooooh. He was FOR KERRY! Traitor! Leftie! Al Qaeda sympathizer! The mindset of this bigot reveals himself by the ‘obvious’ point that we’re supposed to take away from his commentary and ‘reporting.’)<br /><br />Yeah. Here’s some of the commentary, from a website Goldfarb touts in today’s blog, <strong><span style="color:#800000;"><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/07/beauchamp_fact_or_fiction.asp">Little Green Footballs </a></span></strong> (that Dan-Rather-font-attacking blog)<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/wp-admin/Little%20Green%20Footballs%20%28http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26418%29"><strong>New Republic Editor Continues Stonewalling</strong></a><br /><br />Howard Kurtz interviews New Republic editor Franklin Foer, and Foer has chosen to continue distorting and misrepresenting the controversy over ‘Shock Troops:’ Army Private Discloses He Is New Republic’s Baghdad Diarist.<br /><br />As conservative bloggers yesterday continued to challenge the veracity of Beauchamp’s accounts, Foer said: ‘It is really unfortunate that someone like Scott, who was really only trying to tell his particular story, has become a pawn in the debate over the war and the Weekly Standard’s efforts to press an ideological agenda.’<br /><br />Of course, it’s not about an ‘ideological agenda,’ and Foer knows that. This is a smokescreen, intended to cover up the real issue -- the veracity of the events described in the article. Foer’s reaction may play well to the Nutroots crowd, but it’s nothing more than transparently obvious misdirection....</blockquote><br />I fear for Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s life. They have roused every kind of rage: army rage, bureaucratic rage, radio wingnut rage. And for what? For reporting the facts of his experience, as he saw them. He was a journalist in college, but the report has to be utterly discredited, along with its author, its publisher, and anyone who reads it. I don’t know why the hell TNR ‘outed’ their writer, but don’t be surprised if he vanishes into a Pentagon hell.<br /><br />Because we can’t be allowed to see all those flag-draped caskets coming back. This is the ‘HAPPY’ War. The bloodless war. The ‘no sacrifices, no draft’ war. Shut that private up!<br /><br />Revealing his name garnered Beauchamp no friends in Rightie Meanie Land (Another <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp">Goldfarb/WEEKLY STANDARD recommended blog </a>entry!):<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/07/private-beaucha.html"><strong>Private Beauchamp- Requiem for a dung beetle</strong></a><br />Posted By Uncle Jimbo<br /><br />UPDATE: It appears that even dung beetles have fellow travelers, clown prince John Cole of Balloon Juice disparages me, poorly. But you know me, I will savage him manana.<br /><br />Because some people enjoy projecting their weaknesses on me, I do not advocate that anyone hurt the pissant, let alone frag him. Give me a break people, he slimed his whole unit as scum and I pointed out that he might should watch his ass. Really, 'Ya think? ...</blockquote><br />And then ‘Uncle Jimbo’ quotes HIS OWN HATRED(!!?!)<br /><br /><blockquote>So he is unmasked, kudos to JD Johannes who had him pegged down to Company level. I just wonder how the other members of A Co. 1/18 feel about how their buddy Beauchamp described them. And just to note, I had this to say about this POS when this came up.<br /><ul><br /><li><strong><span style="color:#800000;">Scott Thomas is a lying sack of shit. Every unit has a Scott Thomas, the whiny pissant whose brilliance is never recognized and who is always being abused by the chain of command for stuff that's not his fault. It would be normal to hear folks telling him to STFU and do his damn job.<br /><br /></span></strong></li></ul>Well just take a look at this little pissant's previous literary efforts, and I'll be honest I would pay good money to knock that freakin' smirk off his face.</blockquote><br />For fun, check out HOW MANY times these blogs reference each other. This is coordinated. This is interlinked to the point of bloggish incest. And what integrated force is opposing them? The backbiting leftie blogosphere? DailyKos? Me? (Well, actually, YES, me). Who?<br /><br />I know the tremendous loneliness of Scott Thomas Beauchamp. I spent the last couple of weeks in it. A handful defended me a couple of times. Most of the leftie bloggers picked up on the Media Matters talking point that I was a completely obscure liberal blogger (yes, but belittling me helps .... how?). I am equally certain that ‘Leftie’ defenses and comments will obligingly crap on JT Beauchamp’s prose, and engage in ‘civil’ conversations about Glock firing pins and the Uniform Code of Military Conduct, while they railroad Beauchamp into either a jail cell or an early grave.<br /><br />And that’s just ONE front of this ‘War on Terra,’ (never mind the climate or clean air and water). There is a push to intimidate and silence the blogosphere. Perhaps to provide cover for the next link in the chains of fascism that this country is descending into. (Ask not for whom the chains are forged, Lefties. They are being forged for thee.)<br /><br />Welcome to the battle of the bulge. The Morlocks are out for brains to eat, and if you’re reading this, probably brains like yours. Morlocks get very hungry with all that strenuous blogosmearing. Michael Moore, Scott Thomas, Daily Kos, Me, The New Republic, and there are more. The offensive (in both literal senses) is under way. Will we defend? Will we curl into a fetal position and whimper? I'll not hazard a guess. But if ever there were a time ....<br /><br />(For some odd reason, WorldNetDaily has not devoted <em>a word</em> to the story, so far. But then again:<span style="color:#800080;"><u><em><strong> so many targets, so little time</strong></em></u></span>.)<br /><br /><blockquote><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;"><em>And I heard them to shriek<br />between conniption fits<br />we hate you all and<br />to all a Happy Apocalypse.</em></span></strong></blockquote><br />America is a nation waiting for a John Brown. Let’s hope that it’s a longer wait than I fear it will be.<br /><br />Courage.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />[<span style="font-weight: bold;">NOTE</span>: This represents -- to the best of my knowledge -- the first rhyming of </span><span style="font-size:85%;color:#ff0000;"><em><strong>conniption fits</strong></em></span> and <span style="font-size:85%;color:#ff0000;"><em><strong>apocalypse</strong></em></span><span style="font-size:85%;"> in the Western canon. - HW]</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-306321622449577413?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-14473884305213611432007-07-25T09:00:00.000-07:002007-07-25T11:35:30.106-07:00Mission (Kinda) Accomplished[Note:<em> Mr. Williams has been on vacation</em>.]<br /><br />In a moment of historical shame that the tissues of rationalization can only obscure for a brief season, the University of Colorado released the following press release yesterday, transparently a lie:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5644219,00.html"><strong>CU Regents Dismiss Ward Churchill</strong></a><br />July 24, 2007<br /><br />BOULDER-The University of Colorado Board of Regents today voted to accept President Hank Brown's recommendation to dismiss Professor Ward Churchill from the faculty of CU-Boulder for conduct that fell below minimum standards of professional integrity.<br /><br />The vote concluded nearly two and a half years of an extensive faculty review process to investigate charges of research misconduct against Professor Churchill. More than 20 tenured faculty members from CU and other institutions served on three separate panels. Each panel conducted a thorough review of his work and faculty involved found evidence showing Professor Churchill engaged in research misconduct, and that it required serious sanction.<br /><br />"The university has an obligation to ensure its faculty's work is above reproach, said CU President Hank Brown. "Academic freedom requires academic integrity, responsibility and accountability."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cu.edu/churchillcase">The record of the case </a>shows a pattern of serious, repeated and deliberate research misconduct that fell below the minimum stand of professional integrity, involving fabrication, falsification, improper citation and plagiarism.<br /><br />The university's review of Professor Churchill focused on his professional activities, not his statements about victims of September 11, 2001. Professor Churchill, like every United States citizen, has the right to make controversial political statements. Early in the investigation, the university determined his speech was protected by the First Amendment.<br /><br /></blockquote>Right. Nothing to do with the witch hunt launched by <a href="http://cms.studentsforacademicfreedom.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2286&Itemid=27">David Horowitz' </a>various <a href="http://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/">"foundations</a>" and <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/">publications </a>and the Right Wing Smear Machine. The "controversial" political statements whose careful re-casting (a process with which this writer is intimately familiar) led the Governor of Colorado, a significant number of legislators, and a large chunk of the Denver media to scream for Churchill's head.<br /><br />Yesterday, they got it. And, aided by the University's press release, they got it AND they got cover for WHY they got it. Allegedly, "plagiarism," and we're shocked, SHOCKED! to find out that gambling has been going at Rick's!<br /><br />Were outright plagiarism a crime, then what are we to make of the 80% of the news that comes STRAIGHT off of press releases* like the one the University of Colorado ginned up to put them in the best light possible?<br /><br />[* <em>"</em><a href="http://www.videouniversity.com/newspr.shtml"><em>Here's something that might surprise </em></a><em>you: Seventy-five to 80 percent of ALL news comes from press releases and stories that the media gets from businesses and individuals just like you and me! Without press releases and articles, they wouldn't have much news to print, and they'd be hard-pressed to stay in business."</em>]<br /><br />The Ministry of Truth has spoken, and yet, while any five-year-old knows that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill was fired for that smear, any lawyer, TV commentator and "news" reporter will tell you that this was all about "plagiarism."<br /><br />The Ministry of Truth must be pleased.<br /><br />Here's <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-prof_25jul25,1,5782343.story">what the AP said</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><p><strong>Colorado professor Churchill fired</strong><br />By Dan Elliott<br />Associated Press<br />July 25, 2007<br /><br />BOULDER, Colo. - The University of Colorado's governing board on Tuesday fired a professor whose essay likening some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi leader provoked national outrage and led to an investigation of research misconduct.<br /><br />Ward Churchill vowed to sue, saying "New game, new game," after the Board of Regents' 8-1 vote was announced.<br /><br />Three faculty committees had accused Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies, of plagiarism, falsification and other misconduct. The research allegations stem from some of Churchill's other writings, although the investigation began after the controversy over his Sept. 11 essay.<br /><br />"The decision was really pretty basic," said university President Hank Brown.<br /><br />"The individual did not express regret, did not apologize, did not indicate a willingness to refrain from this type of falsification in the future," Brown said.<br /><br />Churchill's essay mentioning Sept. 11 victims and Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann prompted widespread demands for his firing, but university officials concluded it was protected speech under the 1st Amendment.<br /><br />Brown recommended in May that the regents fire Churchill after faculty committees accused him of misconduct in some of his academic writing.<br /><br />The essay that thrust Churchill into the national spotlight was titled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens."<br /><br /></p></blockquote>And here's what <a href="http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html">Ward Churchill actually said</a>, verbatim, if you were actually curious, since this case is all about what Right Wing Talkers SAY that he said, and not about what he <a href="http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html">ACTUALLY</a> said.<br /><br />The "little Eichmanns" statement alludes to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem">a well-known observation on the nature of evil</a> (well-known among the literate, that is):<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil </strong>is a book written by political theorist Hannah Arendt, originally published in 1963. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Hitler's rise to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. The book <strong>Eichmann in Jerusalem</strong> is the result of this reportage.<br /><br />Essentially, Arendt states that aside from a desire for improving his career, Eichmann showed no trace of anti-Semitism or psychological damage. Her subtitle famously referred to the "banality of evil," and that phrase is used quite abruptly as the final words of the final chapter. In part, at least, the phrase refers to Eichmann's deportment at the trial, displaying neither guilt nor hatred, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job" ("He did his duty...; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law." p. 135).<br /><br /></blockquote>Churchill's allusion to this well-known book and its thesis (and its subtitle) was taken, you might recall, and amplified by the Right Wing Smear Machine so that ALL that is remembered is something about Ward Churchill comparing people in the Twin Towers to Nazis! So much for metaphor. So much for literacy.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-prof_25jul25,1,5782343.story">AP Story states</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>That essay argued that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a response to a long history of U.S. abuses. Churchill said those killed in the World Trade Center collapse were "a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire" and called them "little Eichmanns."<br /><br />Eichmann was top-level Nazi who carried out the Holocaust.<br /><br />Churchill had been out of the classroom since spring 2006 but remained on the university payroll.<br /><br /></blockquote>And a firestorm of hatred has been directed in Churchill's direction ever since 9-12-2001. 2142 days and counting, as I write this. And, even though we haven't caught up with bin Laden in the 2143 days since Nine-Eleven, they've FINALLY managed to nail Ward Churchill, Colorado teacher. Here's <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,149295,00.html">a little souvenir </a>from that odyssey of smear:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Professor Ward Churchill is a Traitor<br /></strong>Thursday, March 03, 2005<br /><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,149295,00.html">By Bill O'Reilly<br /></a><br />Professor Ward Churchill is a traitor, in my estimation: that's the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo".<br /><br />... But justifying terrorist attacks on your fellow countrymen? If you do that, you're a traitor. And Churchill's doing it. Even Jane Fonda didn't go that far. And I believe what she did during the Vietnam War was treasonous. Ms. Fonda gave comfort to the enemy and made life more difficult for American POWs and for American soldiers in the field. She also failed to condemn the staggering human rights violations in Vietnam and Cambodia after the U.S. pulled out of Southeast Asia.<br /><br />But even Fonda didn't justify the murder of U.S. civilians as Churchill is doing. There's nothing more I can do regarding this guy Churchill. The man has defined himself and there's no doubt about where he stands. Now it's up to the University of Colorado to deal with him.<br /><br />Clear-thinking Americans have already rejected Churchill's hatred. And no person should confront the man in any way. Shun him. Don't insult the freedom Americans have died for by doing anything else.<br /><br />This story is not about Churchill anymore. It's about the people who enable him. What say you, University of Colorado?<br /><br />And that's "The Memo."<br /><br /></blockquote>Well, the University of Colorado has finally said what.<br /><br />Yesterday it slickly announced Churchill's formal firing (he was removed from the classroom or any "teaching" position in 2006; the firing was a mere formality, in practical terms). And the counter lawsuit will now go on.<br /><br />Churchill is rather a prickly sort to defend, but do we really HAVE to have perfect victims to speak out against injustice? Against censorship? Against academic and media intimidation? Is THAT why the Right has been unified in its desire to crucify Ward Churchill for his speech (that "speech" CU explicitly stated Churchill had "the right to make controversial political statements," even as it slit his throat for those statements)?<br /><br />But was Ward Churchill really fired for "plagiarism" and other charges? Nobody believes it, except, perhaps, for the Denver media and the CU board of regents.<br /><br />And all that is remembered, at the end is the careful misreading of Churchill's essay that was the beginning of this odyssey into the Vindictiveness of the Right Wing Smear Machine. What Churchill himself said was lost a long time ago.<br /><br />The story is, finally, ONLY about what the Right Wing talk shows SAY that Churchill said, and never about what Churchill himself ACTUALLY said. That is the genius of the smear machine. And the <span style="font-style: italic;">pièce de résistance</span>? The Colorado Regents release a firing statement stating that Churchill is not being fired for the reason that they're actually firing him.<br /><br />The concerted campaign to crucify Ward Churchill (paralleled by the <a href="http://cms.studentsforacademicfreedom.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&amp;amp;amp;amp;id=2286&Itemid=27">David Horowitz </a>campaign <a href="http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/">to muzzle "leftist" professors on campuses across the land</a>) can be pooh-pooh'ed by our "little Joe McCarthys" as IRRELEVANT, since Churchill was fired for other reasons. See? The CU Press Release says so, right here! Churchill has "has the right to make controversial political statements." It says so right there, after it says that he's being fired. But NOT fired for those statements.<br /><br />Good ghod.<br /><br />Having been on vacation since Bastille Day, I was gratified to see <a href="http://www.northstarwriters.com/ss052.htm">this piece of "news"</a> that appeared on Tuesday, the day before Churchill's formal termination:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>Methinks Bill O'Reilly Doth Condemn Too Much</strong><br />Stephen Silver<br />July 23, 2007<br /><br />... After Ann Coulter said she "hopes the terrorists kill" John Edwards, Hannity and guest Brent Bozell changed the subject to "liberal hypocrisy" because a liberal blogger named Hart Williams had called for the murder of conservative musician Ted Nugent, and that "no liberal has condemned him."<br /><br />Why hadn't they? Probably because while Ann Coulter is a major media figure who appears on television almost nightly, Hart Williams is an obscure blogger who I'd imagine most liberals had never even heard of. The reason they hadn't condemned him was because they were simply unaware of him. Perhaps O'Reilly, Hannity and Bozell would be happy if every liberal in the country helpfully issued a list, every morning, of every other liberal he wished to condemn.<br /><br /></blockquote>What I <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/zug/2007/07/another-dip-in-nugent-slime.html">actually</a> <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/zug/2007/07/nugent-die-hippie-die.html">said</a> has vanished <a href="http://www.hartwilliams.com/zug/2007_07_08_zugglets.html">from memory entirely</a>. <em>Déjà vu</em>, eh?<br /><br />And Brutus is an honorable man.<br /><br />Courage.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-1447388430521361143?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073029285609577455.post-51245904027944753022007-07-14T23:23:00.000-07:002007-07-15T23:31:53.339-07:00In The News<a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Ted_Nugent_fears_death_by_liberal_0713.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">From THE RAW STORY</span></a> (<span style="font-style: italic;">www.rawstory.com</span>):<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Ted_Nugent_fears_death_by_liberal_0713.html"><span style="font-size:180%;">Ted Nugent fears death by 'lunatic fringe' liberal blogger</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">David Edwards and Muriel Kane</span><br /> </span></a></strong><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:78%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:78%;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Ted_Nugent_fears_death_by_liberal_0713.html">Published: Friday July 13, 2007</a></span><br /></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Whoop-de-do<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4073029285609577455-5124590402794475302?l=www.hartwilliams.com%2Fzug%2Fblogger.html' alt='' /></div>ed waldohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01085992353277366448noreply@blogger.com0