Who will save the country from the likes of Eric Boehlert?
The failed journalist ended up a Media Matters which means he's a propagandist not a journalist. And the dumbest thing we ever did on the left was thinking we could fight the right by becoming like them. "Come on over to the left, David Brock, you can be one of us."
Instead, we became lying corrupt whores. It's on us, no one else.
The key to left victories -- that's not elections, dumb asses -- is an informed public, a thinking public.
Spin is not information, phony outrage is not information, hatred is not information.
Actual information, actual knowledge, leads to a better world. I define that world as "left," others may feel differently. But the story of humankind, of civilization, demonstrates that knowledge produces advancement.
I ignore Media Matters, we pulled them from our links sometime ago when I noticed how a fact check wasn't a fact check. A fact check was a character attack on someone based not on their being incorrect factually but over a writer disagreeing with someone's opinion.
That can make for interesting writing. But don't try to pass it off as a fact check.
More than anything else Benghazi reveals the hollowness of what's passing for the left today.
We get tons of e-mails on the topic from apolitical people each week who are surprised that we're not marching with the spin. We won't. Unlike Eric and other liars, I don't 'meet the world' by turning on MSNBC. Meaning, I'm all over the country speaking to various groups of people. I'm not stupid enough to think that a low rated cable channel represents a significant part of America, let alone all of America.
MSNBC exists (in prime time) to push talking points. They coordinate them with the White House -- and when this was done under Bully Boy Bush, we were outraged. But see a a good whore doesn't just simulate passion, he or she can also simulate horror. In fact, there's probably a great deal more money to be made in acting shocked.
Outside the hacks on the right and the left, you've got a country of people who look at Benghazi and see four dead Americans. They see a press that ignores Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty and Sean Smith while constantly harping on Chris Stevens. This despite the fact that Woods and Doherty are Iraq War veterans and, as one e-mail this week noted, "I've heard more about the veterans killed at a parade in [Midland] Texas by a train than I have about either Mr. Woods or Mr. Doherty from the media."
Yeah, people notice it.
The American people are not stupid. If they were MSNBC would be a high rated network. Instead most realize it's nothing but propaganda at prime time. Most also grasp that there are no journalists on MSNBC prime time. That's a bunch of talk show hosts who couldn't get real jobs in the real world if they had to. These TV 'leaders' did not emerge because they were popular and America was clamoring for them to be on TV. They were forced off on America.
And yet they trot out their tired shtick each week night, pretending that they have some sort of insight to offer as they deliberately lie and skew and whore. And it's embarrassing.
When the left was shut out of the media not all that long ago, we talked about how we would fight back and a lot of us gave money to help on that. And we were assured this was about a smart media, not a partisan one. This would not be about creating an apologist media for Democrats, it would be about a real left media.
When they were out begging, this was really important. Democrats in Congress would not stand against the impending Iraq War. They would not, they refused to. They had the power to stop it before it started. They refused to use that.
Yes, there were some who wanted to. But they were stifled and allowed themselves to be stifled.
So it was really important to those of us repeatedly being hit up for seed money -- for radio, for magazines, for websites, for our own TV programs and -- dare we dream -- our own left network -- over and over, that the focus would be on informing the public, not carrying water for the Democratic Party.
If a whore will tell a man he's amazing in bed, why should I be amazed that a whore would tell so many of us that of course they wanted to create an independent media?
I shouldn't. I can be stupid, more so than anyone else, more often than anyone else. But I can also learn to stop giving. And that's what I did and that's what I encouraged a number of friends to do as well.
Occasionally, we hear from the beggars.
A variation of, "Dear Donor, for just a few hundred thousand you were able to feed me and my family of co-workers and we were able to pretend that we cared about accountability and ethics. Now look at what is left. It is all Democratic operatives. If you could send seed money, even $50,000, we would be able to start a left media that would stand up and tell truth to power."
That's really cute and I love the accompanying photo of you darting out of Manhattan's Bar Americain before the waitstaff realizes you stiffed them on the tip. But the reality is, when we starved the beast, we saw what was going on. And we're not giving money.
You can pretend right now, for example, that you were doing something. In the case of one begging letter, I remember you coming up with all these conspiracy theories about how this person had threatened Barack Obama or that person had and that's why Barack wasn't doing what the people had hoped. And that was May 2009. He hadn't even been in the White House half a year and already you were whoring for him with conspiracy theories about death threats from corporations and all this other distracting crap, none of which did a damn thing to hold the President of the United States accountable.
So let me make it really clear to you, whoring's a young kid's game. I know none of you are good looking. Let's face it, there's a reason you can't get TV work. But you're unattractive and now you gotta a few miles on you and you're still whoring and still expecting to pull in the big money.
It's not going to happen.
You're not just known whores, you're had whores.
A smart whore makes a point to please a customer, that's makes for repeat business.
Instead of pleasing your customers, you screwed them over. Now you show up thinking you're going to get more money from disgruntled johns?
Media Matters could have been something. I never gave to Media Matters. Yes, Crazy Naomi Wolf vouched for the soul of David Brock. I hope he had a real change and I wish him well but I don't contribute money to anyone who did what he did to Anita Hill. I also don't think, "I'm sorry," covers it.
The rush to embrace David Brock couldn't have happened without Crazy Naomi, admittedly. It also couldn't have happened without a left that really spits on women, that gladly degrades them. A left comprised of a bunch of screwed up sexually men who can't get their jollies without hating women. And that pretty much describes the lefty men writing commentaries today. In fact, right now, there's a woman pitching the equivalent of You'll Never Make Love In This Town Again about her affairs (bad sex) with a number of prominent lefty commentators (piss your BVDs, boys, her written pitch includes 'happily married' men as well).
Now we should forgive on the left, absolutely. And David Brock shouldn't have to wear a hair shirt for the rest of his life. But why would we want to take advice from him? Why would we believe he had advice to offer?
David Brock lied about Anita Hill. David Brock also repeated lies about Anita Hill in print. He did so, not surprising in the United States, in order to protect a man (who wasn't fit to sit on the Supreme Court).
David came to be shamed by his actions. Good. It means there was some humanity inside of him.
But what did he have to teach the left?
He wasn't giving course in how to rediscover your own humanity. He wasn't the new Marianne Williamson.
Was he an expert communicator?
No.
He was a liar. A self-billed "professional hitman."
And that's what he brought over to the left.
And the damage has been done. Eden is polluted, paradise is paved over, however, you want to allude to it, our politic is spoiled and rotting.
And if you ever doubt it, here comes Boehlert with his garbage.
Yet another faux left who has decided that Susan Rice must be compared to Condi Rice. I'm not sure if it's because they're women or because they're both African-American or due to gender and race. I have no idea but it's really telling in a "We compare 'em because we can't see no difference between them" kind of way.
You'd think David Brock being gay, that Susan Rice's homophobia (personal or official) that she's expressed as US Ambassador to the UN for the last years would mean Media Matters would dial down their hagiography. But that's not happening obviously.
So Boehlert shows up with nothing about Susan Rice because that, after all, would require work and that 'bath' he gave himself at the sink a few minutes ago before starting his shift is about all the 'work' he plans to do.
Boehlert's taking on Charles Krauthammer.
Today, Rice's sin in the eyes of Krauthammer and Fox News is that she
relayed what the intelligence community told her about Benghazi. For
that, she's guilty of incompetence or being misleading, in the words of
Krauthammer. But in 2005, Krauthammer stressed that Condoleezza Rice
should not be held responsible for relaying what the intelligence
community told her about Iraq because she didn't generate it.
It goes without saying that the sprawling Iraq War was a far more
important, costly and deadly event than the "small firefight" that
engulfed the Benghazi consulate, as national security writer Tom Rick's described it. And it goes without saying that as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice had a much more direct and influential role in initiaiting the Iraq War than United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice had responding to the terrorist attack in Libya.
Let's go through it.
The day after the attacks, as the State Dept's Patrick Kennedy acknowledged in public testimony to Congress, he briefed members of Congress and their staff that it was a terrorist attack. Yes, Boehlert is another 'expert' who's never managed to sit in on a Congressional hearing. It's amazing these experts will insist they read the press.
The days of the press covering Congressional hearings are really over as a result of cutbacks. We increased our coverage of Congressional hearings for that reason. We saw a hearing in November of last year find Democratic Senators asking about the 'troops coming home from Iraq' -- specifically about the 15,000 being moved to Kuwait. We saw the Secretary of Defense and Chair of the Joint-Chiefs state that the US was still negotiating with Iraq to keep troops there.
That hearing was heavily covered -- unlike most Congressional hearings.
It made CBS, NBC and ABC evening news. It had the wire services, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and everyone else. But, with the exception of Elisabeth Bumiller at the New York Times, what we just discussed wasn't noted. Instead, the 'coverage' was that John McCain and Leon Panetta had words. Strong words. McCain snapped at Panetta! (The reporters who were present didn't even stay for the first hour of the hearing. The minute the 'snap' took place, they eagerly began leaving, convinced they had a story. And if their names are Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, they did indeed have a story. If they were news reporters, they didn't have a story.)
So if you weren't at the hearing, I really don't need to hear from you.
At the hearing Patrick Kennedy affirmed what members of the Committee were saying, he briefed them or their staff, September 12th, and was saying it was a terrorist attack.
By the time Rice had gone on TV there were many problems with her presentation. She would have known that if she had any real role in the issue. She didn't. So, no, Boehlert, she never was "responding" to the September 11, 2012 attack. She did go on TV and yack about it. She presented the face of the American diplomat as uninformed and unintelligent. That's no win for anyone.
It goes without saying that the sprawling Iraq War was a far more
important, costly and deadly event than the "small firefight" that
engulfed the Benghazi consulate, as national security writer Tom Rick's described it. And it goes without saying that as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice had a much more direct and influential role in initiaiting the Iraq War than United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice had responding to the terrorist attack in Libya.
Now someone help me out on Boehlert because I appear to have slighted him. I've never given him credit for leading the call against the Iraq War. Apparently, reading him today, he did just that.
Now it was damn lonely in February 2003 speaking on US campuses against the impending war. A lot of people were still silenced by 9-11, others were cowed by it.
But I didn't realize Boehlert was right behind me on that circuit. Or that he, like me, was saying Iraq does not have WMD and there is no connection to al Qaeda.
You know why I didn't know that? Because it didn't happen.
There are those of us who put it on the line and then there is Eric Bohlert.
Even at Salon, he did not use his forum to make a difference on Iraq. In fact, he was writing sorries for Colin Powell (he might want to re-read that today and grasp how so much of it can apply to Susan Rice) and other nonsense. To review the lead up and the early years of the Iraq War is to encounter Boehlert covering such 'ghosts of the past' and topics such as Ben Barnes, Priscilla Owens, Katharine Harris, "Bush's 9-11 Coverup" and so much more.
None of it useful. None of informative. All of it pretty much partisan.
He did summon the 'courage' to attack Darryl Worley though it's hard to tell that really wasn't over the natural animosity and sour grapes of chubby Boehlert towards a pretty boy.
National intelligence claims.
I have never heard Condi accused of cooking the intelligence. Is she now accused of that?
If so, Boehlert needs to explain that claim.
But more importantly, who the hell is he to question Condi?
I say that because I took a stand. And I was told repeatedly I could be wrong (and that I was wrong) and I was willing to live with being wrong. I looked at what was known, what was possible and what was plausible. And, no, Iraq couldn't have WMD.
Where's Boehlert's stand on that? In real time?
He never did take a stand.
He was a coward and now he wants to attack Condi Rice. It might carry some weight if he had taken a position in real time or found a way to write about Iraq. It's hilarious, when you go through his articles from that time period, you've got all this crap about Terry Shiavo and other pop culture topics of the moment and then you'll come across this one piece about how Iraq had fallen off the media's radar. As if he'd been covering it. He's a joke. He was a hypocrite at Salon, he's a hypocrite now.
Condi's position was that Iraq had WMD. She was wrong. She based it on intelligence. She has not been accused of cooking the intel. (One of the few in the administration that's not been accused of that.) And she honestly believed that before she went into the White House (read her speeches and papers from 1996 forward).
She was wrong.
I have no problem saying that. I have no problem calling her a War Hawk.
Thing is, I was doing that in 2003, ahead of the invasion. Where was Eric?
Suddenly, he wants to get all worked up about the Iraq War and people who died in it but, in real time, he was writing about sex scandals in Congress and Jeff Gannon (oh, he couldn't shut up about Jeff Gannon -- he was obsessed with it). Looking through his past writing, every day is about what advances the Democratic Party. It's never about truth.
That's why he couldn't take a stand on Iraq.
He lacked the ethics to oppose the Iraq War and say, "This is a war built on lies."
He could -- and did -- write forever and a day, repeatedly, about Bully Boy Bush's National Guard record. But he didn't give a damn about Iraq and the proof is in what he wrote.
And now that whore wants to show up and use the Iraq War?
And he wants to call the attack in Benghazi a "small firefight" and do it by quoting Thomas E. Ricks?
Four Americans are dead. They were attacked because they are Americans. You can live in your bubble all you want but in America, people are paying attention.
Here's something Whore Boehlert can stuff in his tip jar: If you want to insist that Susan Rice did nothing wrong about Benghazi, don't dismiss it as a "small firefight." No one will take you seriously outside of MSNBC prime time.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
i hate the war
the ballet
