Platt, Roger, Rod and all MOQists:
Today I offer a political version of "The Century of the Self", which was a
BBC documentary about the Freudian take-over of advertising and the
subsequent manipulation of the American mind. (Thanks agin, Rod.) This one
ought to be called "The Decade of Scandals". Its a response to comments by
Roger and Platt, but I'd bet a week's pay that you'll all find it at least
mildly interesting. The quotes are from David Brock's latest book. I should
add that I knew Matt Drudge. Matt Drudge was a friend of mine. I know from
personal experience, and from the things I've read elsewhere, that Brock's
words are true. (I worked in talk radio during this ugly period.) This is
just a taste, a tiny sample of how outrageous lies were circulated through
the American political bloodstream and consciousness. Its just a sample of
how the public was BLINDED BY THE RIGHT, which is the title of Brock's book.
Roger wrote...
Where your critiques were appropriate, I basically agree with your
commentary
(as clearly shown below). I don't agree with many of the criticisms though,
and I think they provide a lopsided, unbalanced view. You know, kinda like
representing the Clinton era based only upon his follies (real or accused)
with Whitewater, Monica, Travelgate and the pardons. Even where true, they
are not necessarily balanced.
Platt wrote...
Precisely why there should be many media outlets. The Internet is a
case in point where at last the individual has a chance to compete with
the BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN and all the rest, the Drudge
Report being an example.
"Drudge was a self-created, self-trained, and self-edited phenomenon of the
Internet age. He had gotten his start e-mailing tips picked up about ongoing
film projects and confidential box office numbers, often literally out of
trash cans, at the CBS studios, where he worked as a gift shop cashier. As
his e-mail list mushroomed , he set up a website, which provided links to
newspapers, magazines and popular columns, and expanded his coverage to
include politics, specializing in anti-Clinton gossip. Though he skillfully
exploited the fact that he worked from the West Coast, often being the first
to report news that would appear in the morning papers on the East Coast by
combing through their websites the evening before, many of his exclusive
scoops, such as reports that Hillary Clinton would be indicted, or that
Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who had died in a plane crash, might have been
murdered, proved notoriously unreliable. His most sensational stories
involved outing the sex life of President Clinton. Predictably, the right
wing embraced Drudge as the newest frontier in the propagands wars, and in
the next few years, he would host a talkshow on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News
Channel, sell a book through the Conservative Book Club and appear as an
honored speaker before organizations of the Christian Right." P282
"His politics were right wing - he often expressed suppost for Pat Buchanan
- though no serious thought seemed to have gone into his convictions. His
Clinton bashing appeared designed merely to drive attention to his site."
P282
"Drudge picked me up at a friend's house in the Hollywood Hills in his red
Geo Metro, arriving with an impressive bouquet of yellow roses. Jesus, I
thought, Drudge thinks we're going on a date. ... Six months hence, I
recieved the following e-mail message from Drudge, under the subject heading
'XXX". Drudge wrote, 'Laura Ingraham is spreading stuff about you and me
being fuck buddies. I should only be so lucky.'" "Drudge later denied a
report that he was gay in the 1999 book 'Dish' by Jeannette Walls." P283
"I thought both Drudge and Ingraham, neither of whom had ever worked as
journalists, might learn from my war stories. We talked about Troopergate,
Gary Aldrich, and Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, my concerns made no
impression on them. Arianna, Laura, Drudge - sadly, they were all lost
causes." P283
"I found other magazine in the journalistic mainstream that were willing to
publish me, despite my checkered journalistic past. The experience was an
eye-opening one. I'll never forget the panic that came over me when I
recieve the first call from a fact checker at NEW YORK magazine, asking me
to submit my notes for a story. In twelve years of right-wing journalism, my
work had never been fact-checked." P295
"And the Jones team had done just what George Conway had said it would do,
this time by leaking it to Matt Drudge. I was privy to Conway's e-mail
traffic to Drudge through Laura Ingraham, who had hooked the two up. Conway
had been a Drudge tipster long before Lewinsky surfaced. In one e-mail from
Conway to Drudge, Conway claimed that Clinton suffered Peyronie's disease,
which causes curvature of the penis. Drudge posted the canard." P308
"In August 1997, Drudge was posting on his site an exclusive item, citing
unnamed Republican sources, falsely claiming that newly appointed White
House Aide Sidney Blumenthal had a history of spousal abuse. Though his
telephone number was listed, the incendiary item containded no comment from
Blumenthal, or from the White House. Apparently, Drudge had not bothered to
test his information. The next day Blumenthal denied the charge, hired a
libel lawyer, and Drudge issued a retracton. Unsatisfied, Blumenthal and his
wife filed suit." P313
"When I met Drudge at my home, I offered him my telephone number so that in
the future he could check facts about me before publication. 'Why would I
want to do that?', he giggled.
"During the week in January 1998 tgat the Lewinsky story broke on the DRUDGE
REPORT and then in the WASHINGTON POST, I recieved a call from Sidney
Blumenthal. I told him all about billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who had
funneled more that $2 million through the SPECTATOR to dig up and publicize
damaging information on the Clintons, which at this point was a closely
guarded secret with the magazine. The Akansas Project's directors had a
close association with, and a possible financial pipline to, David Hale, the
star witness against the President in the Whitewater inquiry. When questions
were raised about the project internally, SPECTATOR board member Ted Olson,
Ken Starr's best friend and David Hale's lawyer, (and presently Bush's
Solictor General) acted swiftly to fire Ron Burr and shut down the
independent audit Burr had sought. Troopergate, I revealed, had been
instigated behind the scenes by Peter Smith, a major financier of Gingrich's
GOPAC. Smith also turned out to be one of the first to put Lucianne
Goldberg in touch with the Jones team. I also knew that Starr had been
approached to draft a brief in the Jones case; Starr failed to disclose his
subsequent secret contacts with the Jones lawyers when he sought
jurisdiction over the Jones case from the Justice Department." P317
"It may have been the germ of the first line of defense; that Clinton was
targeted, as Hillary charged on the TODAY show, by a 'vast right wing
conspiracy'. The press scoffed at Hillary's claim. I might have quibblled
with the word 'vast', but otherwise I knew it was no exaggeration. There
was, as Hillary said, 'another story to be written about the subterranean
origins of the scandal. I knew the moment I heard the story that Clinton had
likely dallied with Lewinsky, besmirching himself and his office. Yet I also
knew that there HAD been a conspiracy. Clinton's private transgression with
Lewinsky became a matter of public knowledge only through the dedicated
machination of his foes, who sought to use it for seditious purposes."
P318-9
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