so bald and boring dropped on out of the race. if you read the common ills monday, you read that ol' ad nags, adam nagourney, the human cod liver pill, got it wrong. i e-mailed c.i. and said what did ad nags get wrong? not because i doubted c.i. but because i was curious.
c.i. wrote back the story isn't donnie fowler or howard dean, the story is that behind the scenes martin frost was being rejected. that's what was going on. so reading ad nags over after that e-mail it was obvious he was back pedaling the real story.
ol' ad nags wanted to frame it as 'howard dean is on the ropes' or donnie's on the rise coz of his pops. that was not the story. the story was that bald and boring was rejected.
why?
because he represents the failure that is the party. because he represents the insider culture that is grossly out of touch. because people have been weighing in about his refusal to proudly proclaim 'i am a democrat.' and mainly because frost can go on the attack and the party wanted to avoid that.
so did ad nags lie?
c.i. said either ad nags had bad information or he chose to distort it.
why would he choose to distort it?
because he was doing payback to frost. that part is me, not c.i. ad nags has sucked up so hard into the ruling class that he can't tell the truth because there's not an elected dem that can't call in a marker.
or maybe because he's just lazy and has bad sources. if so, he shouldn't be the chief political correspondent for the paper but it's a crappy paper so maybe it doesn't matter.
and had cod liver oil's writing is better than reading anything that jodi wilgoren could wrap her sizeable girth around.
but he got it wrong.
that really doesn't seem to matter much to the new york times. they get it wrong all the time. but they're a nice lap dog so they are happy as long as it does not enrage the power structure.
before any 1 e-mails -- you took c.i.'s scoop, i did have permission. i was asked to wait until bald and boring made it official by dropping out of the race. c.i. wanted to protect the source who provided the info and said that this way it was once removed - c.i. has info, c.i. passes it on to me and we're all in the clear.
i'll e-mail this entry to c.i. so they can link to it.
what happened sunday was not about dean or about fowler, the story - the one ad nags didn't tell you about on monday - was that martin frost was being forced out of the race.
donnie's supporters did lobby frost supporters. they were never going to for dean.
but it was explained and argued at length that bald and boring was not the 1 to sit in the dnc chair.
and ad nags turned it into a war against howard dean when it was really a message of 'drop out frost.'
c.i. knows fowler and asked that when i write about this i stress that although donald fowler is admired the support for donnie was not coz he was 'donald's son.' donnie fowler is impressive in his own right. and the point was to get frost out of the race because if dean does get the chair, they did not want frost doing his usual slash and burn.
bald and boring did his slash and burn when he was briefly competing with nancy pelosi for the minority post in the house. started playing by the gop handbook and calling her a 'san francisco democrat.' the thought that he might start labeling dean in a similar way worried the party leaders.
that was the main point that pulled the frost supporters over into donnie's camp because dean stands a real chance of winning and the party didn't want to risk bald and boring going nasty and handing over ammo that could be tossed out for the next 4 years: 'yes anchor person i hear what dr. dean is saying but as martin frost pointed out when he was running against you, dr. dean ...'
the message being sent was clear to frost. so ad nags missed it in his story. maybe he owed frost a favor? maybe he had an axe to grind against dean? maybe he just knew 'shock to dean' would attract more readers than the truth 'bald and boring pushed out.' but he missed the story.
either ad nags can't get the inside info or else he's willing to distort for some reason. whatever.
point is that when you see ad nags's name, you should remember this and realize that just because he puts it in print does not make it true.
