c.i. just called with a 'what you doing?' having my morning coffee, working my way through the washington post and watching democracy now. had i seen the new york times yet? no. in fact, i'd told fly boy he really could canel the subscription if he wanted because that paper is so useless to me.
while i was talking to c.i., i opened it up and noticed elisabeth bumiller's '
'Troubleshooting the Tale of a Hunt Gone Sour' and assumed c.i. had covered this. 'no,' i was told, 'it's a white house letter.' c.i. sees those at floating op-eds and doesn't cover the op-eds or editorials the way the main section, the reporting, is covered at the common ills.
so let me grab it. bumiller, who serves on the elite fluff patrol - hell, she commands the elite fluff patrol, has a warm and tender talk with professional liar mary matalin.
before any visiter thinks, 'you are slamming matalin because she's a republican' let me add that she's married to a professional liar - james carville.
i think they're both disgusting. they disgrace the national debate as they attempt to score points through spin. people always say things like, 'how can a democrat be married to a republican' as though they have no common ground. they have common ground: they both believe in lying. they trot out spin and pass it off as truth. i have no respect for either. (or for their sonny & cher like tv appearances.)
so mary matalin needs to get out a lame story that she had trouble getting out all last week. don imus roared at her when she attempted to lie/spin him last week. she needed an easier audience, so she went where every 1 goes when they need an unquestioning audience, to bumiller. you tell it to bumiller, she writes it down exactly as you tell her because she's apparently incapable of critical thought.
so matalin tells bumiller, and bumiller writes it up as fact, that there was a statement from dick cheney after the shooting of his friend on that hunting trip. matalin says she was awoken and it was read to her over the phone. now this statement, that no 1 ever heard of until matalin started her latest round of lying/spinning, naturally paints cheney in a good light. matalin says she killed it and that it was better to have no statement released than a bad statement.
funny thing is, cheney sat down with brit hume and never mentioned an attempted statement even when hume lightly grilled him. and katherine armstrong, who has turned out to be quite the chatty cathy, has never mentioned it.
so people can and should suspect that this is an attempt to lie/spin and rewrite history. when it's time for that, you call a mary matalin or james carville because ethics don't matter to those 2. they're all about tricks and manipulations. i actually think matalin has a little bit more integrity than carville. it's a teaspoon more, but it is a little more. carville's just a bean counter. for all her bean counting, matalin actually believes in something. it's a frightening and disgusting view of the world, but she believes in it.
today, she's doing what she does best in the paper of no record, creating myths and lies in support of what she believes in. (carville believes in winning elections. matalin believes in that as well as in a dark and oppressive way of life.)
will it work? it worked for bumiller but everything works on bumiller. you drop your ten dollars on the desk beside the bed on the way out and she writes it up.
i don't think any 1 takes bumiller seriously but if there's even 1 reader who does, note that this mythical statement, that matalin supposedly killed, has never been mentioned until the jokes didn't stop after cheney did his sit down with brit hume.
c.i. was wondering if i intended to post anything today? i was thinking about taking the day off. but i'll post early instead. i may end up working with c.i. and some others on a joint entry later today.
zach wrote me, and i see c.i. as well, asking that i note the contents of sunday's the third estate sunday review so here they are:
A Note to Our Readers
Editorial: No spine on no spying
TV Review: Close To Home (and floating in the toilet)
1 Book, 10 Minutes (Danny Schechter, The Death of Media)
Psst, here come the gatekeepers
Musings on the service economy
check out jane mayer's latest in the new yorker, 'THE MEMO: How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted' - which c.i.'s covered at length this morning in 'NYT: Golden reads Jane Mayer online (Guantanamo)' and 'other items.'
the common ills
the new york times
elisabeth bumiller
dick cheney
jane mayer
the new yorker
mary matalin
