Maddow Talks Gop, Weiner on Letterman
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Maddow Talks Gop, Weiner on Letterman
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LIKE DOWD ON RICE: Good God. The history of an age could be found in Greg Mitchellās post last Friday. Or could it?
On the sixth anniversary of āMission Accomplished,ā Mitchell recalled the way big pundits recorded Commander Bushās splashdown on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. The commander strutted about in his flight suit, producing some of the most god-awful ācommentaryā in the history of pseudo-journalism. We all recall the lunacy of Chris Matthews and Gordon Liddy, gaping at the commanderās manly assets on Hardball (text below). But thanks to Mitchellās review, we could also recall what Maureen Dowd wrote, some four days earlier. Take the childrenāand the petsāto some distant chamber:
DOWD (5/4/03):The tail hook caught the last cable, jerking the fighter jet from 150 m.p.h. to zero in two seconds.
Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.
He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics.
Compared to Karl Rove’s ”revvin’ up your engine” myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer’s movies look like Lizzie McGuire.
This time Maverick didn’t just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning.
Yes, that sounds like crazy stuff. But uh-oh! Missing from Mitchellās post was a bit of elementary fairness. In her column, Dowd was actually mocking Bush for his manly, cock-of-the-walk presentation (to read the whole column, click here). Her attack on Bush begins at the point in the column where Mitchell stops quoting. Soon, she has an alter ego saying this to Bush:
DOWD: You can fly, Maverick. But you, Cheney and Rummy are strutting around on a victory tour when you haven’t found Osama or Saddam or WMD; you haven’t figured out how you’re going to stop tribal warfare and religious fanaticism and dangerous skirmishes with our soldiers; you don’t yet know how to put Afghanistan and Iraq back together so that a lot of people over there don’t hate us. And why can’t you stop saying that getting rid of Saddam removed “an ally” of Al Qaeda and was payback for 9/11? You know we just needed to jump somebody in that part of the world.
In fairness, that was salient stuff. Dowd had her Bush figure respond this way, using the kind of Dems-are-fems lingo she herself practically invented: āHey, Miss Iceman, why don’t you head to the Ladies Room? John Kerry and John Edwards are already there, fixin’ their hair all pretty-like. Howard Dean’s with ’em, trying on a dress, and Kucinich is hemming it for him.ā
Weād have to say that Mitchellās quotation of Dowd was a bit unfair. But then, bungled quotationāand tortured paraphraseāare key parts of the modern landscape. If you could wave a magic wand and remove Bad Paraphrase from Campaign 2000, for example, thereās no way Bush could have reached the White House. The history of our modern politics is a history of this technique.
We humans love tendentious paraphrase! We see this again in Dowdās new column, a column in which she actually gets something semi-right about Condi Rice. Dowd uses a tortured semi-paraphrase firstābut lurking inside her central passage, Dowd does say something thatās basically accurate.
Even Dowd sees the basic framework here! Why canāt our progressive TV hosts?
Dowd is discussing the questions Rice took from some Stanford students last week. Before we get to her central passage, letās enjoy a good solid laugh as she sets the scene:
DOWD (5/3/09): Condi Rice, who plans to go back to being a professor of political science at Stanford, got grilled by a student at a reception at a dorm there on Monday.
I’ve often wondered why students haven’t been more vocal in questioning the architects of the Iraq war and ”legal” torture who landed plum spots at prestigious universities. Probably because it would have taken the draft, like the guillotine, to concentrate the mind. But finally, the young man at Stanford spoke up. Saying he had read that Ms. Rice authorized waterboarding, he asked her, ”Is waterboarding torture?ā
Too funny! Dowd often wonders why college students donāt question these people more! Thatās odd! Weāve often wondered the same darn thing about our multimillionaire journalists! (And their young, millionaire-track colleagues.) Appropriate guffaws to the side, Dowd continues with her tale. In our view, she essentially misparaphrases Rice in the passage we highlight. But she makes a sound point in the process:
DOWD (continuing directly): She replied: ”The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture. So that’sāand by the way, I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency.”
This was precisely Condi’s problem. She simply relayed. She never stood up against Cheney and Rummy for either what was morally right or what was smart in terms of our national security.
The student pressed again about whether waterboarding was torture.
”By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture,” Ms. Rice said, almost quoting Nixon’s logic: ”When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
She also stressed that, ”Unless you were there in a position of responsibility after Sept. 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans.”
Reyna Garcia, a Stanford sophomore who videotaped the exchange, said of Condiās aria, ”I wasn’t completely satisfied with her answers, to be honest,” adding that ”President Obama went ahead and called it torture and she did everything she could not to do that.ā
In fairness, noāRice really didnāt āalmost quot[e] Nixon’s logic.ā (Please note the slick use of āalmost.ā) She really didnāt say what Nixon is said to have said: If the president orders it, that makes it legal. But by the time Dowd typed her column, everyone else had enjoyed some good fun with this rather tendentious claim. So Dowd went ahead and typed it tooāhiding behind her āalmost.ā
No, Candidate Gore didnāt say that he invented the Internet (the most consequential mis-paraphrase in American history). Candidate McCain didnāt say he wanted a hundred-year war (the press corps dropped that one quickly). And no: Condi Rice didnāt really say that if the president orders X, that means that X is legal. But in the midst of her fumbling fun, Dowd raised a very good point in this passage, which we quote again:
DOWD: This was precisely Condi’s problem. She simply relayed. She never stood up against Cheney and Rummy for either what was morally right or what was smart in terms of our national security.
Rice may not have made the decisions, Dowd said. But she didnāt push back either.
Dowd raises an excellent point in that passage, though her history may be imperfect. In this morningās Times, Mark Mazzetti offers a history of the torture/enhanced techniques regime (just click here). Among other things, he attempts to report what Rice actually did about this regime at various junctures. His reporting could be wrong, of course. But in Mazzettiās account, Rice offered āstrong supportā for the torture/enhanced techniques program at least until May 2004, when a critical internal report began to raise essential questions. He describes her pushing back against Cheney on several points during Bushās second term, even winning at least one fight. (At other times, she accepts Cheneyās wins.) You can read Mazzettiās full report for yourself. But his account of Riceās conduct isnāt quite as one-sided as Dowdās.
That said, Dowd raised an excellent point: By normal standards, serious questions should be asked about the role officials like Rice played in Bushās regime. What role did she play in the move to war? What role did she play in the creation of the torture regime? Even Dowd understands that this is a basic, essential framework. Thatās why we remind you again of the work which occurred when Riceās number-one man, Philip Zelikow, appeared on our most liberal TV show.
Appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show, Zelikow was allowed to skate. No questions were asked about any of thisāand the same policy obtained two nights later, when Colin Powellās top aide appeared (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/27/09). But then, when Powell himself appeared on this show, he wasnāt asked the worldās most obvious question. Was water-boarding discussed in your presence? The question was screaming out to be asked. But your new imaginary best friend completely forgot to ask it.
Citizens need to lobby their journalists! More specifically, progressives need to tell people like Maddow that they expect her to ask these questions. That they expect her to challenge these public figures. That they want her to stop kissing up to every big star who drifts by.
Progressives need to lobby that way. Unless this nightly ājournalismā is really just a social event, a way to define our glorious clan. A way to feel good for an hour each night. A way to feel goodāand superior.
Even Dowd can see the shape of this problem! Why on earth does our new best friend keep giving big Bush aides a pass?
Yes, they actually said it: We think Mitchellās quote is unfair to Dowd. But hereās what Liddy and Matthews saidāand yes, the boys really meant it! In his opening question, Matthews refers to Democratic criticisms of Bushās glorious splashdown:
MATTHEWS (5/8/03): Gordon, my buddy, thanks for joining us. I’m now giving you a shooting gallery of opportunity here.
LIDDY: Yes, you are.
MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?
LIDDY: Well, Iāin the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man.
And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you knowāand I’ve worn those because I parachuteāand it makes the best of his manly characteristic.
You go run thoseārun that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t countāthey’re all liars. Check that out!
Please note: Four years later, Liddy went straight to the smutty sexual trashing dished to Gore and Naomi Wolfāa sexual trashing which was thoroughly accepted by the ācareer liberalā world in real time. And make no mistakeāMatthews took Liddyās side on this program, ridiculing the silly folk who had been criticizing Bushās splashdown. In fairness, that would have included Dowd, in her earlier column. Matthews thought they were all nuts:
MATTHEWS: And I’ve got to say why do the Democrats, as you say, want to keep advertising this guy’s greatest moment?
LIDDY: Look, he’s, he’s coming across as aāwell, as women would call in on my show saying, what a stud, you know, and then guyāthey’re seeing him out there with his flight suit, and he’sāand they know he’s an F-105 fighter jock. I mean it’s just great.
MATTHEWS: Let’s let him talk for himself. Here’s President Bush expressing his confidence that he did the right thing…
The boys were full of admiration for Bushās manly splashdown. Of course, Matthews had always swum in this sea. Searching today on āHardball and Bush and manly,ā we hit this earlier bit of misery, from Campaign 2000. At this time, Hardball was soliciting and airing comments from insightful viewers:
MATTHEWS (4/27/00): Our second caller says that Al Gore and George W. Bush are both attractive candidates, but in very different ways.
CALLER: I really can’t believe that Chris Matthews thinks that Al Gore is the more attractive of the two presidential candidates. Al Gore is attractive in a sort of limp-wrist sort of way. However, George Bush is attractive in a manly sort of way.
MATTHEWS: Well, Susan, as I said last night, I’ve been polling women, by the way, on this subject, because I don’t know whatāhave any idea what the right answer is, which of these two bucks women find most appealing or least appealing. I’ll remember to include, however, your comments in my current tally. And if you want to play Hardball yourself, just call us at 202-824-6799, or e-mail us at hardball@msnbc.com.
Each candidate was attractiveāGore in a limp-wrist sort of way, Bush in a manly manner.
Of all the comments he had received, Matthews chose to read just two on the air. This was one of the comments he chose. Five months before, in November 1999, he had played an aggressive, leading role in the sexual trashing of Wolf and Gore.
Career liberals cowered and stared at all this. They still donāt discuss it, to this very day. Olbermann licks Matthewsā keister on air. Bush ended up you-know-where.
March 30, 2009 9:46 est.
BS was the second guy I ever read on the tubes…-JT
Feel free to focus for five…you little freaks…
STILL DUMBING US DOWN! A former sports guyāand a former Rhodes Scholarācontinue to dumb liberals down: // link // print // previous // next //
Since we asked: On Friday, we asked a question (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/27/09): Now that the Washington Post had semi-corrected its bungled report about the weakling Obama Admin, would Rachel Maddow follow suit? Last Tuesday night, Maddowās report had been even more wrong than the Postās efforts had been.
Did Maddow correct? Weād have to say no. She did devote a lengthy segment to the topic in questionāa segment we thought was quite remarkable for the ways it seemed to pretend that Maddow was brilliantly right all along. To see Fridayās segment, just click here (it runs more than seven minutes). Weāll discuss this topic later this week.
By the way, do you want to see Maddowās original segment? It seems to have disappeared.
The emperorās favorite columnist: Sadly for you and your whole family, āThe Emperorās New Clothesā may be Hans Christian Andersenās most contemporary fable. Quite frequently, people simply canāt see lunacy, even as it stands before themāif the lunacy in question involves a famous authority figure.
We thought of Andersen when we read Maureen Dowdās Sunday column. Dowd is the most famous columnist at our most influential newspaperāand sheās been visibly crazy for years. Continue reading What He Just Said: The Brilliant Bob Somerby on the Madness of Maureen Dowd