Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong with Washington

What Happened?
Oh, no!
Does the truth make the news?

Out of the blue, ex-Presidential Press Secretary Scott Mclelland blurts out the truth in a pre-April leak of his memoirs:
The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration "were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself.
This must have been too trivial or too ambiguous to amount to a news item. What Happened? The current White House press secretary, Dana Perino, said it wasn’t clear what McClellan meant in the excerpt.

Couldn't she have at least paraphrased her boss when McClellan announced his resignation in April 2006? Remember? Bush and Scotty embraced during a tearful appearance on the South Lawn and the president said,
I thought he handled his assignment with class, integrity. ... One of these days he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days and his time as the press secretary. And I can assure you I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, 'Job well done.'
Can't find what I'm looking for in the way of National Review, Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard. I just checked a couple of blogs:

Blogs4Brownback:
In a craven attempt to rake in a pile of cash, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan has betrayed his President and his Administration. And in doing so, he has betrayed America. Question: was Scott lying then or is he lying now? I can’t be sure, but it seems what he’s leaking now to the press will potentially make him a lot of money from BDS afflicted moonbats who reflexively grasp at any straw in a futile effort to embarrass our great President. Next he’ll be posting on Daily Kos.
And, Flopping Aces:
Whats the trash talk? Well, he writes a tell-all book and wanting to ensure it will sell millions he releases a few sentences that he knew would get the left drooling in anticipation.
I eagerly await the electronic and paper MSM pundits from the Conservative side. They should receive their talking points before the day is out. Until then, there's no news about the news.

5 Moderated Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm glad that we at Blogs 4 Brownback were ahead of the curve on this one. Scott McClelland is just trying to sell a book. It's obvious to anyone with eyes.

11/21/2007 04:17:00 PM  
Blogger Bob Keller said...

Actually vigilante I'm writing a blog entry about this right now..... Because, while I found the news story well covered on the three cable networks, the emphasis was quite different.

On MSNBC yesterday it was the main stOry, covered virtually non-stop with loads of guest analysis, wild accusations (well beyond the limited snippet actually released by McClelland) and hyperbole galore.

On CNN it received heavy coverage, but was the second story in newsbreaks. The coverage was heavy, but restrained and more intelligent.

The story was also covered on FOX, and surprisingly complete with some analysis. But coverage was much lighter. FOX instead covered the recent good news out of Iraq, a story completely ignored on MSNBC, but covered, once again fairly, on CNN.

So it seems to me that cable news is now like blogs with MSNBC becoming a mouthpiece for the left, FOX a shill for the right and only CNN attempting to be an actual news organization.

11/22/2007 03:11:00 AM  
Blogger Vigilante said...

Psycheout's comment reminds me that there are three kinds of Republicans.

(I won't delineate any further, because it's Thanksgiving!)

11/22/2007 10:33:00 AM  
Blogger Pink Liberty said...

I'll look it up but I'll just take a shot at guessing the three kinds of Republicans:

G.O.P.
Greedy
Out to Lunch (living in fantasy/eutopia)
Paranoid

11/23/2007 08:43:00 PM  
Blogger Vigilante said...

I'm not disclosing this line, because it's all too effective in getting chairs pushed back from the table and getting thrown out of bars. A real physical punch-up can be so much more satisfying sometimes. . .

11/24/2007 10:27:00 AM  

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