The Disconnected Mind of Bill Moyers
The liberal PBS host ranted against Bush-era invasions of privacy but gives himself a pass for his own gay witch hunts under LBJ.
On August 17, 2007, Bill Moyers closed Bill Moyer’s Journal, his weekly show on the taxpayer-subsidized Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), by bidding farewell to Karl Rove, a top aide to President Bush who was leaving his job as deputy chief of staff at the end of the month:
Using church pews as precincts Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat — a battering ram, aimed at the devil’s minions, especially at gay people.
Interesting how Moyers, a former Democratic White House press secretary under Lyndon Johnson, singles out an aide to a Republican president for using gay people as political fodder. When he occupied a similar position in the White House of LBJ — a president far more eager than Rove’s employer to destroy his political opponents — Moyers did not hesitate to use sexuality as what he might call a “weapon of political combat.”
And not just political combat. Moyers even tried to find out about the sexuality of a number of aides to his Democratic boss.
When investigating the secret files of longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1975, then-acting Attorney General Laurence Silberman learned how Hoover “had allowed — even offered — the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes.” Bill Moyers took advantage of that invitation to help his boss deal with a crisis which the Democrat feared could jeopardize his reelection in 1964.
In October, just a few weeks before the election, Washington, D.C. police arrested one of the president’s top aides, Walter Jenkins, catching him having sex with another man in a YMCA bathroom. “Moyers … was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater’s staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers’ memo to the FBI was in one of the files.”
Moyers confirmed the authenticity of the memo to Silberman, concerned how he would “explain this to his children.”
Moyers didn’t just seek to use sexuality as a weapon of political combat. He even helped Johnson investigate the sexuality of another top aide to Johnson, Jack Valenti, and others in the administration. Reviewing “[p]reviously confidential FBI files,” Washington Post reporter Joe Stephens discovered that Moyers was “seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members.”
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B. Daniel Blatt blogs at GayPatriot.
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23 Comments
1. Marc Malone:What’s new about this? The Left is always guilty of what it accuses the Right of doing. They have neither shame nor scruples. That’s the value of not claiming any values. You can do anything, and people shrug their shoulders.
Feb 24, 2009 - 12:43 am 2. SGT Ted:“The Left is always guilty of what it accuses the Right of doing.”
It also reveals the criminal-like mindset of “everybody does it” used by the left to justify their pathologies. They claim businessmen are greedy cheaters, abd we find a number of prominent leftwing politicians getting caught out as tax cheats. They cry about civil liberties violations and are the first to call for jailing and marginalizing people for having political differences and merely exercizing free speech or their voting rights, ala opposition to gay marriage. They compain about the reichwing police state and frequently call for or excuse police state tactics to be used on their political opposition, ala the illegal publishing of Joe the Plumbers child support records by the Government. They think everyone is like them.
Feb 24, 2009 - 4:40 am 3. Chris Grieb:I would not hold my breath for Moyer’s mea culpa. I remember the daisy ad and so I don’t watch Moyers.
Feb 24, 2009 - 5:16 am 4. beavercleaver:Another sanctimonious left wing twit. It is astonishing how the left can do exactly what they accuse the right of doing, then deflect the whole issue, in this case by attacking the bloggers. My jaw drops in amazement as BHO tells baldface lies, does exactly the opposite of what he campaigned on, and goes back on promise after promise, while the MSM sits silently, looks the other way and whistles. Moyers is just a slimy weasel. He fits right in with this bunch.
Feb 24, 2009 - 6:10 am 5. aloysiusmiller:Greenwald has given Moyers absolution. What else can be said about this?
Feb 24, 2009 - 6:49 am 6. epb:Another glaring example of media malpractice — as is, propagandists masquerading as journalists! Moyers is a hypocrite.
Feb 24, 2009 - 7:02 am 7. one of your own:Andrea Mackras
Feb 24, 2009 - 7:34 am 8. Steve P.:All that this proves is that both Republicans and Democrats have no qualms with witch hunting against gays when it is politically expedient and advantageous. As if we didn’t know this already.
Feb 24, 2009 - 8:35 am 9. Amy:“Bill Moyers took advantage of that invitation to help his boss deal with a crisis which the Democrat feared could jeopardize his reelection in 1964.”
LBJ wasn’t running for “reelection” in 1964; he was not elected President in 1960, JFK was. LBJ was running for President in his own right in 1964 and chose not to seek reelection in 1968.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:03 am 10. AnninCA:Moyers is an entertainer, first and foremost.
I haven’t found him relevant in a decade.
Frankly, animal channel is more enlightening.
Feb 24, 2009 - 10:48 am 11. johngaltlives:Bill Moyers has a brain? Thats news to me. Ive always known Moyers to have a very BROWN NOSE from sticking his nose up GEORGE SOROS FAT CAN every morning. Id be willing to bet Moyers probably brushes his teeth LEWINSKY STYLE.
Feb 24, 2009 - 12:12 pm 12. Pat J:9. Amy:
Feb 24, 2009 - 12:20 pm 13. Anthony:——-
Good catch. If this yahoo Blatt wants to rant about Bill Moyers he should at least get his facts straight.
“It seems that the driving force of Moyers’ ‘journalism’ remains the same as that of his role as a operative for a ruthless Democratic president: undermining his political foes.”
It seems that the influence of ex-press secretaries from Bill Moyers to George Stephanopoulos has been to corrupt television journalism.
Now they have no standards, and nobody trusts them.
Feb 24, 2009 - 2:02 pm 14. Larry Miller:Bill Moyers is about as trustworthy as Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Moyers is just one more Liberal hypocrite, I can’t understand why the so-called MSM isn’t calling him on the carpet for his outrageous, slanderous “sermons” on PBS …. just kidding, of course the media won’t mention ol’ Billy Boy. Now, if Bill O’Reilly found himself in the same position ….
Feb 24, 2009 - 3:06 pm 15. TurfMonster:“Good catch. If this yahoo Blatt wants to rant about Bill Moyers he should at least get his facts straight.”
Outside of this one mistake, Mr. Platt does have his facts straight. What Moyers did in the 1960’s for LBJ is reprehensible and a simple mistake in a column like this doesn’t absolve Moyers for what he did.
Feb 24, 2009 - 3:27 pm 16. Mike2:If Bill Moyers had a brain he would be dangerous. He’s the perfect leftie, a total hypocrite.
Feb 24, 2009 - 5:45 pm 17. tioedong:———————————-
Who is John Galt?
actually, prior to Monicagate, even heterosexual affairs opened one to blackmail…a security threat.
Feb 24, 2009 - 7:22 pm 18. Smalley:Bernie Ward.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:04 pm 19. C. Siegel:The hypocrisy of Moyers is disgusting, but no surprise. The real and unconscionable damage he did to undeserving citizens remains. If he can find some other ad hominem way to undermine conservatives, he will.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:59 pm 20. deguello:What mind? I thought it was just a sack of manure.
Feb 25, 2009 - 10:14 am 21. Pat J:14. Larry Miller:
“Now, if Bill O’Reilly found himself in the same position ….”
Andrea Mackris?
Feb 26, 2009 - 2:22 pm 22. Lucy Brown:I would like to know if a person like me, can send a fax or mail to tell a Moyers that we know what he has done in the past, so he doesn’t have to preach on his Government subsidized Public TV. thank you, Lucy Brown
Feb 26, 2009 - 10:21 pm 23. Lucy Brown:I would like to know if a person like me, can send a fax or mail to tell a Moyers that we know what he has done in the past, so he doesn’t have to preach on his Government subsidized Public TV. thank you, Lucy Brown
SORRY YOU ARE WRONG, I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN IN THIS SPACE. thank YOU, LUCY BROWN
Feb 26, 2009 - 10:23 pm