Roger Simon comments on the Edwards/National Enquirer affair. Roger writes:
Some cheap psychoanalysis. I would guess that Edwards, like many cheaters, wanted to be caught. After all, it is hard to conceive he would be that dumb as to conduct a tryst in this modern/post-Bill Clinton era in, of all places, the Beverly Hilton. The Hilton — where such events as the Pre-Oscar luncheon and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent victory celebration are held — would be among the last places you would choose. It’s often a virtual den of paparazzi with staff and others always standing by to tip the gossip press on the latest celeb sighting. There are thousands of places in Southern California more low key for such a meeting. If Edwards is indeed that dumb, we are certainly lucky he never became President. Among those who should be scratching their heads at this moment are his supporters.
It’s safe to say that on any given hour, dozens of couples are having assignations in a variety of places. Some may have even been checking into the Beverly Hilton at the same time as John Edwards. Why was the Edwards affair news while the others just part of the background noise of life in a big city? Probably because the National Enquirer reporter threatened to introduce two entities to each other which when brought into contact would produce mutual annihilation. There were two Edwardses. One consisted of the legend whose image was carefully burnished in the press and the other was John Edwards the man, no better and no worse than most of us. And just as matter and anti-matter have to be kept apart in order to prevent both from canceling each other out in a burst of energy, so did the Edwards and anti-Edwards need to remain separate in order for both to survive. Both could not coexist in the same space of public perception.
The irony is that the John Edwards legend and all of its props were created by artful manipulation of the media. Nobody objected to that. But when the National Enquirer threatened to introduce the legend to its opposite there was a hue and cry about their lack of professionalism, etc. It may be pertinent to point out the Enquirer’s offense wasn’t entirely against the privacy of three people. Their real crime was to threaten to expose the facade built up with the help of parts of the press itself; to destroy the accepted narrative with an inconvenient fact. The news wasn’t that two people were having an affair at the Beverly Hilton; the real headline was that a carefully contrived myth was in danger of being exploded. In the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance there is this exchange between a politician and a reporter:
Ransom Stoddard: You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?
Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
The modern version of this adage might be ‘when we’ve made up the legend don’t bother with the facts.’ Mickey Kaus writes “in a move that has apparently stirred up some internal discontent, the Los Angeles Times has banned its bloggers , including political bloggers, from mentioning the Edwards … story. Even bloggers who want to mention the story in order to make a skeptical we-don’t-trust-the-Enquirer point are forbidden from doing so. Kausfiles has obtained a copy of the email Times bloggers received from editor Tony Pierce.”
The problems with legends is that their continued existence requires maintenance. One example of the dead weight of maintaining a legendarium was illustrated by the recent primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It was remarkable to see pundits smashing the very same Hillary legend which they had been constructing only months before. One legend had to be replaced with another, the facts as unimportant in the latter as they were in the former. Another more recent example has been the public coverage of the Surge, condemned as “doomed” until it became convenient to advocate a precipitate withdrawal in the face of success; now the success of the Surge itself makes an arbitrary withdrawal viable because ‘we cannot lose the war’.
Andrew Klavan’s wonderful opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal observes that some public myths are so entrenched they can only be challenged indirectly, like the political struggles in Mao’s China named after flowers, numbers and colors. Myths are carefully confronted in code until it safe to challenge them directly. Klavan writes:
A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds … oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level … a conservative movie about the war on terror. … Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past. … And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror — films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” — which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe. Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3″ and now “The Dark Knight”?
The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?
Because it cannot be otherwise, unless you are willing to disregard a memo from your editor and endure the ostracism of your friends. The emergence of legends in press coverage is equivalent to the phenomenon of “open secrets” within organizations. “Open secrets” are things everyone knows to be true (or false) when the opposite is publicly claimed. This corrupts the public debate. There is a need to demote the collection of media myths to the less exalted status of currently accepted hypothesis. Ironically, this may be in the process of being achieved through the establishment of other channels of reportage and fact-finding. The emergence of articles of faith (such as Anthropogenic Global Warming) create a serious stickiness in the way we view reality. The real problem with “printing the legend” is that we print the lie we are prepared to believe. In the end reality sets us straight and the adjustment is often painful.
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64 Comments
1. Teresita:A little prior restraint? I guess the LA Times doesn’t want to derail Edwards’ bid to be picked for VP:
LOS ANGELES, July 21 (Xinhua) — Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards said here on Monday that he would “seriously” consider being Barack Obama’s running mate, if asked.
“Anything that I’m asked to do by Senator Obama, either as a presidential candidate or as the next president of the Untied States, I would take seriously and seriously consider,” said Edwards.
(A tip of the hat to 2164th, who alerted us to this story a couple days ago on the EB)
Jul 25, 2008 - 3:54 pm 2. NahnCee:When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
If Obama should actually attain the Presidency of the United States, will we then print his legend which he’s been busily spinning like a black widow these past months or the facts of his existance thus far which is all smoke and mirrors?
Jul 25, 2008 - 4:18 pm 3. Mike Sylwester:At a point in his life when Edwards intended to campaign for election to the US Presidency, this affair with this woman, resulting in a pregnancy, was amazingly foolish. It is foolishness that is off the charts. He risked so much for so little and so stupidly.
Jul 25, 2008 - 4:47 pm 4. Sticky B:It is foolishness that is off the charts. He risked so much for so little and so stupidly.
Part of the JFK legacy?
Jul 25, 2008 - 4:57 pm 5. Clioman:“Anything that I’m asked to do by Senator Obama, either as a presidential candidate or as the next president of the Untied States, I would take seriously and seriously consider,” said Edwards.
At this point, Obama might very well ask Edwards to just simply go back home, shut up, and stay there. Or, as a wise cop once told me, “son, you have the right to remain silent, and I’d exercise it if I was you.”
Jul 25, 2008 - 4:57 pm 6. Lifeofthemind:Buy a billboard near the LA Freeway and put this on it:
Jul 25, 2008 - 5:03 pm 7. cjm:how much you want to bet that hillary has pics of obama?
Jul 25, 2008 - 5:09 pm 8. wretchard:how much you want to bet that hillary has pics of obama?
In that case, print the legend.
Jul 25, 2008 - 5:11 pm 9. RWE:Par for the course for Edwards. All he could do was talk about the “two Americas” and come down firmly on the side of the downtrodden and poor. But he ain’t either one. He not only makes millions but also has his corporation pay him in capital gains, which means he does not have to pay Medicaid and social security like us little people.
You really have to wonder about those people with the “Edwards” sticker on their personal possessions. At least Obama has the Audacity of Audacity, but the Edwards supporters are probably all waiting on those promised millions from that terrific Nigerian oil deal they lucked onto.
Jul 25, 2008 - 5:13 pm 10. sadodharma:Does this really hurt a guy of whom, until now, everyone half considered gay or at least very metro?
Does this not cast his shadow beside other great Dem. heros now like Bill,JFK,FDR etc?
If he was a republican I’d say he was politically dead, but he’s a Dem. This is likely a shot in the arm for his career.
Jul 25, 2008 - 6:44 pm 11. James:I guess I will define myself as a kook by pointing out that I think the following are myths:
1) Climate is influenced by CO2 production.
2) The ozone hole is caused by man-made refrigerants.
3) Saturated fat helps cause or causes heart disease.
4) A retro-virus known as HIV causes destruction of the immune system.
5) Public education teaches kids the things they need to know.
Assuming I’m right that these are myths (granted, a leap), they all follow the same pattern:
A theory is produced to justify a large government program. The theory requires millions or billions of dollars in funding to test.
This requires building a narrative to justify the funding, which involves talking as if the theory is true.
By the time the money is allocated, and the tests are done, very large interests have been formed based on the theory being true. The theory being not true is no longer acceptable.
Wretchard is one of the smartest guys I read on the internet (IMHO), somehow I doubt even he could solve the puzzle.
James
Jul 25, 2008 - 6:53 pm 12. Alsadius:James: I can tell you that at least 3, probably 4, of those myths are truthful. CO2 *does* influence climate(just look at its infrared absorption spectrum, it’s pretty blatant), the evidence for CFCs causing ozone depletion seems fairly legit, HIV destroying the immune system and causing AIDS is rock-solid, and public schools do teach kids things they need to know. For that matter, you’re probably wrong about saturated fat, but I don’t know enough to be sure of that. Mind you, in all but the case of HIV the point you’re making is fairly legitimate – AGW and ozone are overblown, and the public education system has a whole mess of problems – but the statements you made are not mythical.
Jul 25, 2008 - 7:06 pm 13. Teresita:James: A theory is produced to justify a large government program. The theory requires millions or billions of dollars in funding to test. This requires building a narrative to justify the funding, which involves talking as if the theory is true. By the time the money is allocated, and the tests are done, very large interests have been formed based on the theory being true. The theory being not true is no longer acceptable.
Lets take the first one: “Climate is influenced by CO2 production.” Assuming your hypothesis that large money interests form around the theory being true, why have 182 countries (some very poor) ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but not the United States, which rejected it in the Senate 95-0. That seems to imply that the Big Money Interests blew all their money buying the votes of countries that stand to get poorer if they implement the Kyoto Protocol, and there was no money left over to lobby even one member of our own Senate to vote “yea”.
Jul 25, 2008 - 7:15 pm 14. exhelodrvr:James,
“The theory being not true is no longer acceptable.”
Not sure what the point of your post is; the above statement is unrelated to whether or not the theory is, in fact, true.
If you are trying to say that once an idea gathers a following, it becomes very difficult to stop, then you are correct. But that still doesn’t mean that the idea itself is not valid.
Jul 25, 2008 - 7:44 pm 15. wretchard:Reality supplies a lot of surprise endings to what we imagine are straightforward stories. A aviation hero who then falls out of political favor. A decorated veteran who dies from a drug overdose. An ACLU poster boy who kidnaps his own children and takes them to Yemen after all the civil rights types work for his release. The narrative betrays us; or would alternatively argue, we betrayed the narrative.
Jul 25, 2008 - 8:27 pm 16. James:exhelodrvr:
What I meant by my clumsy phrasing was:
Once the testing is started, negative evidence will generally be ignored or disparaged without being refuted. To accept the evidence that the theory is wrong requires that the evidence be much stronger than the evidence supporting it. The theory is true, until proven false with a high bar.
Of course, in each case the theory might be true. But I believe in each case, substantial evidence was discovered which wasn’t given the respect it deserved. Institutional inertia, necessary to test the theory in question, makes the testing process unequal – and prone to myth-making.
James
Jul 25, 2008 - 8:52 pm 17. Lifeofthemind:Wretchard,
Jul 25, 2008 - 8:53 pm 18. Lifeofthemind:The kidnapping was done by the Mother contrary to her word to the Court. The loquacious ideologue on that post is correct on one thing. Everyone connected with that episode should be brought up on charges for Child Abuse, Trafficking and Kidnapping. Let CAIR and company spend their legal budget on that.
James,
So if you neither trust the evidence nor can rely on a competent and honest professional to examine the evidence for you how do you decide? You end up making emotional commitments to positions based on subjective criteria that can not be falsified. That is what Mapes did when she and Dan Rather declared the story behind the Bush memos was true even if the evidence was false. You have simply inverted the process by declaring these theories false because you can not trust or evaluate the process by which the evidence is evaluated.
Global warming theory is not definitively proven or linked to the process you mention. That does not mean the process simply does not exist. Similarly it is not necessary to claim that schools do not teach useful information in order to support a claim that the current public education system is wasteful and should be changed or even abolished. Excessively strong claims about the evidence only serve to discredit an argument and hurt the actual policy goals you might be hoping for.
Jul 25, 2008 - 9:05 pm 19. James:LifeOfTheMind:
Just to be clear. I’m not making prescriptive statements. I’m not claiming that the next time such a theory is proposed, that it will be automatically false due to the process I describe.
I believe that I have seen arguments and data on each side of the controversies I listed, and claim that I have come to conclusions based on that data. I did much the same with fonts/kerning in the Mary Mapes saga.
I’ll admit I over-simplified my statements. They should have read something like:
CO2 influences climate enough to change normal climate variation to any significant degree. Etc.
My desire for brevity caused problems in that case.
James
Jul 25, 2008 - 9:36 pm 20. Nomenklatura:The influence of the press has been based on its having been, for most people, the most convenient source of publicly circulating information. Once having attained that position, (around the time of Benjamin Franklin) journalists found they were able to exercise a great deal of influence by mixing their own bias into the flow of information.
The web is inexorably and irreversibly undermining for most people that status as ‘most convenient source of publicly circulating information’. Journalists thus have to both accept becoming a less important information source, and reduce the amount of bias if they don’t want it to become ever more blatantly obvious (as consumers compare the journalistic product with alternate sources).
Our current generation of journalists seem for the most part utterly unable to navigate this challenge, hastening their own downfall, and on balance I think I would rather have it be that way.
The vestigial abuse will be the journalism schools, lurching on like zombies.
Jul 25, 2008 - 9:49 pm 21. Lifeofthemind:James,
Jul 25, 2008 - 9:57 pm 22. TmjUtah:Granted. For my nickel you weaken your position by lumping HIV in the same list. Regarding fat, by conflating “helps cause” with “causes” you also overstate. Anything may make a statistically meaningful impact on a result without being determinative. Skepticism can be a healthy approach to many theories and you should not be faulted for it. As the apostle of tolerance Cromwell wrote to the Presbyterians, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” Note, not my faith.
Thanks for the lively discussion, can you wait for Mapes’ movie?
Opinion:
Edwards got caught in order that he not be faced with telling Obama “no” when asked to be VP.
The real untold story – the one that no MSM has any interest in writing – is how many A – list Dems may have already said the same thing.
Denver is where all this comes to a head. I’ve already reserved our TV for the week, House, Eureka, and CSI be darned.
Jul 25, 2008 - 10:01 pm 23. John:James/Alsadius:
“CO2 *does* influence climate(just look at its infrared absorption spectrum, it’s pretty blatant”
Maybe so, maybe not..
Google:
Jul 25, 2008 - 11:03 pm 24. Wadeusaf:“co2 infrared absorption wavelengths”
http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
http://nov55.com/ntyg.html
Some folks insist that character counts. In the high roller environment of TV filtered presidential politics, I am not so sure it is character as much as a facade of character, that really counts with the voters. By ignoring the downsides of Senator “OH” the MSM is setting him up for a horrible fall and hard landing. I am not certain that would be such a good thing for the nation. By ignoring Senator McCain, the MSM is setting itself up for an unhappy ending. We shall see what we choose but not necessarily what we want to see.
I have no desire to see the pictures of lady in question above, I certainly didn’t want to know about the life and high times of the call girl in the NY Governors mansion, I really don’t want to know if Jack and MM ever got past first base, I don’t care how wide the stance of certain representatives is or if a certain senator tried to pick up my son or someones son or daughter as a page. I expect the party the legislative branch and the FBI to help me vet the bastards in the first place, and set standards high enough to keep the fanny grabbing to a minimum. It is easy to tell which party tries at least to keep its members clean or, failing that get rid of them. It is blatantly obvious which party does not. The GOP lost the 96 mid term election not because of an adverse reaction to certain congressmen and senators, but because the members of the house and senate were not being fiscally responsible. unless that message gets across the GOP will continue to lose seats and McCain will lose the Presidential election.
Frankly, no one is concerned about Edwards fate. As a trial lawyer I guess most folks already believe he’s going to hell.
Jul 26, 2008 - 12:35 am 25. wretchard:Some folks insist that character counts. In the high roller environment of TV filtered presidential politics, I am not so sure it is character as much as a facade of character, that really counts with the voters.
I think most voters are resigned to hype. Even if the picture on the packaging is an idealization of the actual contents, most consumers won’t balk for as long as it bears some relationship to the product being represented. We all know that the picture on packages of frozen cheescake always look better than than the actual thing, but we do expect to find some kind of cheesecase inside the box. Toys are depicted in fantasy situations on the box but we do expect to find an actual toy within.
But when the legend varies from reality by so wide a margin as to have no conceivable relationship then we are in trouble. It’s like opening a can of spaghetti and finding, not even spaghetti of the worst quality, but something other than spaghetti. Sludge or something. Then we are past hype and into a swindle.
For as long as political hype does not deliver a traitor in the guise of a patriot or a thief packaged as a reformer the public is Ok. After all, their expectations are low. All most want is a reasonable honest, acceptably intelligent and mostly patriotic politician. They’ll settle for minimal competence, just don’t hand them a disaster.
Jul 26, 2008 - 12:54 am 26. wretchard:It’s really hard to watch this clip, especially the part featuring Keith Olbermann without feeling a little bit like the time my wife woke me in the early hours of the morning (in Oz) telling me that the Twin Towers had been hit by suicide airplanes. It’s a moment when you realize with absolute clarity just how things stand. To Olbermann and company, the Surge is just something that happened; a lucky break. It is a theft of a kind that would make ghouls proud of their work.
Lies are not harmless, nor entertaining, nor simply part of the way the world works. They are ugly, treacherous, and hurtful. And it is a worthwhile task in life, however humble it may be, to try to hold fast to the true. Without hatred or rancor, though one may sometimes feel it; but as a man holding on to a life saver.
Jul 26, 2008 - 2:18 am 27. hdgreene:I see Teresita is printing the legend about the Kyoto treaty — a document that has spun much Fantasy writing all on its own (the poor counties were paid to sign up — and won a trip to Bali to boot!).
Perhaps this was John Edwards way of saying he did not want to be VP. By 20 naughty 12 it will be spun as John taking responsibility for his children.
I told my Democrat friends in 2004 that many in their party (especially the media branch) loathed GWB (a Texas conservative and Republican and Born Again Christian) and did not want to give him any credit for improving US security. So they portrayed the round-up of suspected AQ sympathizers after 9-ll as “fascism on the march” rather than needed measures to stop further attacks — but only after there were no new attacks. the lack of attack was do, apparently, to AQ’s basic humanity.
The unintended consequence (liberals are always producing unintended consequences): The Democratic Party as a whole seemed to take the threat of terrorism lightly.
Jul 26, 2008 - 5:14 am 28. Morton Doodslag:As long as we’re discilussing leftist media bias, and selective truth telling, I was astounded to read an item about Barack Obama’s brother yesterday, linked at Drudge. It may still be there. It’s entitled “Found! Obama’s brother!”
If one reads this article carefully, one learns that Barack Obama’s father must have been a polygymous Muslim, and that he continued to sire children with his first wife even after he’d married BHO’s wife. Further, BHO’s mother probably knew about it. Obama Sr. frequently returned to Kenya, and BHO’s half siblings through that marriage are both older and younger than he. I suspect if some PajamasMedia sleuth were to try, no divorce documents or claims can be found.
Compare the complete non-mentioning of this jaw-dropping FACt to the smears and claims of Mormon polygamy with media reporting on Romney.
I’m unaware of any claim that Romney’s family was polygamous, but he was widely smeared with this through innuendo. Whereas BHO is almost certainly a byproduct of a fricking Muslim harem!
But the PC rules viciously preclude even mentioning the fact. Even many I. The right, so eager to show they’re not Islamiphobic, buy into the clampdown on discussing BHO’s blatant Muslim roots and the implications.
In the somewhat silly Harry Potter series, the characters are gripped by a hysterical avoidance of mentioning the name of the man who threatens them with destruction. The antagonist in the story is regularly referred to as “He who must not be named”.
Muslims and Leftists have successfully waged a campaign of fear and intimidation so that even mentioning the incontrovertable facts surrounding this BHO phenom is out of bounds.
I had never read anything in the media about this harem detail in BHO’s past. Even the British article only hinted obliquel to this revelation by a passing reference to the age of BHO’s younger brother. If one didn’t ponder the significance of it, one would not have gathered the fact that BHO Sr. returned many times to his first wife, whom he probably never divorced, and continued to sire children with her after marrying BHO’s mother and having HIM.
When every peccadillo of our right wing politicians, real or imagined, becomes a feeding frenzy in our media, and the first black Muslim born offspring of an Islamic harem is blatantly glossed over and placed off limits through vicious Press attacks and intimidation, you know we’ve gone very far down some kind of scary rabbit hole.
If it were a Mozart opera, we could laugh at the high farce of it all. But a nightmare is unfolding, and the monsters are not being named. Except here.
Jul 26, 2008 - 5:57 am 29. sadodharma:The fat=heart disease link is poorly understood. Just look at what happened to the cholesterol drug Vytorin for a good example. Scientist have long known that statins reduce heart disease. The myth was that it was done by reducing cholesterol levels (comes from fat).
Vytorin is a combo drug of a statin and another type of cholesterol lowering drug (zetia) that reduces cholesterol levels by blocking absorption in the gut unlike statins that work mainly in the liver to cause the drop.
So on the surface this drug should have compounded the positive effects of reducing cholesterol, and they did. However, studies show that heart disease risk was not reduced with the drug, in fact there was a small increase in risk.
Now, many are beginning to say statins work as anti inflammatories in the body and for this reason, not cholesterol lowering, it decreases heart disease. New myth, or the truth?
Jul 26, 2008 - 6:33 am 30. 2164th:Morton Doodslag. To help your cause, your comment is lead post at the Elephant Bar.
Jul 26, 2008 - 6:36 am 31. Morton Doodslag:Thanks, 2164th, and also for correcting typos. I post on an iPod touch which is a very lame way to blog. I will check it out.
I wonder if the Obama family harem and his father’s obvious polygamy will ever see the light of day in our currupt media? What do other readers of this blog think about this blatant cleansing of Saint Obama?
Jul 26, 2008 - 6:55 am 32. Jay:I read the post on Drudge yesterday. The photo was a gas. But what I have not read anywhere is the implication on O’s psychology from his abandonment by his “father” and essentially his mother. Such children grow up with a repressed rage when they rejected by others. I know since I was an abandoned infant (due to disease). O had a rage when he was in the Illinois Senate according to a story in the New Yorker which did not make much of it.
Jul 26, 2008 - 7:25 am 33. Wadeusaf:By the way did you read the bit on Drudge today about his conversation with Cameron? Seems that he is alread POTUS. He and his gang should show up at the White House and tell Bush to leave and go back to Texas. No reason to have a nomination let alone an election. We could have coup staged by the MSM and the left using “reason”.
Will Jerry swear him in as POTUS?
Also I believe that his prayer left in the Wailing Wall was meant to be published.
Seabee’s busied themselves constucting the tower tops for the Combat outposts for most of late 2005 and most of 2006, their handiwork can be seen all over An Anbar. But it is stunning that listening to the Mudville Gazette report that, the MSM missed the story. ONE reporter got it right, one lone reporter put a story out about it, and not one outlet pick up on it. I believe you posted it here (at the Belmont club).
I recall feeling a glimmer of optimism that yeah, someone is getting it, somewhere in Iraq the ultimate inevitable connection has been made between Al Qaeda = bad, and US = good. Oberman missed the story, Oberman could not be bothered to research a matter of historical fact, and yet he has the audacity to call Senator McCain a lier. Because Oberman and the MSM were too lazy to actually get off their bar stools get out of the green zone and actually do some reporting they missed the most important story on the war. And McCain is delusional? Because of their incompetence “OH”bama is stuck on a false narrative, and through stubborness and lack of experience and a refusal to talk to the military he doesn’t know which story to believe, the story of the men who made it happen or the story of the men who sat through it all in a Baghdad bar.
Jul 26, 2008 - 8:13 am 34. Wadeusaf:In August of 1963, the Philadelphia Phillies were so far ahead of second place team in their division it was a statistical certainty they would take the pennant, being only a few victories of earning the crown.
What followed was the biggest collapse in Baseball history.
There is always hope.
Jul 26, 2008 - 8:24 am 35. 3Case:“Lies are not harmless, nor entertaining, nor simply part of the way the world works. They are ugly, treacherous, and hurtful. And it is a worthwhile task in life, however humble it may be, to try to hold fast to the true.”
Well said. Thank you.
Jul 26, 2008 - 9:29 am 36. 3Case:“When every peccadillo of our right wing politicians, real or imagined, becomes a feeding frenzy in our media, and the first black Muslim born offspring of an Islamic harem is blatantly glossed over and placed off limits through vicious Press attacks and intimidation, you know we’ve gone very far down some kind of scary rabbit hole.”
Also, well said.
Keith Olberman is the most exquisite and best groomed chained monkey that the Disney Corp. has got.
Jul 26, 2008 - 9:42 am 37. Pajamas Media » John Edwards: The Man vs. the Myth:[...] Read the entire story here. [...]
Jul 26, 2008 - 10:53 am 38. glenn:The allegory of the comic strip superhero is the excuse many people need to avoid confronting things that need to be confronted in society. Batman or Superman or Zorro or whoever will rescue you so you can continue your feckless ways. When the going gets really tough shine that light or whatever and help is on the way.
Jul 26, 2008 - 11:26 am 39. jim:The man is building a 28,000 square foot home and lecturing us about energy consumption and global warming.
Jul 26, 2008 - 11:59 am 40. tanstaafl:The man made tens of millions chasing ambulances and working for a hedge fund/private equity firm and is admonishing us about the evils of capitalism.
The man has a wife sick with cancer who he used as a prop in his presidential bid, and then cast aside while he chased some bimbo through the halls of the Beverly Hilton Hotel at 2 am.
The man is toast, and the media which helped burnish his image because it fit with their agenda will continue to lose readership and advertising revenues. Toast attracts toast.
Will the National Enquirer’s “love child” story finally destroy the Edwards legend?
There was a legend ? Anybody with half a brain has seen straight through this airhead for the duration.
Some may have even been checking into the Beverly Hilton at the same time as John Edwards.
John never checked in. Minor detail.
Despite the apparent reluctance of (becoming less and less mainstream)media, this is as much “news” (and of the same variety) as a sitting President lying under oath.
There has only been one John Edwards, for the duration. Despite attempts to spin it otherwise, this enormously hypocritical inventor of the buzz phrase “Two Americas” should finally come completely into focus for anyone who didn’t see it before.
Best line, so far…
“Is it too early to consider Elizabeth and Rielle as ‘The Two Americas’?”
Jul 26, 2008 - 4:38 pm 41. TheOrchidThief:Wadeusaf:
Phillies. Slight correction, September 1964. Only we Cardinal fans remember that great feeling.
Jul 26, 2008 - 6:11 pm 42. Wadeusaf:TOT,
Jul 26, 2008 - 7:00 pm 43. ZEITGEIST:Sigh, I knew it wasn’t THAT long ago…, thanks. For some reason I have it stuck in my head that it was 1962, no matter, there is still hope.
[...] UPDATE: Richard Fernandez: “The irony is that the John Edwards legend and all of its props were created by artful manipulation [...]
Jul 26, 2008 - 7:16 pm 44. Jack Okie:This post gets to the heart of the “bandwagon” effect James describes:
http://tinyurl.com/6jmpzg
Jul 26, 2008 - 7:48 pm 45. Mwalimu Daudi:On the subject of manufacturing legends:
I read somewhere that a movie is being planned about Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson. Wanna bet that it will bomb like Redacted and all of the other leftist fables?
That’s not to say that movies like In The Valley of Elah, Rendition and Redacted are not highly valuable historical tools. Like Birth of a Nation, Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), The Deer Slayer, Munich, and Full Metal Jacket, these movies provide a valuable glimpse into the sociopathic thought processes of political movements that were quite powerful in their time.
Watching Hollywood – leftist, liberal, progressive Hollywood! – embrace the cause of bloodthirsty fanatics straight out of the Dark Ages who execute suspected homosexuals and keep women in a state of slavery is an event unparalleled in American history. It is, as one author put it, an attempt at the re-primitivization of Man.
Jul 26, 2008 - 8:14 pm 46. leslein:“Assuming your hypothesis that large money interests form around the theory being true, why have 182 countries (some very poor) ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but not the United States, which rejected it in the Senate 95-0. ”
Actually a lot of Kyoto provisions don’t apply to poor or developing countries, like China and India. For that matter, a lot of developed countries that ratified Kyoto have missed their emissions targets. The question should be, if global warming will be so catastrophic, why don’t these countries want to reduce their carbon emissions?
Jul 26, 2008 - 8:43 pm 47. buddy larsen:Olberman and ilk, and the big lie they push, have come to be an active front in this war. It’s sort of crazy when you think about it — I mean, the fact that Olberman and ilk work alongside the enemy, killing our troops, the troops defending our way of life, and then cash their fat paychecks and live high on the hog in the very country whose soldiers they are stabbing in the back.
Jul 26, 2008 - 9:04 pm 48. Pink Pig:I pretty much agree with all 5 of James’s points above.
Lifeofthemind: the history of AIDS/HIV is very complicated, and personally I would be less dogmatic about it. HIV, which wasn’t called that until the late 80s, had been known for many years before that — it was long ago identified as a sexually-transmitted virus with no known effect, therefore considered harmless. It was only Gallo who claimed a connection between HIV and AIDS. His timing was certainly good. The world was waiting for just such a pretext, to justify a massive transfer of wealth from the productive rich to the unproductive greedy. It became almost immediately un-PC to doubt that there was a connection between the two. It also served the need to keep the flow of money going after AIDS largely disappeared in the Western world. You could just claim that HIV prevention (a virtual impossibility) is just as important as AIDS prevention. You can also claim that a multitude of idiopathic tropical diseases are AIDS, and you can back it up by pointing out that the victims of these diseases mostly have HIV in their blood.
There are a couple of inconvenient facts, though. 1) Before HIV was declared the same as AIDS, victims of AIDS invariably died, but carriers of HIV do not invariably die — indeed, the vast majority of them go on living normal lives (as far as I know, Magic Johnson is still around). 2) It was supposed to be impossible to die from AIDS if you didn’t have HIV, so when a few cases of this showed up, the victims were simply declared not to have AIDS — which mainly meant that they were denied the benefit of medical care and went on to die early.
Jul 26, 2008 - 9:16 pm 49. Tcobb:One of the truly terrible things about our time is how propaganda often wears the mask of science when there is really nothing of the sort beneath the facade. All too often the real dynamic is one of Solutions in search of a problem. When the problem of the moment is deemed to be of such small magnitude that the Solution seems to be inappropriate then the search will continue for another problem, but the Solution remains the same. And the strange thing about the great Solutions is that they all seem to involve giving less and less autonomy to the individual citizens.
Jul 26, 2008 - 9:56 pm 50. Teresita:Glenn: The allegory of the comic strip superhero is the excuse many people need to avoid confronting things that need to be confronted in society. Batman or Superman or Zorro or whoever will rescue you so you can continue your feckless ways.
That reminds me of Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who was willing to rape our national resources to the max, since the “rapture” was coming in 1988 anyway, when Jesus was supposed to come down and save us all like Superman.
Jul 27, 2008 - 10:08 am 51. exhelodrvr:Teresita,
“Interior James Watt, who was willing to rape our national resources to the max”
One of those “urban legends” of the left.
Jul 27, 2008 - 12:38 pm 52. Ricardo:Pink Pig
Jul 27, 2008 - 3:02 pm 53. Ricardo:I’m an MD. You are so totally confused about HIV I do not know where to start. I know the gay population and drug addict advocates used the issue to advance their political agendas, but you need to go to the nearest library and pick up any textbook on infectious disease and just read a little.
To clear up a couple of huge misunderstandings:
Yes, the mortality for Aids has gone down in developed countries, but it is because of drugs that were designed to work specifically against the HIV virus and how it works. I have seen many patients follow their viral titers (concentration of virus in blood), when the titers go up, disease flares up. There are other forms of acquired immune deficiency, though rare. There are even congenital forms of inmune deficiency. We know this.
Yes, there are asymptomatic carriers of HIV, as there are for every other pathogen known to man. Even in the worst plagues there are asymptomatic carriers.
Could all the money used to ferret out this info have been spent on Breast or prostate cancer? Yes, but the political will was on AIDS. That’s the way the system works. But it does not negate the fact that HIV is the major (number of cases) cause of AIDS. Other causes are rare.
Teresita:
Jul 27, 2008 - 3:21 pm 54. buddy larsen:I’m a long time lurker. You lob these nonsensical provocative nonsequitors to a forum that has already expressed irritation at such postings, yet you act SHOCKED, SHOCKED! when people insult you.
The first couple of times you may claim ignorance, the second hundred you might claim to be “speaking truth to power”, by the fifth hundred time you might be asking for respect, but by the thousandth, you are just another junkie asking for a hit.
Like Batman himself I’m torn between the desire to give you what you so obviously crave and deserve, and my desire to be civilized.
His wiki article says “After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back”; there is no indication he actually ever said this. Glenn Scherer, writing for Grist, erroneously placed this remark in Watt’s testimony to Congress.[10]. Journalist Bill Moyers, relying on the Grist article, mistakenly attributed the comment to Watt. After it was discovered that the quote was mistaken, Grist corrected their article and Moyers promptly apologized [11].”
That he was hounded out of office for some wiscrack he actually did make is no surprise, in that his career was one long uphill fight for individual economic and property rights, against the great green collective.
Jul 27, 2008 - 6:10 pm 55. Stan:Morton Doodslag:
Did Obama’s parents ever actually get married ?
BHO himself seemed a bit unsure of it in one of his books.
Jul 27, 2008 - 7:18 pm 56. Morton Doodslag:Stan – I suggest above some sleuthing by someone at PJM. His vagueness on their marriage, his birth certificate, and other things may be a deliberate coverup, given the explosiveness of these issues. In any event, the fact his father repeatedly returned to wife #1 to sire more children is astounding.
Kenya was still a British colony in 1957 when Obama Sr. married (?) his first wife. Some semblance of order may have still prevailed at that time.
Jul 27, 2008 - 9:24 pm 57. chilibill:In his efforts to sell us the idea that there are “two Americas”, John Edwards failed to mention that there were two John Edwardses.
Jul 27, 2008 - 11:18 pm 58. Ledger:What some on this forum have referred to as foolish and untimely, I can only see as the epitome of arrogance. In his mind he was among the elite and as such could do no wrong. Now all he has to do is explain it to Elizabeth.
Here is a little humor from TNOYF.
[John Edwards on CNN]
Well, Wolf, needless to say, I’m floored by these allegations. And while it’s impossible to overstate the impact they are having on my wife Elizabeth’s health, you can be sure I’ll try. As you know, Elizabeth’s breast cancer is no longer in remission, and the doctors warned us that any further stress would send her tumors into a metastatic orgy that wouldn’t end until each of her vital organs had been devoured.
[Wolf Blizter on CNN]
Um, I’m sorry to hear that, Senator, and the secular healing thoughts of everyone at CNN are with Elizabeth. But to these allegations–
[John Edwards on CNN]
Have you ever heard the sound of a spleen being eaten by cancer, Wolf?
See: John Edwards Channeled baby and it is not mine
Jul 29, 2008 - 3:01 am 59. Roderick Reilly:John Edwards rates a “legend?” What legend?
Fairy tales are not the same thing as legends. John Edwards is a stuffed toy unicorn with perfect hair. Nothing more. Oh, and he did try to ruin obstetrics in rural America.
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Aug 12, 2008 - 2:03 am 63. Drive Time Happy Hour » 08-13-08:[...] Richard Fernandez does: Print the legend [...]
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:16 am 64. stephanazs:Interesting facts.I have bookmarked this site. stephanazs
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