I noticed today via LGF that Sidney Blumenthal is inadvertently taking off after Charles Johnson. I say inadvertently, because I doubt even Sidney is so ideologically straight-jacketed to think that Charles works with Karl Rove. So I’m not certain who Sidney was talking about (he doesn’t name anyone naturally) when, in his impassioned defense of Dan Rather, of all people, on Salon today, Blumenthal writes:
Within minutes of the conclusion of the broadcast, conservative bloggers launched a counterattack. The chief of these critics was a Republican Party activist in Georgia. Almost certainly, these bloggers, who had been part of meetings or conference calls organized by Karl Rove’s political operation, coordinated their actions with Rove’s office.
Charles – perhaps the pivotal blogger in the unmasking of Rather for having duplicated the forged document, supposedly written on a period Selectric, with Microsoft Word and then matching his creation and the copy perfectly with a gif file – appropriately laughs off Blumenthal’s accusation with the back of the hand.
But I would like to add a bit more – because I am probably among the few people on the planet who actually knows both men. I had dinner with Blumenthal back in the Eighties when a mutual friend, thinking we had things in common (we did then), introduced us. Charles, as many reading this are aware, I came to know through blogging and the formation of Pajamas Media.
So here’s my take:
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the most classical cases of projection I have ever read. Sidney Blumenthal – the consummate insider, a man who has not changed his world view or Beltway allegiances for decades – cannot conceive independent citizens like Charles Johnson exist. It has to be some kind of orchestrated plot, some nefarious clandestine campaign, because that is the way Sidney knows life to be. But, luckily for the rest of us, it’s not.
Charles Johnson is a lone wolf and far more bohemian and original than Sidney Blumenthal. He is, in fact, one of the more interesting people I have ever met and, despite what some have written about him, one of the least racist (and not just because he spent most of his life playing backup for black jazz musicians.) The idea that Charles works with or even knows Karl Rove is ludicrous.
As for the larger theme of Blumenthal’s piece, the implication that Rather should be exonerated because of the greater truth that Bush was a National Guard slacker even if the documents were fake, it is such a pathetic argument I can’t believe anyone wants to make it. But Sidney does. Talk about reification.
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46 Comments
1. photoncourier.blogspot.com:The idea that it would be acceptable to represent fake documents as real because of a “greater truth” is directly analogous to a company CFO who thinks it’s okay to commit accounting fraud because the Generally Accepted Accounting Practices don’t reflect the “true value” of the company.
Sep 27, 2007 - 5:30 pm 2. reliapundit - the astute blogger:BRAVO.
Sep 27, 2007 - 6:59 pm 3. Barry Dauphin:Maybe Blumenthal is Kenneth.
Sep 27, 2007 - 7:01 pm 4. Ray Zacek:Projection? Yes, indeed. Blumenthal has given us great insight into how the Clinton Restoration in the White House will handle media matters.
Sep 27, 2007 - 7:17 pm 5. Anthony (Los Angeles):It has to be some kind of orchestrated plot, some nefarious clandestine campaign, because that is the way Sydney knows life to be.
No wonder he fit so well with the Clintons.
Sep 27, 2007 - 7:35 pm 6. chuck:Wasn’t Blumenthal in on the plot? The Democratic plot, that is. IIRC, he published an article in one of the British papers on Bush and the TANG that was synchronized with the Sixty Minutes II broadcast. It sure looked to me like it was his part of the large scale media assault that was supposed to kick off at that time. The NY Times was in on it too.
Sep 27, 2007 - 9:18 pm 7. Ed Driscoll:Oh my God–Sid’s stumbled onto the secret plan at last!
Sep 27, 2007 - 9:34 pm 8. mikem:At Blair’s, where Driscoll linked:
“Rove: Oh, come on! These are dated 1972 but theyíre in Microsoft Word! Hellloooo! You think anybody in their right mind will fall for these? Oh, look here; you havenít even changed the default settings! Why, I could type these up at home!
Ann Coulter: With respect, sir, the plan was to …
Rove: Plan? Plan? Listen, legs, this plan wouldnít fool a Kennedy! Or a crack-addicted homeless person! This so-called plan wouldnít rate a segment on Air America! This plan Iím looking at wouldnít be posted at Democratic goddamn Underground! This half-assed, retard plan isnít worth the …
Hugh Hewitt: Actually, we were thinking of giving the memos to Dan Rather.
Rove: Proceed.”
L M effing A O
Sep 27, 2007 - 11:10 pm 9. CTRepublican:Say, has Charles apologized for promulgating this crap?
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/7259.html
How embarrassing!
Sep 28, 2007 - 4:40 am 10. Lem:For anybody that missed it, there is a guy happens to be “one of the pioneers of electronic typesetting” who at the time (back in 04) set out to prove the memos were fakes.
If you have time and you want proof THIS IS IT.
http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm
Warning ñ exhaustive technical page – this guy will not spare you any details.
The humanity
Sep 28, 2007 - 5:29 am 11. Terry Gain:Obviously Blumenidiot is right on. What I can’t figure out is how Rove got Kerry to make the Jhenjis Khan and Nixon sent me to Cambodia speeches, not to mention getting Democrats to create insane far left organizations like Daily Kos and MoveOnAndIgnorePerjury.
And it was a work of pure genius for Rove to get MoveOn to run that Betray Us ad. But how did he do it?
Sep 28, 2007 - 5:29 am 12. cgage:Isn’t Blumenthal talking about “Buckhead”. He was from the South and one who posted a reaction quite quickly (with Power Line?).
Hardly the “chief critic” or anything close. That title would most likely go to Johnson and the the Power Line guys.
Jeez, what a world where I remember this crap for 3-4 years.
Sep 28, 2007 - 5:41 am 13. Lem:I hear that cgage. As I recall the first “web” allegation that the memos were fakes was a post on Free Republic. The program Rather used was 60 minutes Wednesday.
Some of you may recall Sydney was Bubbas point man in the WH for deflecting “bimbo eruptions”. Hitchens had some interesting things to say about Sidney and I think he may have testified to as much to the House managers and later at the trial.
It should all be there in the web.
Sep 28, 2007 - 6:10 am 14. Terry Gain:It was Buckhead on Free Republic within about 30 minutes of the show airing so obviously he was in on the plot.
What I find amazing is that the Clinton’s have yet to figure out that Monica was a Republican operative (code name Really Deep Throat). I suggest they hire Mary Mapes to get to the bottom of this.
Sep 28, 2007 - 6:31 am 15. Terry Gain:Clinton’s? Damn. Just had to be possessive about America’s power couple.
Sep 28, 2007 - 6:33 am 16. CJ:CTRepublican,
While the misidentification of that particular photo is regrettable (since it does appear that, as claimed, it is a still from an extremely obscure Dutch movie, rather than a photo of an actual stoning,) the LGF story did not center around the supposed incident.
Sep 28, 2007 - 6:37 am 17. JorgXMcKie:So, CTRepublican, are you denying that Muslim women *don’t* get stoned for ‘rape’ or ‘adultery’?
How embarrassing. Repeatedly.
Sep 28, 2007 - 7:03 am 18. wattdog:Sid Vicious is a Clinton hack, liar and distorter par excellence. Do not forget when he appeared before Ken Starr’s grand jury and afterwards talked about it being nothing but sex. Part of the spin to discredit Mr. Starr, who played by the rules and kept grand jury testimony secret. Years later, the transcripts of Mr. Blumenthal’s appearance reveal that Sid’s characterization was, how shall we say, “inaccurate.” Of course, by then the media had convinced the world it was just about sex and let’s move on…
Sep 28, 2007 - 7:08 am 19. Lem:An exhaustively well documented liar defends an exhaustedly well documented forgery.
You can’t make this stuff up!
It had to be, it could only be on Salon.
No one else would take it. I wonder how many rags turn him down?
Sep 28, 2007 - 7:50 am 20. zefal:Just in case everyone doesn’t remember the particulars about guy from Georgia who questioned the memos authenticity on Free Republic.
The guy on Free Republic downloaded the pdf document with the memos from the CBS website. Someone had posted a link to them on the thread about the 60 minutes piece. The time stamp was a pacific coast time stamp on the guy’s comment.
When NPR did a piece on this they “mistakenly” stated the same “facts” that sid the squid is now repeating. People contacted NPR to point out their “mistake” but they never corrected it. Which makes them liars in my book.
I’ll look for the original Free Republic thread and post it here.
Sep 28, 2007 - 7:54 am 21. Bill Peschel:It’s easy to see why Sid would think he’s right. I’ve been thumbing through a book of memos Richard Nixon and his cronies wrote during the time he was in the White House (”From: The President” edited by Bruce Oudes), and it shows how the Republicans organized “independent” responses to news. Dan Rather getting flooded with telegrams in response to a story critical of the White House; Nixon officials working with Lou Cannon on stories that promoted the administration’s line.
Interestingly, one memo talked about how the Chicago Tribune added an opening paragraph to one of Lou’s column, changing the slant of the story. Lou had to demand that they remove it.
So if you’re in politics, and you’re used to orchistrating “grassroots” responses, and if you’re in the media, and you’re used to receiving it, it’s easy to see why you wouldn’t believe that Charles Johnson wasn’t getting “helped”.
Of course, believing it so much that you can’t see with your own eyes that you got rooked is another magnitude of self-deception.
Sep 28, 2007 - 8:35 am 22. zefal:I can’t find the original thread but the poster’s name is Buckhead and he’s commenting on this piece by sid.
To: Congressman Billybob
Any fool could see those documents were fake. All I did was point out the obvious.
Please, please, somebody take my deposition.
45 posted on 09/27/2007 6:39:27 PM PDT by Buckhead (just making the comments buckhead won’t make)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies ]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1903206/posts
PS As you can see he stills as the Pacific coast time stamp
Sep 28, 2007 - 9:05 am 23. Lem:“…the implication that Rather should be exonerated because of the greater truth that Bush was a National Guard slacker even if the documents were fake…”
If you read the column carefully, Sidney is inadvertently submitting an amicus brief promoting torture.
Even though torture is wrong there is a greater good that mitigates it.
Welcome to the dark side Sid
Here is the original buckhead post on the memos.
Sep 28, 2007 - 9:10 am 24. Lem:http://tinyurl.com/26plqh – scroll down to post 47
For your fare share of buckhead go here.
http://coletti.co.uk/?p=41
Sep 28, 2007 - 9:16 am 25. zefal:Found an edited archived version of the original thread. Note they changed the time stamp to EDT on it.
To: sinkspur; All
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/08/60II/main641984.shtml
There are the documents; now you see if you think they say what the NYT says they say.
11 posted on 09/08/2004 11:17:50 PM EDT by Howlin (I’m mad as Zell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
—————————————–
To: Howlin
Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90’s. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn’t used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80’s used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively.
47 posted on 09/08/2004 11:59:43 PM EDT by Buckhead
Sep 28, 2007 - 9:19 am 26. Lem:[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
I don’t know what you are implying zefal. My page here in NY says..
47 posted on 09/08/2004 8:59:43 PM PDT by Buckhead
Sep 28, 2007 - 9:30 am 27. michaelt:Free Republic users can set the time zone that they see posted on threads, so that might explain any discrepancies.
Sep 28, 2007 - 9:59 am 28. michaelt:And let me add that it was a live thread, it was going during the East Coast broadcast of the Rather piece, and if Buckhead hadn’t noticed the obvious forgeries, someone else would have downloaded the docs and figured it out.
A little more on the time zone thing:
If you are not a logged in user of FR you see the West Coast time, as the site is based in that time zone.
If you are a logged in user and you have set your time zone, you see times based on the time zone set in your preferences.
Sep 28, 2007 - 10:09 am 29. Buddy Larsen:Remember the CBS story with its NYT supports broke in the same time frame with (1) NBC’s Today Show’s unprecedented three straight days of interviews with smear-author Kitty Kelly on her new book “exposing” GWB’s coke use (at Camp David), and (2) DNC/Kerry campaign’s massive all-media roll-out their new “Fortunate Son” campaign aimed at ridiculing GWB (our CIC during a wart, but that’s another story).
So, Blumenthal has Rove initiating & coordinating not just creating & planting the forgeries with Rather, Mapes, & crew, and not just the discovery & reaction from Buckhead, Charles Johnson, LGF, Free Republic and the blogs, but also the ‘breaking’ coverage @ the major Dem newspaper, two of three tv broadcast networks, the Kerry campaign, the DNC, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and last and yes least, Kitty Kelly’s Bush-the-cokehead book, all to pop out at the American people more or less simultaneously, late in the presidential campaign.
Mercy sakes. Blumenthal you’d think would be writing a book, rather than whispering out the side of his face.
Sep 28, 2007 - 11:02 am 30. Buddy Larsen:“during a wart” –I was editing “wartime” to “war” and just got tired.
Sep 28, 2007 - 11:07 am 31. Neo:I can only guess that Sidney forgot this guy ..
Sep 28, 2007 - 11:57 am 32. Korla Pundit:Can a Lizard be Frog-Marched?
Sep 28, 2007 - 12:36 pm 33. Buckhead:I am Harry MacDougald, a/k/a Buckhead – you are discussing my post on the TANG docs on this thread.
Michaelt has it right about the time zones.
I’m in the eastern time zone, and posted the post in question just before midnight, eastern time.
Michaelt is also completely correct that somebody else would have noticed the documents were fake within minutes of when I did – they were obviously fake to millions of people, so that my role as the first is purely fortuitous. In fact, I was quite shocked that no one else had posted the same observation before I did.
It is quite unbelievable that all this delusional garbage is being recycled, but I suppose this is the price of the Thornburgh-Boccardi Report’s failure to drive a wooden stake into their hearts, shoot them with a silver bullet, pour holy water on them, and sprinkle them with a clove of garlic. The report from Peter Tytell does not shy from the conclusion and states without qualification that the documents are fake. Dr. Joseph Newcomer likewise states definitively they are fake in the article linked above.
Sep 28, 2007 - 1:47 pm 34. Ray Zacek:Regards,
What really impresses me is how Karl Rove, who must have gone international now that he’s left the White House, arranged all that brouhaha in Myanmar to distract from the focus on the Bushies incompetence. Pure genius.
Sep 28, 2007 - 2:21 pm 35. Buddy Larsen:well, Buckhead, somebody would’ve eventually sailed from Europe to America, too, but Columbus still did something big!
Sep 28, 2007 - 4:42 pm 36. h0mi:CTRepublican:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=27275_About_That_Stoning_Image
Sep 28, 2007 - 4:58 pm 37. Neo:When the Thornburgh-Boccardi Report came out, it was pretty obvious to me that it was written to be as truthful as possible without creating any new exposure for CBS to any possible libel action.
Unfortunately, the CYA aspect of the report meant that it would not pass judgment on the level of fakery of the documents themselves. So what we got was a document that pinpointed process errors in fact-checking but stopped short of giving any of the possible slandered/libeled parties any fresh admissions that could be used in court.
Sep 28, 2007 - 5:14 pm 38. Buddy Larsen:yep, the whole sordid affair would’ve, in other times and places, sent many people to jail. Including Dan “Courage” Rather.
Sep 28, 2007 - 5:17 pm 39. legion:Does anyone with an IQ higher than their shoe size still take Sid Blumenthal seriously? Really? How odd.
Sep 28, 2007 - 10:39 pm 40. John Dunshee:If Rather and Sidney really think that the real story should be what the memos say instead of whether they are authentic, I have in my possession an e-mail sent to John Kerry from Ho-Chi Minh personally thanking him for the help he provided in expelling the hated Americans from Vietnam. Perhaps they would like to focus on the content of that instead of questioning its authenticity also.
Sep 28, 2007 - 11:44 pm 41. Neo:This is the same Sidney “lied about GrandJury questions” Blumenthal, isn’t it ?
Sep 29, 2007 - 7:50 am 42. Barry Dauphin:If Rove were half as smart as people think, he’d pay Blumenthal to say stuff like this. Then again, he doesn’t have to be smart, when the other side is so dumb as to keep bringing up these faked memos as evidence that their opponents are up to no good.
Sep 29, 2007 - 8:24 am 43. Buddy Larsen:Barry, right–the Clintonistas are always too clever by half.
But, the “position” is what they’re after.
Credibility, shmedibility, just give the bloc a meme. The outrageous stories are memetic armbands.
“Where’s your armband, pal?”
Sep 29, 2007 - 11:44 am 44. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):I think projection is the right way to look at it. To the left, almost everything that happens around Bush is a conspiracy. Perhaps that’s because the Clinton administration in fact was doing so many conspiracies (and accused of even more as a result).
The media completely believed their narrative that, in 2004, the Swift Boat Vets campaign against Kerry was organized by Rove, which I know for a fact to be a myth. Just as they assume Washington drives everything (and should, in their own world), they cannot imagine independent Americans driven by (gasp) honor, duty and patriotism.
If you want to see conspiracies and news manipulation, just wait until Hillary gets started… oh wait, didn’t one of Bill’s accuser’s have her manuscript stolen recently? Never mind waiting…
Sep 29, 2007 - 3:19 pm 45. Buddy Larsen:That’s why “Bush Lies” is so critically important to the left –it knows it does it, it knows we all know it does it, so the other side simply must be seen to do it too. Damn Bush, why won’t he let everything be relative?
Sep 29, 2007 - 5:02 pm 46. Peg C.:legion, I would take Sid Vicious seriously if only because a Hillary! administration will be chock full of types just like him. The WH will be a Gordian Knot of lies and conspiracies that will supply the alternative media a full-time job to unravel (we know the Drive Bys won’t do it).
Sep 30, 2007 - 1:13 pm