Dirty Laundry

Sun   5 May 2002   11:46 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Here's Your Sign] [Media Ochre] [Flyover Blogdom]

First it was Jon-Benet Ramsey, then Nicole Brown Simpson, then Chandra Levy, and now Bonnie Lee Bakley. If it’s lurid, it leads. Some might choose to add Monica Lewinsky to this list, and not without justification; the legacy media, which had an enormous investment in Bill Clinton, did report that story not for any constitutional ramifications, but as a celebrity sex scandal. That twist is a common thread in all these stories. The Ramseys may not have been celebrities before their daughter died, and there may not be any obvious sexual overtones (aside from the practice of putting a six-year-old girl into a beauty pageant), but there was enough there to turn the tragic murder of a child into a lurid, sensational story that still hasn’t gone away for good, I fear. O.J. Simpson most certainly was an established celebrity before his ex-wife was found stabbed to death. Reports of an affair between Gary Condit (celebrity by virtue of being a blow-dried blond, blue-eyed congressman from California) and Chandra Levy would have made that a celebrity sex scandal even if they hadn’t turned out to be true. And of course Bonnie Lee Bakley was selling nude pics of herself over the Internet. Celebrity, sex, and blood. The three most marketable things in American pop culture—and any two will turn an otherwise innocuous story into a years-long reporting frenzy by bubble-headed bleached blondes with a gleam in their eye. Too bad they overshadow what must be the very real anguish of the very real human beings involved in these events. The Ramseys have themselves been fingered as suspects in their own daughter’s murder by much of that segment of public opinion that found the story titillating. Simpson is still walking free thanks to the spectacle made of his criminal trial. Chandra is still missing, and it’s taken months for an arrest to be made in Bakley’s murder. Honor and justice have yet to be satisfied in any of these cases, because legacy media find it more important to satisfy the public’s appetite for a salacious spin on a tragic story. At least Bill Clinton didn’t get off altogether scot-free. He is, after all, still married to the Shredder from Chicago.

Needed: A Surgeon General’s Warning on Newspaper Ink

Fri   8 Jun 2001   12:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

There’s no escaping stupidity. It’s everywhere, and if you hope to keep your sanity you have to learn to live with that fact.     But every so often one particular source of stupidity just gets under my skin so deep that I can’t shrug it off. What is it, pray tell, about publishing newspapers that attracts so many people to whom ’idiot’ would be a compliment? We’re talking about people whose sole qualification for being placed on a pedestal is that their heads are as stone-stuffed as a marble bust — yet almost invariably such people believe themselves better qualified than you or I to make important decisions for ourselves and our communities.     Consider just one issue: During my adult life I have lived in just three places. But in each of these places, the local newspapers have pushed — in the face of convincing evidence the locals are deadset against it — consolidation of city and county governments. In two of those places, past efforts have gone down in flames so convincingly that anyone with an I.Q. that doesn’t begin with a zero and a decimal point would get the message, but in both places the newspapers persist. The oddball locale has never even allowed a vote on the issue and most elected officials (who would normally jump at the chance for centralized power) are openly opposed. Yet the newspaper pushes it nonetheless.     As if that weren’t bad enough, the publisher of that community’s local daily seems to have such a seething personal grudge against certain county commissioners that his opinion has been driving the way local news is covered (rather than the news driving editorial opinion, which was once the normal way of running a newspaper). Any criticism of this is met personally by the publisher with defensiveness and sarcasm. How reassuring of his publication’s objectivity.     Is it something in the ink? Does the chemical composition of newsprint cause severe brain damage — which is most strikingly noticeable in those who have risen through the ranks to become editors and publishers? Could that be it?     The Daily Routine, of course, is not a newspaper. Nor, as plainly stated in its mission statement, is its news section presented under the guise of a purely objective rundown of news stories. People who read it know, or ought to know, what they’re getting. And people who read a daily publication purporting to be a newspaper ought to get news stories presented in an objective manner under editorial judgment that trusts the reader to make up his own mind. However quixotic the bigwigs may be in promoting things their readers will never support, they owe it to those readers not to try to manipulate public opinion with blatantly slanted reporting.     Yeah, I know. It’s like saying politicians should keep their promises, men should always be faithful to their wives, and nobody should ever blow up a building full of innocent children to make a political point.     But you’d think an intelligent publisher would at least insist his news reporters try to maintain the appearance of objectivity. After all, if you’re really going to try to manipulate public opinion to get people to support things they don’t want, it’s counter-productive to let the reader see up your sleeve.     The only logical conclusion is that there’s a stupidity epidemic in our nation’s newspaper offices. Somebody call the Centers for Disease Control.

A Latter-Day John Brown?

Sat   12 May 2001   12:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Here's Your Sign] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

The other day I heard something that literally made my day.     While running some errands, I had my car radio tuned to WGST, the Atlanta station that carries the Rush Limbaugh show. During a break, the station ran a public-service announcement that went, in the absence of a verbatim transcript, more or less like this:     “With so much in the news recently about Timothy Veigh, we here at WGST would like to take a moment to remember his victims.” After a moment of silence, the announcer went on, “At times like this, it helps to be reminded that sometimes the two sides there are to every story, are Right and Wrong.”*     That was a risky thing for a radio station to say in this day of political correctness and the near criminalization of judgmentalness. Yet it seems that McVeigh’s crime is one of those rare birds in post-modern America: something we can all pretty much agree on. There aren’t many things that can even aspire to that status. Slavery is one, and the event of nuclear war another — but not much else. Abortion? The environment? The right to enjoy the fruits of one’s own labor? Some days we can’t even agree on whether the sun rises in the east.     That there is a consensus on McVeigh is all the more curious because the penalty to which he was sentenced is viscerally opposed by a small but vociferous segment of the public — some of whom are conservatives. My own view on the death penalty is that it really isn’t killing — it’s just chlorinating the gene pool. But even a lot of death-penalty opponents are holding their peace when it comes to the Butcher of Oklahoma City. The only controversy seems to be whether he acted as much the lone wolf as he claims, or whether one or more as-yet unidentified persons were more involved than is currently accepted. I still don’t think the whole story has been discovered, and I doubt McVeigh will tell any more of that story than he has. And that’s because Timothy McVeigh seems convinced that his cause is more important than his own life, and that he can still further the cause even as a corpse.     Most people would like to think that the men they send to kill or be killed in their nation’s defense would be willing to lay down their lives for that cause, if necessary. And the cup of military history runneth over with examples of heroism on that scale. But the willful quest for martyrdom is not something Americans are accustomed to. In our age, that mentality is left to Middle Eastern suicide bombers — just as a previous generation associated it with Japanese kamikaze pilots. Americans just can’t get their minds around the idea that someone could actually want to die for his cause even when he doesn’t have to.     Timothy McVeigh is not the first American to display such a level of fanaticism, though. More than 140 years ago there was a man whose devotion to a cause led him to take up arms against his lawful government, years before any Southern state opted for secession and made armed rebellion against the United States a quasi-legitimate exercise. And this man’s cause was one with which Americans today are in 100% agreement: the abolition of slavery. John Brown, late of “Bleeding Kansas,” led a raid on the Army arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), was captured, tried, and sentenced to hang. And hang he did, decrying with his last breath the evil that would yet lead to Civil War and a century and a half of hard feelings between North and South, black and white, centralists and de-centralists.     McVeigh insists that he was right to kill 168 innocent men, women and children as punishment against a U.S. government that committed murders under color of authority at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas, just as John Brown insisted with his last breath that he was right to challenge the lawful authority of the United States over slavery. I don’t say that “McVeigh believes” the government committed murders, because it’s not a matter of belief — any more than John Brown’s condemnation of slavery was a matter of belief. Both men committed their crimes because they were outraged at crimes being committed by, or under the protection of, the government.     Given how popular opinion must have reacted to the raid at Harpers Ferry, you would think that America would have shrunk from the abolitionist cause for some time afterward — but the raid occurred in 1859, only two years before the outbreak of Civil War. Back then, most people could understand the difference between an atrocity, and the belief that led to its occurrence. In all, the effect of Brown’s action seems to have been a wash — slavery was ultimately abolished, after an armed challenge against the U.S. government, but it came neither because of the raid nor in spite of it. Or perhaps it would be better to say both because of and in spite of it.     Whatever reforms may come to our government today in light of the events at Ruby Ridge and Waco, there will probably be elements of both “because of” and “in spite of” when it comes to the relationship to Timothy McVeigh as well. His atrocity helped empower and re-elect a hopelessly corrupt President, whose tenure and departure has nevertheless reintroduced such notions to public discourse as “Right and Wrong.” His prosecution has brought to light yet another in a series of faults in the conduct of the FBI, which bore a share of responsibility for both incidents that McVeigh thought he had a right to avenge. Perhaps this will prove to be the catalyst for such reforms as may restore public trust in federal law enforcement agencies, or perhaps it will serve merely to erode that trust even further.     There are of course major differences between John Brown’s cause and that of Timothy McVeigh. Slavery was an offense on a grand scale compared to the mere incompetence, recklessness and dishonesty that surrounds Waco and Ruby Ridge. Millions were enslaved, compared to the relatively few victims of Elmer Fed whose screams drove McVeigh over the edge. And as shocking as Brown’s raid must have been in 1859, his victims were soldiers — able and willing to fight back — while McVeigh’s victims, civilians and their children, had no such opportunity. Bombing a building full of children is not the act of a heroic would-be martyr, but a display of malicious cowardice for which there is a special place in hell.     It may be, though, that history tailors its shocks for the times. Maybe a society that sanctions infanticide to protect a woman’s standard of living isn’t as easy to shock as one that tolerates slavery. Some will bridle at that suggestion, but a greater proportion of slavery’s victims survived it than do abortion’s victims.     Sometimes the two sides there are to every question, are Right and Wrong. If we as a society needed to be shocked, there are certainly enough reasons. Editor’s Note: You’ll notice this took place four months, almost to the day, before 9/11.

Media ‘Vote’ Counters Missing the Point

Mon   26 Feb 2001   8:00 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

Recipients of The Daily Routine will have seen that USA Today has declared Miami-Dade for George W. Bush in the counting of “undercount” ballots that were the centerpiece of last year’s interminable aftermath of Election Day. This comes on the heels of a similar finding in another county. What USA Today reports is that regardless of the standard used in “determining the intent of the voter” Al Gore could not gain enough votes to overturn the certified result — which, for those who were living in a cave during November and December 2000, was that George W. Bush, now our President, won the state’s 25 electoral votes and as a result the presidency. If even the most lax standard of defining a legally cast ballot was used, Gore gained a paltry 49 votes, far fewer than his projected 600, in Miami-Dade. This strongly suggests Bush was correct in accusing Gore of using “fuzzy numbers.” Under stricter standards, Bush had a net gain. A point to bear in mind, however, is that the media-found outcome is based on the consistent application of a single standard to all ballots in question. That is to say, the same standard used to discover a vote for Gore would be used to also discover a vote, if there was one, for Bush. As we saw during the circus of “re”-counts before the U.S. Supreme Court fired the clowns on Dec. 12, the consistent application of standards was not a realistic danger. The controversy over the so-called “recounts” was rooted in a number of discrete issues, of which the most worrisome was the adoption of new standards for counting votes after the ballots were cast. Second in importance, and the issue on which the Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling against Gore was based, was the inconsistent or unequal application of standards for determining what is and is not a legally cast — and therefore countable — vote. In fairness, the lack of a consistent statewide standards is due to a failure of Florida’s government to enact or promulgate such a standard, rather than necessarily the fault of Gore partisans. But Gore’s supporters made no bones about their desire to exploit this loophole in Florida election law, along with novel legal theories that made great sense to journalists and the legal hacks on the state supreme court, but not to Florida’s trial-court judges nor seven justices of the nation’s highest court. When media organizations hired major auditing firms to backstop the vote-counting machines used by duly constituted election authorities in the Sunshine State, it was widely recognized as little more than an attempt to do mischief to the outcome that — by the time it was finalized — had won wider public support than the much-ballyhooed “popular vote” victory claimed by Gore. In terms of the legitimacy of that outcome, the media “recounts” were never a threat since public opinion (long the weapon of choice for the Clinton-Gore political machine) had rejected Gore as a sore loser and rallied around Bush. That the results now being reported merely ratify what Florida authorities and the Supreme Court majority held all along, is of value only in providing “bragging rights” to Bush supporters. They do not “legitimize” George W. Bush’s presidency. That which is already legitimate doesn’t need to be re-legitimized. Still, in this day of public opinion as the pre-eminent weapon of political mass destruction, these numbers do infuse huge volumes of new political capital into the President’s account, even as the trashy departing behavior of his predecessor finally bankrupts his. That amorphous hive-mind known as Official Washington would be well advised to acknowledge this even more than they had previously. In particular, members of the President’s own party whose spines have jellified during their careers in Congress should reconsider their opposition to Bush’s tax cut. The turnaround on public opinion also should be heeded by members of Congress who wish to transform Bill Clinton’s current political weakness into tangible punishment for his misdeeds. Public opinion can be fickle (need I resurrect the horrors of 1995-96?), and public adulation in the form of positive poll numbers has always been second only to the unwholesome attentions of young White House interns on Clinton’s list of favorite things. Now that he no longer has that support, he is as close to Hell as this life can put him. It’s also too early in Hillary Clinton’s Senate term to expect her husband’s current tribulations to derail her political future. Both are expert at playing the woebegone victim of hateful enemies, and the hold they continue to have over many conservatives and libertarians is no more wholesome than the Clintons’ own devotion to power, privilege, and droit de seigneur.     Besides, just as Clinton’s behavior is faulted for energizing “Clinton-haters,” so does the obsession of some with “getting” Bill Clinton only serve to energize those few still inclined to defend him.     Any responsible hunter will tell you that the cruelest thing one can do to one’s prey is to let it get away wounded. If we really want to punish Clinton, maybe it’s better now simply to let him crawl away into the underbrush.

Bayonet the Wounded

Thu   2 Nov 2000   4:33 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

News item (NYT): Even Democrats Admit Republicans More Fired Up This Year Forgive me if I sound paranoid, but “Shades of 1998!“ Remember two years ago when all the media were telling us that Republicans and other conservatives were so much more fired up than their liberal Democrat opponents? You might recall that everyone seemed to be projecting big gains for the GOP in both houses of Congress and in state houses across the country. Didn’t happen, did it? This kind of 11th-hour poor-mouthing by the libs cannot be allowed to work again. They’re hoping once again to inspire lethal overconfidence among Republican voters. I remind all of Napoleon’s advice: “It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.“ He may have been a lousy emperor, but he knew a thing or two about winning wars. For many years the other side has effectively defined electoral politics as warfare. But our right to continue speaking out for what we believe in is at stake, so the mercy we as a nation have historically shown to the vanquished in actual war cannot be shown to the liberal Democrats and their media allies in this election. Even if we really do believe we’re going to win big on all fronts on Election Day, we have to mobilize ourselves on that day, prepared to do the electoral equivalent of bayonetting the wounded. Which is no less than the other side has repeatedly done to us in its own victories. We’ve learned that politics is hell. Let’s teach that lesson right back at ‘em. [And this was before the Florida debacle even happened. So right, it’s embarrassing.]

A Press Conference That Will Never Happen

Mon   28 Feb 2000   16:23 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

As of this writing, there remain three candidates for the Republican nomination, and two for the Democratic nomination—although that could change as early as tomorrow. If you’re like me, there are a lot of questions you wish someone would ask these candidates. In no particular order, here are some of mine. “Mr. Vice President, what should the American people conclude about a would-be leader of the free world who has to be instructed by a woman on how to act more masculine?“ “Gov. Bush, earlier in your campaign you took some heat from conservative Republicans for calling yourself a ‘compassionate conservative,‘ which some took as suggesting that ordinary conservatives are not compassionate. Some thought you used this phrase in hopes of currying favor with the press corps. Given the events of the last two months, do you think there’s any point in a conservative, even an avowedly compassionate one, trying to curry favor with the press?“ “Sen. Bradley, why are you still here?“ “Sen. McCain, if Gov. Bush was wrong to speak at Bob Jones University, does this mean you will be firing the aide for your campaign who graduated from Bob Jones University?“ “Mr. Vice President, can you name the Speaker of Parliament of the Czech Republic?“ “Sen. McCain, given the outrageous dishonesty that your campaign stooped to in the Michigan primary, do you really think you can still command the moral high ground?“ “Gov. Bush, what would you say to someone who still whines about how we need to get money out of politics, after he has beaten you in three states on a comparatively shoestring budget?“ “Mr. Vice President, can you identify the American Founding Fathers depicted by these busts we borrowed from Monticello?“ “Sen. Bradley, can we call you a cab?“ “Ambassador Keyes, can Republican primary voters expect that in a future election cycle you will conduct your campaign as a serious effort to win election, rather than as merely a showcase for your admittedly brilliant oratory?“ “Sen. McCain, you’ve claimed to be a Reagan Republican. You’ve also declared yourself in favor of ‘small but energetic’ government. President Reagan always argued that there should be less government, and said that it governs best when it governs least. This places you and President Reagan at polar opposites. Please comment.“ “Mr. Vice President, what does ‘is’ mean?“ “Gov. Bush, since New Hampshire your campaign has become more engaged and directed. What lesson might we draw from this on the merits and liabilities of competition?“ “Sen. Bradley, how many fingers am I holding up?“

When Is the News Not the News?

Mon   21 Feb 2000   13:56 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

Here I am, trying to crank out a commentary for this week, and all the news I can think of to comment on, isn’t even news. So Big Media took sides in the South Carolina GOP primary; it simply follows the pattern they set in the general election campaign back in 1992. So the pollsters were dead wrong about who would win that primary; people in the Carolinas have been flummoxing pollsters for years. So Big Media can’t figure out why things didn’t go as they predicted; they’ve been clueless all along. Could I turn that into a piece on Big Media partisanship? Yeah, right—like I haven’t done that one a million times since I started spreading my opinions all over the Internet. It’s almost become obligatory that conservative Internet commentators do at least one Big Media-bashing piece a month. Media bias is only news to the media, a fact that tells us all we need to know. According to the exit pollsters, a majority of the record turnout in South Carolina named taxes as the issue they cared most about—and they’re not in favor. This is another item that is news only to the news media (or would be, if they were willing to report it, which they’re not, which also isn’t news). The whole thing is just plain pathetic. After I learned of the results of the primary, I happened to catch part of a C-SPAN interview with somebody who writes for The State, a newspaper in, I believe, Columbia, SC. This writer was talking about how George W. Bush’s visit to Bob Jones University, and his refusal to demand that the legislature take the Confederate battle flag off the statehouse, would come back to haunt Bush if he wins the nomination. Apparently the Democrats’ first strategy to try to get Al Gore elected president is to claim that Republicans are all a bunch of stealth Klansmen. Also not news. Al Gore himself reacted to Bush’s win by accusing Republicans of wanting to destroy Social Security and Medicare. Can you say deja vu? Gore’s hysterical reaction suggests he is actually afraid of having to face Bush in November, when the media drumbeat the last couple of weeks has been that Bush can’t win in November. Surprised? Me neither. (You know Big Media is out of it when even Al Gore manages to have a better grasp than they have, of the mood of the electorate!) So what’s to write about? What’s to comment on? I shoulda took the week off. And if next week’s no better, maybe I will.

Sorry, but This Really Isn’t News

Thu   30 Sep 1999   14:47 by Kevin McGehee in Peachtree City, GA 0 comments [Wackadoodle] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

Ted Turner chose a speech over in Red China to confess to something a lot of us have known all along: this multi-billionaire who controls the most profitable media outlets in America, is “a socialist at heart.“ Well, duh-h-h-h! This is the man who came up with the ecofascist indoctrination cartoon, “Captain Planet,“ with its pagan religious references; the man who singlehandedly created the pro-Soviet “Goodwill Games” after the civilized world boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow; the man who makes fun of popes and offers to revise the Ten Commandments. This is the man who has for years consistently demonstrated a contempt for the very same system of freedom and capitalism that anabled him to rise above the trailer park and redefine mass media in the age of cable and satellite television. Love may be blind, but it ain’t deaf; no sane capitalist would have fallen in love with Hanoi Jane. So why is there even a ripple over Red Ted’s confession? How can there be even one person in this plugged-in world who hasn’t gotten his number a thousand times over by now? Perhaps it’s because we still haven’t gotten used to the idea of dedicated socialists being willing to take the name upon themselves. Even mere liberals can’t win national elections in this country if they openly confess their liberalism; avowed socialists are no more politically viable today than they were in the 1950s. But then, Red Ted isn’t running for any office, except possibly the honorary title of National Embarrassment now that Bill Clinton can’t seek a third term. Perhaps it’s the monumental hypocrisy of a man who owes his wealth and prominence to free-market capitalism, stating his desire to see those things done away with. But in Clinton’s America, hypocrisy is a label that is only applicable to conservatives who disapprove of sexual harassment and rape by the most powerful man on earth. Therefore Red Ted’s confession isn’t really hypocrisy, it’s merely a multi-billionaire’s version of an attitude often found among those who move to an idyllic locale because of growth, and promptly become no-growthers. Now that Red Ted is one of the wealthiest men on earth, and owns such a hugely disproportionate share of America’s private land, he wants to be the last to achieve such a pinnacle—never to be rivaled by some upstart nouveau riche. Not by any means a unique stance in these waning months of the 20th Century, so hardly worth getting all agog over. No, I think the real reason so many people are surprised at Red Ted’s confession is that he thought it was needed. His audience over there in the New Focus of Evil knows a Red when it sees one, just as we do. Yet somehow the husband of Hanoi Jane felt it necessary to tell them what the whole world already knew. The man who brought us CNN has demonstrated himself to be the only one left who hadn’t already gotten the news.

Earth Calling Safire

Thu   5 Nov 1998   7:03 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

William Safire says the Republicans’ social agenda is what hurt them on Election Day. Earth calling Safire! Everything I’ve seen indicates that a major problem for the Republicans on November 3 was that—in most of the country—the so-called “Religious Right” didn’t turn out in the numbers Republicans needed to overcome the high Democratic turnout sparked by the Open Sewer Party’s scare ads. In states where there were social-conservative issues on the ballot (like, say, Alaska) religious conservatives turned out in nice, big numbers and kept the Democrats from doing as well as they might have. In other states this didn’t happen. Why? Timid national leadership, for one. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s comment about homosexuality being like alcoholism might have made a few points with social conservatives, but the Senate’s refusal to consider even a relatively infinitesimal tax cut wasn’t an affront only to so-called fiscal conservatives. It was an act of cowardice in the face of a weakened and reeling President, something that anyone with any amount of character had to find revolting. The too-little-too-late “honesty” ad campaign also came across as a last-minute bone to social conservatives, probably in response to internal GOP polls that may have warned of low turnout in that constituency. Just as the “Religious Right” didn’t forgive George Bush’s “no new taxes” betrayal on the strength of his pandering at the 1992 Republican convention, that vital segment of the party didn’t buy the last-minute campaign ads. I think also that many social conservatives are growing increasingly discouraged by the trends of the last six years. A president who represents promiscuity, mendacity, abusiveness, and a towering Messiah complex, apparently manages to maintain sufficient popular support that two-thirds of those polled want him to receive a purely symbolic, meaningless and unconstitutional “punishment.“ Language, situations and acts that a generation ago could only be shown in adult movie theaters now appear regularly on cable television and are making inroads on broadcast TV. Lawyers and judges find nothing objectionable about demolishing fundamental pillars of our civilization, object to asking the people what they think of it all, and reject the results when they don’t like them. And the Four Horsemen of the American Apocalypse—CNN and the news operations at ABC, CBS, and NBC—smugly disregard fact and balance in their reporting on the most corrupt president in American history. A growing number of social conservatives, I fear, are retreating from political involvement, having concluded that the nation is beyond saving by political means, and may not be salvageable at all.  The loss of those committed voters, navigating the political waters by a reliable moral compass, can only doom the Republicans to fall back into permanent minority status. The Democrats have no such constituency to lose—all Democrats seem to be united by the lure of being on the receiving end of wealth redistribution, and it’s hard to disillusion people with such squalid character. No, Mr. Safire, what hurt the Republicans on November 3 was not their “social agenda,“ but their lack of one—and their lack of backbone in pursuing any agenda at all in the last two years.

Were You Surprised by Democrats’ Claim of ‘Coming Government Shutdown?‘

Wed   5 Aug 1998   8:37 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

I was—when my federal employee wife told me a couple of weeks ago that the federal employee newsletter had included a warning of just such a possibility. Remember 1995? The federal government shutdown resulting from a showdown over the budget? Remember how the Democrats and the unions (and, naturally, Big Media) placed the blame for the shutdown on the Republican Congress? And remember how it came out afterward that the Democrats and the unions had conspired to bring the shutdown about for political purposes? Odd, isn’t it, that the 1998 “coming government shutdown” should be announced first in the federal employees’ newsletter, and that it should reach Big Media’s radar screen at a Democrat press conference? Odd, that is, when Congress has not been pursuing any kind of major budget showdown? Not in the least, given what’s been happening of late on the Clinton scandal front. Clearly, the Clintonistas have been expecting the news for their man to get worse and worse as 1998 has progressed. Congressional Democrats have signed on because they want to win back control this November, and they’re convinced that their propaganda offensive surrounding the shutdown a few years back helped them in 1996. And they’re equally convinced that the American people weren’t paying attention when the true origin of that shutdown was made public. Certain traits can be said to run through every strategy the Democrats have used since 1992. First, of course, is a blurring of the distinction between the Office and the Person of the president. This has manifested in any number of ways—from Roger Clinton’s calling Rush Limbaugh a traitor to the country for daring to criticize Bill Clinton, to the attempt to establish a personal attorney-client privilege between the Clintons and the White House Counsel’s office, right down to Clinton’s oft-stated belief that his own political survival is all that stands between our nation and its utter collapse. In effect, because Clinton and his followers do not recognize a distinction between the Office and the Person of the president, they regard the Rule of Law as optional—and more often an obstacle than a necessity. A second consistent thread running through Democratic strategies since 1992 is the ready use of distortion, manipulation, and deception—not as a last resort when all other strategies fail (as was previously the case), but as the first and most favored approach. This, too, is an offense of sorts against the Rule of Law, but in a more abstract fashion. The Rule of Law depends on a well-informed people freely making decisions based on the facts as they are known. When they are denied these facts, or are given only those facts (or, more properly, those assertions of “fact”) that support a partisan position, with any adverse facts dismissed as propaganda formulated by an evil partisan enemy on the other side, the people will make decisions that are not in their own best interest. At first. The people are not sheep. They will trust liars and manipulators only so long before they become enraged and take action. First they will act at the ballot box, and if Clinton’s followers were dismayed by the outcome of 1994 they ain’t seen nothing yet. Even if they should succeed in bringing about their desired outcome in 1998, they will do so only by digging still more and bigger tunnels beneath the foundations of our nation’s institutions. I do not want to see those institutions brought to ruin for the sake of making Clinton’s last months in office more comfortable, or come to think of it for any reason. It’s time for the Democrats and Big Media to step away from Bill Clinton and allow him to face justice, while those institutions can still be saved. “Coming government shutdown” my maiden Aunt Fannie!

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