October 29, 2005

Right wing spin

Watched Bill Maher last night--or part of it anyway. Tony Snow was on to defend the right, and his spin on the Libby indictments was kind of what we expected. He kept saying things like he was "indicted for talking to reporters." Luckily, the other guests went after him for that.

But his other repeated spin was that Joe Wilson had been proven to be a liar, and that Valerie Plame had, in fact, urged that her husband be sent to Niger. Huh?

Ok, I may not know the details on all of Wilson's veracity, but it strikes me that this is a right wing feint. Say that Wilson is an idiot and a liar. The White House still orchestrated an effort to intimidate and discredit Wilson by outing his wife. Snow said she wasn't really an agent and hadn't been for years. Yet, the memo that circulated on Air Force One clearly identified her as a covert agent. Maybe she shouldn't have been, I don't know, but she was.

Ultimately none of it matters. The right seems to have forgotten that our behavior is not determined by others. The fact that terrorists like to torture doesn't mean we do. The fact that others might lie and cheat does not make it ok for us. Just more proof that this white house is Christian in name only, and so are their most visible supporters.

4 comments:

Bootleg Blogger said...

Streak- While channel surfing I accidentally hit fox news. Hannity had Mary Matalin on. I must say, what a whine-fest! Evidently, no crime has been committed and a wonderful person has been slammed. Evidently, when the special prosecutor goes after their guy, it's all of a sudden ok to totally disregard his findings. If you tell a lie enough times......

Anonymous said...

The politicos have truly mastered post-modern rhetoric. Truth doesn't matter nearly as much as the 'truth' that can be discursively constructed. As BB notes, that's commonly done by disseminating and repeating a specific message regardless of its resemblance to any sort of objective reality.

Streak said...

CNN is reporting now (finally) that foreign countries investigated Plame's role in their own country, and anyone who might have worked with her.

Cheney, Bush, Rove and Libby exposed a CIA agent who worked for us. I have said it before, but had this happened under Clinton, we would be looking at impeachment.

Anonymous said...

Especially with a Republican majority and the increasing viciousness of people like DeLay, there is no question that a Democrat in office would have been impeached. Hell, they impeached the guy for getting a hummer in the Oval Office and lying about it! How many people, exactly, did that kill? Bubba is lucky that Hilary didn't kill HIM! So far there has been lying to the American public, perjury to a grand jury, outing a CIA agent, illegal stock trades (Frist), money laundering (DeLay), and of all that, how the hell is Bush not facing greater repurcussions than Clinton?? It boggles the mind.