Project for the
New Century
“A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice.”
— Tim Robbins, speech to National Press Club, April 15, 2003
Resoluteness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for such a voice. Also needed is eloquence. Here is such a voice:
Postscript:
I wrote the above at 3:38 PM today, thinking I had finally found someone to admire whom my left-leaning friends might also admire.
Perhaps resoluteness and eloquence suffice to stop a mob; they are not, however, sufficient to impress professional journalists, who, to be much impressed, require a third quality– truthfulness.
Since today’s major Washington and New York papers indicate that a presidential scandal of Water- or Monica-gate proportions may be in the offing, some minimal fact-checking seems in order. Hence, at 3:40 PM today, I did a Google search on names Pitt discusses:
“karl rove”
“robert mosbacher”
novak.
That search indicates that unfortunately, mob-stopper Pitt seems, like many leftists, to be a liar.
Here is an excerpt from Pitt on Karl Rove dated Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2003:
The Most Insidious of Traitors
“Karl Rove, senior political advisor to George W. Bush, is a very powerful man. That is not to say he has never been in trouble. Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush Sr. campaign for trashing Robert Mosbacher, Jr., who was the chief fundraiser for the campaign and an avowed Bush loyalist. Rove accomplished this trashing of Mosbacher by planting a negative story with columnist Bob Novak. The campaign figured out that Karl had done the dirty deed, and he was given his walking papers.
Demonstrably, Rove is back in the saddle again. The January 2003 edition of Esquire magazine carried an article by Ron Suskind…. “
Here is an excerpt from columnist Robert Novak dated December 5, 2002:
“The article in Esquire’s January edition by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind is actually about Karl Rove, Bush’s powerful political adviser….
Unfortunately, I did not escape Suskind’s article, which includes these sentences: ‘Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fund-raising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.’ I was called by no fact-checker, who would have learned of multiple errors.
Suskind has confused former Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher Sr., Bush’s 1992 chief fund-raiser, with his son Rob, who headed the Bush campaign in Texas (Victory ’92). Criticism of the younger Mosbacher, a frequent unsuccessful candidate in Texas, was not ‘planted’ with me by Rove but was passed to me by a Bush aide whom I interviewed. Rove was indeed fired by Mosbacher from Victory ’92 but continued as a national Bush-for-president operative.
Three mistakes in two sentences lend credence to claims by White House aides that they were misrepresented in Suskind’s July article…”
I say Pitt seems to be lying because in today’s editorial he never even mentions Novak’s column of December 5, 2002, which is, as noted above, readily available.
It is, of course, possible that Pitt and Suskind are right and Novak is wrong. It is also possible that Orwell was wrong, that Stalin was a great man, and that Communism is the wave of the future.
Looks to me like you’re finding reasons to say that those who dislike the idea of a traitor in the White House are leftist Stalinist liars.
The Wilson story is in a sort of inertial stasis at the moment; no one will admit who told them what. The White House will try and wait it out and spin it as liberal liars making up lies, just as you’re doing above. In all likelihood, however, someone in the White House is responsible for disclosing classified information motivated purely by revenge. That disturbs me much more than anything Pitt said or didn’t say.
I mean.. REALLY. ‘Stalin was a great man?’
Comment by HomerTheBrave — Tuesday, September 30, 2003 @ 9:15 pm
Recommended reading…
I mean… REALLY recommended:
Lying to the Credulous.
Comment by m759 — Tuesday, September 30, 2003 @ 10:19 pm
So I read as much of that as momentum would allow, and all it says to me is that ideologues are ideologues, which is exactly what’s wrong with a White House that outs CIA agents because their husbands bear bad news.
Comment by HomerTheBrave — Thursday, October 2, 2003 @ 7:47 am
I was doing a similar fact checking of the Pitt article when I ran across this. I’m certainly not going to claim I have the answers, but…
In reading Novak’s response to the Suskind article he says that these ‘criticisms’ of the Junior Mosbacher “who headed the Bush campaign in Texas (Victory ’92)” originated by a ‘Bush aid’ and not from Rove. Was it not Rove who got that job later?
I may be reading this wrong, but it does seem to correlate with what ‘seems’ to be happening here. Rove would be stupid to directly do anything like this – he’d most likely do it through an aid.
At least I would.
Here’s to the truth. May it be known.
Comment by Ebonsun — Thursday, October 2, 2003 @ 8:26 am
Addendum: It also seems to me that any reporter worth his salt would think twice about blatantly printing the NAME of a CIA undercover agent. Especialy one that is working to protect our country from WMD threats.
If she was part of some scandal, or was not doing her job, that would be something else… but to just name her? Novak MUST have known the seriousness of what he was printing.
That in itself makes the ethics of this reporter somewhat suspect – to me.
Comment by Ebonsun — Thursday, October 2, 2003 @ 8:34 am
Yes, lying ideologues are lying ideologues… whether of the left or the right. And Novak’s ethics are indeed suspect… as are the ethics (and truthfulness) of every other member of what Twain rightly called “the damned human race.”
Comment by m759 — Thursday, October 2, 2003 @ 2:15 pm
Wait a minute … didn’t Stalin win?
Comment by oOMisfitOo — Friday, October 3, 2003 @ 1:31 am