Mark Steyn: Iraqi spy case shows media at it again

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 14 March 2004 | Mark Steyn

[Lando Lincoln]

Anyone who wants to understand why the media are held in such low regard by the public -- in polls of the most respected professions we usually come somewhere between Nigerian e-mail scammers and serial pedophiles -- should consider the following headline from an Associated Press story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week:

''Accused Spy Is Cousin Of Bush Staffer''

The accused spy is Susan Lindauer, who is accused of working for Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency. She describes herself merely as an "anti-war activist,'' though, as the daily rummage through the Baathists' scrupulous paperwork indicates more clearly every day, being an anti-war activist and on the Saddamite payroll are by no means mutually exclusive.

Before she allegedly became an Iraqi agent, Lindauer spent a decade in Washington working for four members of Congress: Peter DeFazio, Ron Wyden, Carol Moseley Braun and Zoe Lofgren. What do these four legislators have in common?

Answer: They all have a ''D'' after their name.

But to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's headline writer the salient fact about Lindauer is not her 10 years of work for the Democratic Party but the amazing revelation that she is a second cousin of Bush chief of staff Andrew Card.

A second cousin! Hold the front page!

Here's an easy test for the publisher, editor and news staff of the paper:

1. Name all your second cousins.

2. Where do they live?

3. When did you last see them?

It's one thing for the press to be anti-war and feel Saddam should be given another decade or two to come into compliance with Security Council resolutions. It's quite another to be so smitten with the old butcher that your copy editors internally absorb Baath Party tribal politics and assume that mere second cousinship with members of the Bush clan automatically puts you in the inner circle. To be fair to the Associated Press, they sent the story out on the wires with the headline, ''Woman Named In Spy Case Worked As Journalist, Congressional Aide.''

What's that? ''Worked As Journalist''? Well, there's an angle the Seattle guys unaccountably missed. Before she went to work for the Democratic Party, Lindauer worked for . . . the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Instead of the cousin thing, the headline writer might more usefully have written:

''Accused Spy Used To Sit At Desk Next To Mine; I Made Clumsy Pass At Her At 1992 Office Party.''

I'd love to see these headline writers working in Hollywood: ''Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me''? ''Well, to be honest we thought it sounded punchier as 'Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Someone Who Used To Go To School With Someone Who Was A Cousin Of Someone Who Was Briefly Married To A Receptionist At Halliburton. When Cheney Worked There!' ''

Look, these are serious times. Week after week, more details emerge of the extraordinary number of influential Westerners, from French government ministers to the head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, who appear to have been in the pay of Saddam. That's, among other things, what Susan Lindauer is accused of.

But we don't have a serious press for these serious times. Boring and self-important is not the same as serious. But one reason why John Kerry calculates he can get away with damning the Bush administration as ''crooks'' and ''liars'' is because he figures he can count on the mainstream media doing what the Post-Intelligencer did -- instinctively framing every issue in anti-Bush terms, no matter how ludicrously. I suppose it's not entirely impossible that one reason the Post-Intelligencer guys went with their spy-Bush linkage is because Lindauer has been accused of betraying her country and Al Gore accused Bush of ''betraying'' the country, too. But that's one more reason why Bush will win in November: The media and the Democrats are sustaining each other in their delusions.

Sen. Kerry thinks the Bush administration are ''crooked'' and ''lying.'' The Bush ''lie'' boils down to this: The president believes there's a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things. And they think Bush is ''lying'' by insisting on playing it as a war.

As it happens, the only big political ''lie'' in recent days came from Kerry, who told a meeting in Florida, ''I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy.' '' The senator has spent most of the last year in Iowa and New Hampshire, which, for all their charms, are not where one goes to rub shoulders with ''foreign leaders.'' Jacques Chirac could have driven over the Granite State border from Quebec's Eastern Townships, where he was vacationing last summer. But he didn't. Kerry does not appear to have ''looked at'' any foreign leaders since he began his campaign.

And, if he had, he'd find them far less well-disposed to him than he imagines. Last Thursday, March 11, 2-1/2 years to the day after Sept. 11, nearly 200 people were murdered by terrorists in Spain. Like Britain, Australia and Poland, Spain is a member of what John Kerry calls Bush's ''fraudulent coalition.''

You can disagree with the administration on this war. I have. A few days after 9/11, I called for resignations from the agencies that failed on that day -- FAA, FBI, CIA, INS. Didn't happen. Still hasn't happened. It should. A couple of weeks after 9/11, I called for a total upheaval of America's relationship with Saudi Arabia. Didn't happen then. There are a few subtle hints that things are changing, but far too slowly. Anyone who took the war seriously can certainly find fault with the administration. But not if you stand there like a 5-year-old boy and never get beyond pointing your fingers and sticking your tongue out: ''Ooh, Bush lied. And Ashcroft's a big bully. And Cheney's stealing it all for his oil buddies. And you shouldn't mention the war in your campaign ads, because it's not fair. Nyaa-nyaa!''

Two hundred people died in Madrid because of a war Democrats refuse to admit exists. But, hey, you never know: Maybe the guy who did it will be a third cousin twice removed of Karl Rove.

[Lando Lincoln]

Lando

[Lando Lincoln]

Poke, it is my pleasure to ping one of these to you for a change. And, it is posted in its entirety!

Lando

[KantianBurke]

When Steyn passes on, I've got first dibs on his intellect and writing skills :>

[twntaipan]

Two hundred people died in Madrid because of a war Democrats refuse to admit exists. Very powerful line. Think we will see it in the NY Slimes? Think again.

[MaryFromMichigan]

A Mark Steyn bttt

[NordP]

Great article! Thanks for posting it.

NordP

[Unicorn]

BTTT

[God luvs America]

Does anyone have a name of the writer for the SPI and a phone number? We can start a calling campaign as we successfully did last week to the NY Times and USA Today when they described Peaceful Tomorrows as a "non-partisan, independent" organization.

[Steel Wolf]

What's that? ''Worked As Journalist''? Well, there's an angle the Seattle guys unaccountably missed. Before she went to work for the Democratic Party, Lindauer worked for . . . the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Now THAT'S chutzpah. I wish I could say 'Wow, I can't believe the press would be so overtly and shamelessly biased', but that just wouldn't be true.

[SkyPilot]

The Liberal Media has not been shamed by all the books, articles, and speeches proving that they are left0wing enabling vermin.

If anything, the lamestream press is only getting more and more shrill, and less and less credible.

One glance at the "spin" via headlines on Yahoo News are enough to make you sick.

[alnitak]

''Well, to be honest we thought it sounded punchier as 'Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Someone Who Used To Go To School With Someone Who Was A Cousin Of Someone Who Was Briefly Married To A Receptionist At Halliburton. When Cheney Worked There!' ''

Thanks Lando, I needed a laugh today.

[Thebaddog]

I have been wondering what "intelligence" the goofy chick could have gleaned from the democrats she was working for. And then it came to me that she was passing the "intelligence" to the democrats.

[Lando Lincoln]

Does anyone have a name of the writer for the SPI and a phone number? We can start a calling campaign as we successfully did last week to the NY Times and USA Today when they described Peaceful Tomorrows as a "non-partisan, independent" organization.

Great idea......here is the info. I am e-mailing something for sure.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's mailing address is:

P.O. Box 1909, Seattle WA 98111-1909

The main phone number is 206-448-8000. To subscribe or for subscriber service, call 206-464-2121 or, toll-free, 1-800-542-0820.

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Lando

[alwaysconservative]

Great article! Thanks for posting this!

Now, let me vent a little about "the media". Even FOX News, which I still watch on weekends for the hope I'll see Brit or Fred or Tony, had these abominations this morning: Juliet Huddy saying that Kerry looks "Lincoln-esque". Imagine that! To her, a lying, flip-flopping, arrogant waste of air looks like the Great Emancipator and founder of the Republican party! As if that weren't enough, Julian had the audacity to say about the attacks on Kerry's cowardice that what happened SO MANY YEARS AGO isn't relevant! You might recall that he thought it was perfectly okay to delve into President Bush's records from SO MANY YEARS AGO when the Dims insisted that he had not served his country. This kind of hypocrisy and stupidity is simply astonishing.

(Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.)

[Hillary's Folly]

I wonder if Steyn would consider a request to be Bush's press secretary. Can you imagine the exchanges in the briefing room?

[SpinyNorman]

It is incredible that any paper that purports to be even the least objective, or even worthy of the name, would for even a second, think that a suspected spy's distant relative trumps the fact that the woman actually WORKED for Moseley Braun and other Democrats/causes.

If this doesn't clearly demonstrate the liberal bias of the "mainstream" press, I cannot imagine what would.

[tsmith130]

That is the best idea I've heard all year!!!

[1rudeboy]

bttt

[T'wit]

I suppose this headline is too much to ask: "Accused Iraqi Spy Worked for 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate."

But it is worth noting that the accused spy's former employer, Carol Moseley Braun, was back in the news this week for her mutterings about being available for vice president. Ms. Moseley Braun was thrown out of office for corruption -- if I recall, she put her campaign manager-lover on the public payroll, big time. Now it would seem that she that she was harboring a spy on the payroll as well as her tax-paid bunk hunk.

This may be a bit too corrupt even for the Democrats, but I will have to be shown.

[kevkrom]

As it happens, the only big political ''lie'' in recent days came from Kerry, who told a meeting in Florida, ''I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy.' '' The senator has spent most of the last year in Iowa and New Hampshire, which, for all their charms, are not where one goes to rub shoulders with ''foreign leaders.'' Jacques Chirac could have driven over the Granite State border from Quebec's Eastern Townships, where he was vacationing last summer. But he didn't. Kerry does not appear to have ''looked at'' any foreign leaders since he began his campaign.

This has been captured in The John Kerry Songbook as follows:

I CAN'T SAY THEIR NAMES ("A Horse With No Name")

For the first part of the campaign
I was fighting for my life
There was Gephardt, Clark, that welfare queen,
Sharpton, Edwards, and Dean
The next thing I knew was that I had no buzz
About foreign policy
So I made up a story and said that other
World leaders would vote for me

I've got foreign support but I can't say their names
It just one of the rules of the game
But believe me, it all works out the same
'Cause the media won't point a finger of blame
La, la...

After going through my schedule
No such meetings could be found
Even though it was a load of bull
My reasoning was sound
I've got the support of ev'ry dictator
The whole wide world around

I've got foreign support but I can't say their names
It just one of the rules of the game
But believe me, it all works out the same
'Cause the media won't point a finger of blame
La, la...

For Mugabe, Castro, And Aristede
I am the person they need
Same for Saddam Hussien and Kim-Il-Jong
And don't forget the Viet Cong
Terrorists could come out from underground
To strike at the lands of the free
All the while, I won't make any sound
Until the UN orders me

I've got foreign support but I can't say their names
It just one of the rules of the game
But believe me, it all works out the same
'Cause the media won't point a finger of blame
La, la...

[petercooper]

The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things.

Steyn is great!

[wunderkind54]

To SpineyNorman and Skypilot:

Why the incredulity concerning the liberal press??

You know they are spin machines, yet you continue reading their garbage.

I've come to view most newspapers as National Enquirer wannabees suitable for my amusement, not intellectual content. I'm getting better daily at using the grey matter between my ears as a filter.

[Trust but Verify]

Our newspaper (The Milwaukee Urinal) ran the headline, "Bush Aides' Kin Arrested on Spy Charge". You can't make this stuff up. It only mentions in passing that she worked for Democrats in Congress throughout the 90's, but never names them.

[SierraWasp]

Thanks for posting this!

Having been first to bring this AP story from an obscure list of bulletins on a financial website to FR last week, click to peek it's gratifying to find Mark Steyn writing about it already.

I had taken a self-imposed week-long vacation from my FR posting addiction, but this story broke that.

Almost nothing brings me as much pure displeasure as either Journalistic or Judicial activism... especially by leftists in either venue!!!

[Lurker]

I can't even name one of my second cousins.

L

[Lando Lincoln]

G'mornin' FRiend! I was gone for almost two weeks awhile back. But, here I am!

Lando

[mtbopfuyn]

That's the reason I refuse to watch FNC on the weekends. All three of the non-friends are total idiots.

Kudos to Steyn!

[Calvin Locke]

Even FOX News,...

Watched a bit Saturday. Forgot the anchor, but he did say "...spy...Card...four Democrats...journalist...and worked for Fox News...."

[You Dirty Rats]

Foxnews.com had the same headline as everyone else.

This second-cousin thing is beyond laughable. You can legally MARRY your second cousin; that's how remote they are!

[Thom Pain]

"If this doesn't clearly demonstrate the liberal bias of the "mainstream" press, I cannot imagine what would."

They know full well that they are fatally biased. It just suits their (dishonest) purpose to ignore it.

[arasina]

But one reason why John Kerry calculates he can get away with damning the Bush administration as ''crooks'' and ''liars'' is because he figures he can count on the mainstream media doing what the Post-Intelligencer did -- instinctively framing every issue in anti-Bush terms, no matter how ludicrously.

That is it in a nutshell. Funny thing, though, the people are on to it, dear media. We even know when our formerly favorite Fox News Channel does it. And we will call you on it every single time, you Pravda* clones. And if you think there are a lot of stupid people out there who will believe you...perhaps there are, but they're not "likely voters" in the way you hope they are. The only things they are likely to vote on are who will be the next winner of "Survivor" or whether or not Brittney Spears will stick to her new chastity pledge.

*The mainstream media think that if they are not serving as some kind of mouthpiece for the government that they are all for freedom of speech. They still speak with only one voice (anti-GOP government) instead of presenting both sides of any issue. Thus, I call them Pravda clones.

[Dog Anchor]

"These newspapers, owned and edited by these men, although free from the repulsive vulgarity of the yellow press, were susceptible to influence by the priviledged interests, and were almost or quite as hostile to manliness as they were to unrefined vice...they favored the removal of tariff on works of art; they favored all the proper (and even more strongly all the improper) movements for international peace and arbitration; in short, they favored all good, and many goody-goody, measures so long as they did not cut deep into social wrong or make demands on National and individual virility. They opposed, or were lukewarm about, efforts to build up the army and the navy, for they were not sensitive concerning National honor; and, above all, they opposed every non-milk-and-water effort, however sane, to change our social and economic system in such a fashion as to substitute the ideal justice towards all for the ideal of kindly charity from the favored few to the possibly grateful many."
- Theodore Roosevelt

[SierraWasp]

"G'mornin' FRiend!"

Not so loud and exuberant, my geographically connected FRiend... It's still pretty early on a Sunday Mornin, out here!!! Whew... (faint grin)

[Grampa Dave]

[JayNorth]

It is incredible that any paper that purports to be even the least objective...

You probably aren't from Seattle. That paper is so bad (how bad is it?) that everyone calls it the "Post UNintelligencer". The paper calls themselves "The P I". Everyone else calls it "The P U" because it stinks.

The Post Intelligencer was one of those papers that you would read and burst out laughing at how incredibly they had to twist a story to get a negative Republican spin or a positive RAT spin. I swear if judgement day came and all the RATs went "south" and all the PUBs went "north" the P U headline would be "Bush uses rich oil buddy connections to get special treatment while brave Democrats work to solve the problems of the unfortunate in Hades".

[SierraWasp]

I think you should get some kinda "Tagline Superiority" AWARD!!!

That poster ain't too bad, either...

[Liz]

Heheh......good one.

[Puzzleman]

But one reason why John Kerry calculates he can get away with damning the Bush administration as ''crooks'' and ''liars'' is because he figures he can count on the mainstream media doing what the Post-Intelligencer did -- instinctively framing every issue in anti-Bush terms, no matter how ludicrously.

I agree that the press’ covering for Kerry and all the other Democrats is extremely important. It explains the major difference between us and them.

In Plato’s Republic, he asks whether a person would act in a moral way if he were invisible. I believe that the answer depends on whether the person is religious or not. Religious people would continue to act morally because they would not be invisible from God. Secular people would feel free of all constraint and might not be moral.

Kerry and the other Democrats are secular and have been made invisible to the voters by the press. That is what allows them to make these outrageous statements and makes it easier for them to slide down a slippery moral slope.

[Grampa Dave]

With what the liberals do and their poster boy John F'onda al Querry, taglines are very easy to come by.

Thanks. I will be mainly off the boards for a few weeks to handle a lot of personal stuff, (Good things). So don't panic if I don't answer for awhile after today.

[blackie]

Wow ~ Mark Steyn nailed it ~ thanks LL!

We are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ trolls, terrorists, democrats and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!

~~ Bush/Cheney 2004 ~~

[Skooz]

Excellent article. He hits the nail on the head so repeatedly that I cannot find just one quote to pull to post here.

Bravo.

[Skooz]

LOL! That is very good.

[Savage Beast]

"we usually come somewhere between Nigerian e-mail scammers and serial pedophiles"

Oh I'd put them--not you, Mark, let me hasten to say--between crack whores, who have an overwhelming craving to feed their habits, and the ones who are just out-and-out psychopathic.

[Bubba_Leroy]

I can't even name one of my second cousins.

Ditto. Your second cousins are the children of your parents' first cousins. You are descended from the same great-grandparents. I can't even name one of my parents' first cousins.

[Eva]

HERE'S a link to the PI article, the author's name is Matthew Daly. I am particularly in favor of the writing campaign because this headline is very typical of the PI bias. I have cancelled by subscription to the paper several times in protest. The first time was in 1991 when the paper ran a front page article on hurricaine Andrew, in which they claimed that Pres. Bush was only visiting Florida because he had relatives there and that disaster victims that lived in disaster prone areas don't deserve federal funds anyway (at least not during a Republican administration).

[blackie]

FYI ~ good stuff ~ Bump!

[tillacum]

Now you know why some of us don't watch F&F on the weekends. These two and maybe the third are weak sisters or democrats. They are the unbalanced of a so-called balanced tv network/station.

[cyncooper]

I have been wondering what "intelligence" the goofy chick could have gleaned from the democrats she was working for. And then it came to me that she was passing the "intelligence" to the democrats.

I've thought of that, too.

BTW, she IS goofy and loony seeming. All the more reason not to let the dems shrug her off as some fringer. She worked as a *spokesperson* for these dems. Whether they had any knowledge of her Iraqi sympathies or not, it calls into question their judgement in hiring this nutcase on their staffs. Same goes for the vaunted media that is dismissing her as nutty. They hired her, too!

Either the media and dems are drawn to crazy people (check) or she is playing the role of ditz in order to minimize her competency for her upcoming hearings.

[cyncooper]

I wonder if Steyn would consider a request to be Bush's press secretary. Can you imagine the exchanges in the briefing room?

Wow. I would PAY to watch those press briefings.

[SierraWasp]

"So don't panic if I don't answer for awhile after today."

Hey! You din't panic when I took a week off to pout over the local election results!!! (grin)

Have a nice week. See ya later, Gladiator!!!

I may ping ya anaways, justa give ya ping overload when yew gits back! Then you can REALLY painic... Ha Ha Ha!!!