Posted on 03/03/2005 7:47:45 AM PST by Constitution Day
happy warrior Daffier ’n’ Daffier . . . One of the problems with the concept of “spin” is that it turns media analysis into a full-fledged James Jesus Angleton Cold War wilderness of mirrors. At Berlin station in the good old days, if the guy’s telling the truth, that could mean he’s a real defector. If what he’s saying isn’t true, that could mean he’s a KGB-planted fake defector. On the other hand, if the guy’s telling the truth, that could mean he’s a fake defector feeding some true stuff so we won’t spot he’s a fake defector. And, if what he’s saying isn’t true, that could mean he’s a real defector, since every transparently honest fellow is bound to get a few things wrong. On the other other hand, if what he’s saying isn’t true, that could mean he’s a fake defector posing as one of those true defectors who appear more plausible by getting a few things wrong. On the other other other hand . . . An ex-MI6 guy in Britain once told me that in intelligence every fact had a minimum of seven possible meanings. As I recall, at Angleton’s CIA, they figured it had eleven possible meanings. Let’s just say it’s like 7-Eleven: Whatever you’re looking for, it’ll be in there somewhere. I don’t think the Berlin-station types would have been impressed by our current journalistic elite. For example, the other day, some secret tape recordings of George W. Bush fell into the hands of the New York Times and the excitable lads rushed into print with them, and the great herd of America’s mainstream media stampeded along behind. The chaps at the Times were thrilled by these illicit tapes and splashed them over the front page for days on end, even though the clandestine recordings shockingly reveal that the private off-the-record Bush is . . . exactly the same as the public on-the-record Bush! But, like some neophyte slip of a thing in his first week at the CIA, the Times assumed that the very fact that they were secret recordings must mean they were highly damaging. In completely private conversations taped without his knowledge, Bush reveals . . . “I’ve got a great wife”!! “The Bible is pretty good about keeping your ego in check”!!! “I’m not going to kick gays, because I’m a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?”!!!! These and other shocking revelations caused me to fall into a deep sleep, slip off the chair, and get a nasty paper cut as page 27 of the Times’s top-secret scoop nicked my cheek on the way down. I’m not a conspiracy-minded guy, but when I got to this paragraph I did wonder whether the whole thing wasn’t a massive leg-pull and whether Bush had to do 27 takes to get through a particular line without cracking up: “Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: ‘No, what I said was, I wouldn’t fire gays.’” To paraphrase Daffy Duck, consonant trouble. The first time I heard George W. Bush speak was at the Elks Lodge in Littleton, N.H., in 1999, and this is how he answered an interminable question from a very aggressive gay activist who’d traveled over from Vermont: “Hey, we’re all sinners, buddy.” The media expend an enormous amount of energy proving that George W. Bush is — unbeknownst to the world — living a double-life exactly like the one he lives in public. In the thin gruel of Kitty Kelley’s attempt to do to the Bushes what she did to Sinatra and Liz Taylor, my favorite shock revelation was this: A couple of years back, President Bush agreed to host the 35th reunion of his Yale graduating class. One of them, Miss Petra Leilani Akwai, had been a Mister back when the president knew her, and there was much speculation on the potential awkwardness of the encounter. Here’s how it went: “You might remember me as Peter when we left Yale,” said Petra. “And now you’ve come back as yourself,” said the president. That’s classic Bush: straightforward, transparent, very human, and kind of goofily sweet. Yet Kitty Kelley seemed to think it was damaging stuff. The tragedy of Dan Rather and his fake documents is that, even if they had been true, it would have made no difference. Even the alleged revelation in the Times scoop that Bush had tried marijuana fits the narrative — a wastrel youth who redeemed himself. By contrast, the narrative to which the Left is wedded — that Bush is simultaneously the world’s biggest moron and an evil genius — is one even Angleton’s CIA could never have straightened out. In the same week the Times was publishing its “Bush Is a Christian Who Loves His Wife Shock! See pages 2, 3, 4-9, 12-23, and special unreadable Pulitzer-nomination section you can pull out and toss straight into the trash,” Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Democrat of New York, was telling a Social Security forum in Ithaca that the fake Rathergate documents had been planted by Karl Rove. Though everyone else on the planet knew they were fake within 23 seconds, Karl cunningly identified the one news team dumb enough to fall for them. Hmm. You don’t have to be an old Cold War hand to figure that Congressman Hinchey is an obvious Rove deep-sleeper planted in New York decades ago to make the Democrats look even bigger dopes than CBS . . .
MARK STEYN
Steyn ping!
Great article.
I do agree: Hinchey must be a Rove plant. LOL! ;)
I wonder what kinda beer he drinks. I'd love to send him a case.
Steyn is brilliant, as usual.
So...who's really pulling the strings ? Rove or Cheney ?
bump for later...
LoL.
Steyn's great!
I'm sure these voyeuristic chaps splash lots of stuff after getting their hands on illicit things. Just ask their mums.
There is never enough Steyn!
(But the tell-all secret tapes of Constitution Day will keep you awake for days! :-).
Conspiracy Guy.
OMG! Where did you find that?? HAHAHAHAHAHA!
"To paraphrase Daffy Duck, consonant trouble."
As always, great article. Thanks.
good reading
Linked from a SD blog. It's on an Iowa blog. Great though, isn't it?
Mark Steyn and the internet were voices in the wilderness to me. And I am speaking literally!
But the thing I really like the best about him besides his sharp politcal insight, is his dedication to Looney Tunes.
Shhhhhh! This is not a secure thread!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.