Whenever I go out of town, I always feel I might as well be in another country; I get that out of touch with what's going on. Even though I mapped out where the Air America affiliates were on the way down here (finding the DC and Chapel Hill affiliates, but somehow missing the Philly affiliate), I've missed the latest developments in the Tom DeLay Festival o'Sleaze and apparently the revelation that it was Mel Martinez' legal counsel who leaked to Democrats the memo about what a wonderful thing the Schiavo case was for Republicans. Apparently the meme going around the wingnut circles was that the Democrats somehow fabricated this to make the Republicans look bad.
Sorry, folks, but that dog never should have hunted for ya -- the Democrats just aren't that smart. If they were, they'd be in power. This is YOUR tactics, wingnuts, not ours.
Eric Boehlert fills us in:
When the Terri Schiavo story became national news in mid-March, a curious subplot revolved around a talking-points memo that was reportedly distributed to Republican senators. Reported first by ABC News, and then by the Washington Post, the existence of a memo, which made crass -- and ill-advised, it turns out -- assertions that the Schiavo story was a political winner for Republicans, gave Democrats ammunition in their insistence that the GOP's involvement in the right-to-die case was more about politics than morality. The document, which described the case as "a great political issue" that would excite "the pro-life base" and be "a tough issue for Democrats," became an embarrassment to Republicans, especially when subsequent polls showed the Schiavo controversy to be an across-the-board loser for Republicans.
Right-wing bloggers, however, thought they smelled a rat, and in an almost laughable effort to connect nonexistent dots, they set off on an "investigation" and concluded the memo was likely a farce from the get-go, surmising that a wily, unknown Democratic dirty trickster had gotten a willing press to report that the memo came from the Republican side.
Led into battle by Power Line, which posted over a dozen conspiratorial-sounding posts about the memo, bloggers seized on its misspellings as proof of deception and, relying on echo chamber tips from GOP staffers on the Hill, became more and more sure in their pursuit. "Is This the Biggest Hoax Since the Sixty Minutes Story?" a March 21 Power Line headline asked. Then, on March 30, came "Talking Points Story Goes Up in Smoke." (Time magazine honored Power Line as Blog of the Year in 2004 for its role in the CBS scandal.)
But then, late on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the author of the memo had stepped forward: An aide to Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida admitted he had written it. Now the facts are clear: The memo is real, and it was written by the Republican side and distributed by the Republican side, making it a GOP talking-points memo.
[snip]
Writing in Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, Power Line's John Hinderaker insisted the memo just didn't add up, that it couldn't have been written by a Republican because it was just so ... inappropriate: "These political observations are not 'talking points' at all. These are comments on political strategy which would be out of place in argument on the Senate floor, or in a media interview." That's a basis on which to launch a conspiracy theory?
[snip]
Aside from their sloppy speculation, the episode also revealed the cloud of arrogance that hangs around bloggers from the CBS Memogate crowd. Indeed, this week right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin, busy peddling another false story -- which claims that Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographers who captured blood-curdling images from Iraq had ties to terrorists -- demanded to know why Pulitzer judges hadn't met with bloggers to discuss their conspiracy theory before handing out their prestigious prize. Right-wing site Little Green Footballs thundered: "The media establishment puts their thumb in the eye of the blogosphere, awarding a Pulitzer Prize for photography to the Associated Press's anonymous and very possibly staged photographs of terrorists committing murder on Baghdad's Haifa Street" (emphasis added).
The only proof provided for the charge was a link to another right-wing Web site that asked supposedly probing questions about the circumstances of the photographs -- questions that were about as insightful as the ones originally posed about the Schiavo memo last week.
Even when proven to be categorically wrong, reckless bloggers don't flinch. Examining the rubble Wednesday night, after the Post published its story about Sen. Martinez, Power Line concluded, "This story serves as an object lesson in how the mainstream media can take a dopey, one-page memo by an unknown staffer and use it to discredit the entire Republican party." Only someone who is shameless, and spends weeks accusing both reporters and Democratic elected officials of being liars, could turn around and announce that a manufactured episode had served as "an object lesson in how the mainstream media" tries to discredit Republicans.
But this is so indicative of how the right-wing works: Never admit a mistake. From George W. Bush's Iraq war to the corruption of Tom DeLay to the hatemongers with their blogs who get 10 visitors a day, the right-wing philosophy is the same: Never admit a mistake; never admit the world is round when you've always said it's flat. And always, always find someone else to blame, preferably the so-called "liberal media." The Party of Responsibility and Accountability indeed. More like the party of snotnosed bullies who turn into crybabies when things don't go their way.
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