Three more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For what?
MEANWHILE...
The LNS "Total Recall" Putsch Wrap-Up: Seven Lessons Learned
1. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-California) and Sen.
Barbara Boxer (D-California): Please, please stay out
of small planes, and do not open your own snail mail.
2. To the Democrat legislators in Sacramento, learn
from the mistakes of Tom Duck-It (D-SD), shut it down,
don't get Blaired.
3. To the stupid white men and women who voted for
Conan the Deceiver, read my lips: 0FF-SHORE DRILLING.
4. To Arriana Huffington, I am tempted to call you
twice the man Cruz Busto-Mondo is, but that would be
short-changing you. Just thanks for speaking truth to
power.
5. To Warren Beatty (D-Hollywood): Run, baby, run. The
coast is clear! Willie Brown (D-Tammany Hall) will get
the signatures, and you can win.
6. To Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Closet),who wants a US
Constitutional amendment to permit Conan the Deceiver
to run for President: It won't happen.
7. To all of you who read the LNS, and to all of you
everywhere in the US, involved in anyway in the
Internet-based Information Rebellion against the "vast
reich-wing conspiracy," remember, to paraphrase
Carvel's formulation of 1992, IT'S THE MEDIA, STUPID.
Conan the Deciever won by going unchallenged on Leno,
Oprah, Howard Stern and Larry Clueless Lying. Conan
the Deceiver refused to answer really hardball
questions. He participated in only one debate, in
which all the questions were scripted ahead of time.
AND the "US mainstream news media" drowned out the
local TV and radio news (which relative to the
national media) remained objective. Yes, IT'S THE
MEDIA, STUPID. The anti-Bush, whoever he turns out to
be, Dean (D-Jeffords), Clark (D-NATO) or Kerry
(D-Mekong Delta), has to be willing to challenege
their complicity. Today, NotBeSeen (NBC) has merged
with Vivendi to form NBC Universal, an EVEN BIGGER
corporate media giant. Gosh, I wonder whose films
Universal distributes? Golly, I wonder who hosts the
NBC Tonight Show?
Consider this...
AN AGE OF PROPAGANDA (PART 1)! Matthews groped for
ways to help Arnold. We found it a sign of the times:
MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2003
GROPE THIS: How low in character is Washington’s
“press corps?” Chris Matthews has long been the low of
the low, and he proved it again on last Friday night’s
Hardball. That morning, the Los Angeles Times had
reported that six women had accused Arnold
Schwarzenegger of groping and grabbing, without their
consent. Matthews has been the muscleman’s chief shill
in the media, so he quickly got to work, standing by
his man. But uh-oh! Friday night, trouble was brewing!
On Hardball, Gloria Allred expressed concern about the
Times report:
ALLRED: What I’m concerned about is what Arnold
Schwarzenegger has done, what he has allegedly done to
women, to the six women who reported incidents to the
L. A. Times. We don’t know if it is true or not, but
Mr. Schwarzenegger himself, Chris, said where there’s
smoke, there’s fire. He suggested that he acted badly.
MATTHEWS: Right.
ALLRED: He suggested that he apologize. But he didn’t
specifically say what he did. We’re not stupid. The
Times reported that he grabbed women’s breasts, that
he grabbed under their skirt and to their buttocks.
Uh-oh! It didn’t sound good! So Matthews began
misdirecting. “By the way, where were you on Clinton?”
he asked, specifically mentioning Monica Lewinsky. And
soon an obvious distinction was offered. “This is a
different situation,” Allred said. “This is
unconsented-to conduct.”
Hmmm. Let’s see if we can puzzle this out. Lewinsky
engaged in consensual conduct. These six (now fifteen)
women say they were groped. The distinction seemed
fairly clear to us, but the Hardball host was
thoroughly flummoxed. Allred voiced the distinction
again. But he just couldn’t figure it out:
ALLRED: The situation with Monica Lewinsky was
consented-to conduct. She consented to that conduct.
In the newspaper article in the L. A. Times, the
situation with the six women with Arnold
Schwarzenegger—
MATTHEWS: So it’s OK if it’s—
ALLRED: —is unconsented-to, if you believe it’s true.
MATTHEWS (openly sarcastic): OK. Just to get this
straight, just to—Gloria, so your record is straight
here. So it’s OK to have consensual relations with a
woman who is 30 years or whatever younger than you in
the workplace. That’s OK. And it is OK to lie about
it. But in this case, he admitted he did it and that’s
not OK. What is your value system here?
Can’t you see the total clowning, and one of the
clowning clowns who produce it? Matthews feigned utter
confusion—he just couldn’t figure this “value system”
out! And now, concluding his segment with Allred, he
showcased his low, smutty character:
ALLRED (continuing directly): Well, it is very clear.
It is not unlawful, although I don’t think it is wise,
to have a sexual relationship that is consented to in
the workplace.
MATTHEWS: OK.
ALLRED: But, if it is unwelcome in the workplace, as
is alleged against Arnold Schwarzenegger, that’s
unlawful. If it is true, it is sexual battery that he
committed, Mr. Schwarzenegger. And that is potentially
a crime.
MATTHEWS: Great. OK. My producer is telling me to shut
you up. OK? I'm trying to be polite. Go ahead, Kim
[Serafin].
Matthews—“trying to be polite”—didn’t tell Allred to
“shut up” himself. He just said his producer was
saying it!
But Matthews was hardly alone this weekend. Many
pundits seemed confused by the concept of consent. Of
course, few of them clowned any harder than Matthews.
But he’s long been an industry leader.
THEY’VE GOT YOUR CONSENT RIGHT HERE: Many pundits were
having trouble with the “consensual/nonconsensual”
distinction. Wow, it was hard to sort out! Luckily,
Susan Faludi explained why that might be. Why was
Matthews so utterly puzzled? Why should Allred just
“shut up?” Writing an op-ed in Sunday’s Los Angeles
Times, Faludi offered a general suggestion:
FALUDI: A Schwarzenegger spokesman told The Times that
[one of the alleged groping episodes] was just a case
of “locker room humor.” Which actually explains a good
deal of Schwarzenegger’s appeal to male voters. He
comes out of the testosterone-ruled world of weight
rooms and action movies, where women are the
designated observers and adorners, and where men find
their place in the wolf pack through a
well-established ordeal of hazing and humiliation.
The men who don’t make it to the top in that world
still have the compensation of identifying with the
one man who does, as long as they don’t identify with
any of the women, as long as they don’t “say nothing.”
They still belong to the pack, by virtue of being
male.
No matter how much sand gets kicked in their face,
they still can fantasize that one day they, too, like
Charles Atlas, will do enough leg lifts to rise in the
ranks…The locker room game works as long as only men
get to play, and only as long as they agree to play by
certain rules. One rule is that sensuality is
verboten, but aggressive jocularity is not.
Humiliating women in a “playful” way can signal a
powerful rejection of “the feminine” and a powerful
reinforcement of male bonding.
Of course, Matthews has always been a sand-kicking
bully when female guests talk back on Hardball. We
have written in the past about his rude putdowns of
Norah O’Donnell, Elizabeth Holtzman, Kiki Moore, Mary
Boyle. Let’s say this for Bill O’Reilly—he tells men
that they ought to shut up. Matthews—a 98-pound bully
and coward—likes to say “shut up” to women.
YOU LIVE IN AN AGE OF PROPAGANDA: Many pundits dragged
Clinton in, eager to get their favorite movie star off
the hook. They tended to ignore two distinctions:
Consent/non-consent: “[A]ll of Arnold’s incidents were
one-off,” Andrew Sullivan wrote in a silly
disquisition which said that Clinton was worse, so
much worse. “Clinton, for the most part, pursued the
same women over time.” It’s unclear who Sullivan meant
by that, except for Lewinsky, of course. But he also
mentioned Gennifer Flowers—a person who alleged a
twelve-year, passionate love affair, not an unwanted
advance. But somehow, many pundits conflated the
Flowers allegation with the assault allegations
against Schwarzenegger. But we think you know why that
is. Among other reasons, your “press corps” isn’t very
smart or very honest—and you live in an age of
propaganda.
Credible/non-credible: Pundits tried to shill for
Schwarzenegger, citing turrible conduct by Clinton.
Any many pundits just keep citing Clinton-accusers who
lack credibility. Take Flowers, for example. Her
initial 1992 tabloid story was filled with howling
factual errors—embarrassing, utterly stupid errors
that plainly called her tale into question. She later
wrote an entire book without naming a single time and
place where she and Clinton were alone together. By
1999, she was making crackpot cable presentations,
accusing Clinton of a long list of murders (see THE
DAILY HOWLER, 9/26/03). But you live in an age of
propaganda—and your “press” had invested time and
energy into pretending that the shapely songstress was
credible. In fact, as is now quite obvious, she is a
consummate crackpot and clown. (For the record,
Clinton admitted to one sexual act with the
yellow-haired yodeler, not an act of intercourse.)
Then, of course, there’s Kathleen Willey, the corps’
favorite Clinton-accuser. The press corps simply
refuses to tell you how bad her credibility turned out
to be. They knew to hide what Linda Tripp said (see
THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/10/03), and when Robert Ray said
that Willey had lied, they knew to hide that from you
too (same reference). Today, they still cite Willey’s
sad tales wherever they line up for Arnold.
Do the accusations against Schwarzenegger seem to be
true? That is a matter of judgment. (We think the
general answer is obvious.) Should they affect how
Californians vote? Voters decide that, not us. But you
live in an age of propaganda, and many pundits are
shilling for Arnold. They’ve deceived you for years
about Clinton-accusers, and their fakery continues on
still.
SULLIVAN’S STRUGGLES: Andrew Sullivan struggled hard
to show that Clinton was worse, so much worse. Here’s
our favorite of his six silly items:
SULLIVAN: Item two: most of Clinton’s sexual targets
were women who worked for him or were under his direct
authority. Some of Arnold’s targets were on movie sets
where he certainly had social power but where he was,
as far as I know, not the owner or direct boss.
Readers, there’s only one word to describe such slick
parsing. You know what it is: “Clintonesque.”
By the way, who are these Clinton “targets,” who
supposedly made up the bulk of his victims?
Presumably, Sullivan refers to Flowers and Lewinsky.
But Flowers’ allegations lack credibility, and
Lewinsky engaged in consensual conduct. (And no, she
wasn’t “21,” a bit of clowning to which Maureen Dowd
returned in yesterday’s column.)
By contrast, Schwarzenegger stands accused of multiple
assaults against unwilling women. Sullivan, of course,
finds those allegations less troubling. Reason?
Schwarzenegger wasn’t the boss at the time! Say hello
to the endless clowning which defines a corrupted
press age.