The Great GENE LYONS pops up just in time to RESCUE REALITY ITSELF from the grim, dark clutches of America's stupid, cowering, craven, greedy, amoral, chronically lying, sadistic, ghoulish, craven (did we mention 'craven'?) media whores. As we know, the media whores judge their talents - and are rewarded by their corporate masters (and a dazed and ignorant American public) with SUCCESS, in DIRECT, INVERSE PROPORTION to their factual reporting skills.
Tell American readers that the Bush-Cheney "WAR ON TERROR" is making Amreica LESS SAFE, or that the INSANE Bush BUDGET DEFICITS in support of tax-cuts for the wealthy, and positively GROTESQUE levels of corruption and crony spending that mark the "war on terror" are DESTROYING the American standard of living, then you will be run out of the "major media" on a rail, mocked and sneered at if not smeared, as Robert Scheer was fired from the LA Times after 30 years for relentlessly hammering away at the Bush-Cheney lies-to-war, to be replaced by a rabid WingNut Bush wars apologist Jonah Goldberg. (Or as Dan Rather was run out of CBS, for daring to point out that during the Vietnam War then Texas National Guard Lt. George W. Bush had gone Absent Without Leave, AWOL, and had refused a direct order to take a flight physical exam, after having been trained to be a jet pilot with over a million dollars worth of expensive war-time training.)
But before George W. Bush could go on his month-long vacation of August 2001 while Al Qaida terrorist plotted, unmolested by the entire US multi-trillion dollar defense/intel/counter-terror (CIA/FBI/national-security) establishment to attack America.... before Dick Cheney could hand taxpayer-funded billion dollar, no-bid, no-oversight contracts to his "former" company Halliburton like parents handing out candy on Halloween night; before Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz could dream up America's Stalinesque torture gulag and unleash American bombs all over Afghanistan and Iraq, there was first the little problem of getting such a psychopathic, pathological Republican president elected in the first place.
And that is where the EIGHT YEARS of CLINTON HATING MEDIA comes in. Gene Lyons and his reporting partner, Joe Conason, LITERALLY WROTE THE BOOK, COMPILING THE LIES of the "MAJOR MEDIA," which all through the 1990s became little more than a wing of the CLINTON-HATING RIGHT, in their book, "The Hunting of the President."
The NEW YORK TIMES and the WASHINGTON POST were the WORST OFFENDERS - the Times, itself, "CHURNING OUT ARTICLES OF NEAR HALLUCINATORY INACCURACY" on a weekly, if not daily basis. The Times reporting was so bad that they had to pay a LIBEL penalty to Los Alamos physicist WEN HO LEE after it was revealed that the Times' breathless "TREASON IN THE RANKS!" reporting about alleged nuclear spying by Lee was little more than Nazi-esque Smear Mongering. The Times' break with reality, and sad, sordid "reporting," reached a sorry nadir with the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL" a "SCANDAL" concocted by KARL ROVE, DICK CHENEY, and GEORGE BUSH to RUN VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE OUT OF TOWN, on a rail, tarred and feathered in January of 2001, after Gore had won the popular vote in the presidential election of November 2000.
By SMEARING Clinton-Gore staffers as "TRASHING THE WHITE HOUSE," Rove and the Republicans LEGITIMIZED their THEFT OF THE ELECTION. And the NEW YORK SLIMES, and WASHINGTON LYING POST, were there every day of the "White House Trashing Scandal," publishing BREATHLESS "reports" and felling entire forests of trees to wax and comment on the alleged "lack of moral values" of the Clinton-Gore staffers.
Only thing... the entire story, the reporting, the smear-mob opinions masking as commentary... simply WERE NOT TRUE. THERE HAD BEEN NO "trashing" of the White House.
KARL ROVE has simply taken the ROUTINE WEAR AND TEAR on offices after an 8 year lease was up - worn carpets, out of date phones and a jungle of computer lines, fading paint and worn furniture - and TURNED IT INTO a MAJOR, NATIONWIDE SCANDAL - with the abject, craven, incompetent, lying cooperation of Arthur Sulzberger's NEW YORK SLIMES, and Fred Hiatt's cowardly "PRAVDA ON THE POTOMAC" Washington Post.
Lyons (and Conason's) book "The HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT" came out before the whore Times and whore Post turned the so-called "White House Trashing Scandal" into a Karl Rove wet-dream that legitimized stolen-election 2000, and chased popular vote winner Al Gore out of Washington in disgrace. Senator JOE LEIBERMAN would show his cowardly colors by REFUSING TO SPEAK UP for the SMEARED Clinton-Gore staffers, because Mr. Lieberman realized even in early 2001 that his goals - permanent US wars in the Mideast at the behest of hard-line Israel Likudniks - were more in line with Dick Cheney's PNAC "go to war in IRAQ!" policy aims, than they ever would be with Al Gore's policy priorities.
(Dick Cheney signs the Project for a New American Century, PNAC, manifesto, advocating war and invasion of Iraq, June 1997. By January 1998, PNAC had codefied its "statement of principles" to specifically indicate that invading Iraq with US military power was the raison-d'etre, the Alpha-and-Omega, for PNAC.
http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
And, we apologize: just trying to TOUCH the SURFACE of America's media whoredom over the past decade plus involves a long, relentlessly sourced rant. (Speaking of "sourcing" "The Hunting of the President" has over TWENTY FIVE PAGES of mostly single-line sources and footnotes!)
But this week, Gene Lyons outdoes himself, and magnificently illustrates the sheer, literally MURDEROUS HYPOCRISY of the radical-right CLINTON-HATING "moral values" MEDIA; who for eight long years shouted "CLINTON IS A RAPIST!" and "CLINTON IS A MURDERER!", and in their INSANE LUST to prove exactly that.... THEY advocated the release from prison of a known RAPIST who WOULD, INDEED, go on to MURDER two other women!!
For a taste of Lyons' "the mainstream media got it all wrong about Whitewater" see his index page at SALON.com here:
http://dir.salon.com/topics/gene_lyons/
or, specifically, this little gem that illustrates exactly how Clinton-hating Republican lawyers scuttled a deal in the 'sexual harassment' case between Paula Jones and President Clinton, thereby giving Ken Starr the opportunity to depose President Clinton about an affair that had nothing to do with Starr's $70-million taxpayer financed "Whitewater" financial investigation.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2000/03/04/willey/
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There’s more to character than being charming
Gene Lyons
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/210393/
Pundits and TV anchorcreatures love pronouncing about politicians ’ “character,” when all they’re really talking about is personality. Hence glib, superficially charming candidates invariably win plaudits in the reality-TV epics we call presidential elections. This year’s GOP Prince Charming is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. When it comes to ingratiating himself, few surpass the one-time Baptist preacher. He’s witty, he’s warm, and doggone it, people like him. Character consists of something deeper. That’s why it’s important to know the truth about Wayne DuMond, the serial rapist and murderer Huckabee freed from the Arkansas penitentiary to kill again. Unfortunately, that’s the last thing you’ll hear from the candidate himself.
DuMond was a cunning con-man, a predatory psychopath adept at playing victim. A naïve and inexperienced Huckabee went for it, hook, line and sinker. So did others for whom professional skepticism is supposed to be a job requirement. In springing DuMond, the Arkansas Republican courted praise from the Clintonhating right-wing press, whose responsibility for the murder the ex-con committed after his release shouldn’t be overlooked.
Here’s the backstory: in 1985, DuMond, a handyman with a long rap sheet, kidnapped 17-year-old Forrest City, Ar., cheerleader Ashley Stevens and raped her at knifepoint. DuMond’s trademark MO was cutting off his victims’ brassieres with a hunting knife, vowing to murder them if they told.
Stevens not only reported the crime, she later recognized the newly cleanshaven perp on the street, and agreed to testify.
While free on bond, DuMond was found castrated on the floor of their remote mobile home by his children, an empty bottle of Jack Daniels nearby and his own bloody footprints everywhere. DuMond’s blood alcohol level was 2. 8, falling-down drunk. His wife asked police if he’d mutilated himself. Investigators suspected he had. It’s an uncommon, but not unknown, sympathy ploy. No evidence of the masked intruders DuMond claimed gelded him ever emerged.
Two things made the case notorious. In a touch of Arkansas gothic, the St. Francis County Sheriff (who’d played no role in the rape investigation ) exhibited DuMond’s testicles in a jar. Second, although her identity wasn’t initially disclosed, young Stevens was a distant cousin of then-Gov. Bill Clinton.
After Clinton became president, Du-Mond portrayed himself as an innocent victim of the satanic “Clinton machine.” Soft-headed conspiracy theorists who circulated “Clinton death lists” found the notion irresistible.
New York Post columnist and “Current Affairs” correspondent Steve Dunleavy churned out articles of near-hallucinatory inaccuracy championing DuMond’s cause. He portrayed DuMond as a blameless Vietnam vet with no criminal history. In fact, DuMond avoided prison in Oklahoma by testifying against men tried and convicted of beating a man to death with a claw hammer. He’d been convicted of second degree assault in Oregon, and charged with but not tried for a previous rape in Arkansas.
Dunleavy claimed DNA evidence exonerated DuMond, but that a vengeful Clinton prevented his release. Both were categorically false. No DNA evidence existed; Clinton had recused.
DuMond became a right-wing cause célèbre. One Guy Reel wrote a book entitled “Unequal Justice,” parroting the same bogus claims. Most significantly, Jay Cole, a Fayetteville, Ar., Baptist pastor and pal of Huckabee’s, bought into the delusion.
No sooner had Huckabee become governor after Kenneth Starr’s conviction of his Democratic predecessor, Jim Guy Tucker, than Huckabee began talking about commuting the presumptively innocent DuMond’s sentence. He clearly expected to be congratulated. Instead, Prosecutor Fletcher Long erupted. How could the governor even think of doing that without reading the trial transcript ?
Abandoning her anonymity, Ashley Stevens invaded Huckabee’s personal space: “This is how close I was to Wayne DuMond,” she said. “I will never forget his face. And now I don’t want you ever to forget my face.” Professed victims wrote agonized letters begging Huckabee to desist.
Today, Huckabee alibis that nobody could have predicted DuMond’s Missouri crimes. Many people did. Even this column warned that: “Rape’s not a crime of passion; it’s a crime of rage. Violent sex offenders, innumerable case studies show, keep at it until something stops them. If Huckabee doesn’t understand that, he’s got no business getting involved.” Instead of backing off, Huckabee got tricky. He held an improper closed-door meeting with the parole board, several of whom say they’d felt pressured. Last week, Huckabee’s then-chief counsel, Olan “Butch” Reeves, basically seconded their claims. After the board voted to parole DuMond to Missouri, Huckabee wrote a “Dear Wayne” letter stressing “my desire... that you be released from prison” —the proverbial smoking gun he can’t now rationalize or whine away. Angry Missouri cops say DuMond’s victim’s severed bra straps were like a calling card. They found his DNA under her fingernails. Huckabee’s latest book claims that DuMond died in prison before coming to trial. In fact, he was convicted of murdering Carol Sue Shields on Nov. 12, 2003, and at the time of his death was a leading suspect in the murder of a second Missouri woman. You’d think Huckabee might have noticed.
—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
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