Month: October 2003

Weighs in on the racial aspects of the Rush ESPN story. Cool sports blog, I think. And brand new.

Apparently, he discussed the drug once on his show a couple of years’ back. According to this news thread, “The talk was mostly about the abusers of the drug, and that it was a shame that the abuse affected people who really need it.” The date given for the show is July 30, 2001. Someone should find the transcript.

Taranto unearths some details that cast doubt on whether the leaking of Plame’s name was, strictly speaking, illegal. It doesn’t make it any ethically or morally better, in my book. But it’s still interesting.

Some interesting observations from old Hollywood hand, Roger Simon.

I’m not commenting on the prescription drug stuff because no charges have been filed against Limbaugh and we don’t know what the truth is yet. And I haven’t commented on his ESPN firing because, well, when you know as little about football is I do, it’s hard to judge whether Limbaugh’s comments were valid or not. But a couple of things are worth saying: this isn’t censorship. The government is not involved. Rush had freedom of speech a week ago and he still has today. His whining on this point was silly and worthy of Susan Sontag. Similarly, I don’t have much sympathy for ESPN. They hired Rush Limbaugh, after all, not Jim Lehrer. Didn’t they expect something like this? He’s designed for controversy. And he has to quit the minute he causes some? Denial all round, if you ask me …

Schwarzenegger’s response today to the smear campaign orchestrated by the liberal Los Angeles Times struck exactly the right note. In general, I believe the women in these cases. Almost always, the men have behaved badly. For the record, I believed Anita Hill (though I would still have supported Clarence Thomas for Supreme Court Justice); and I believed almost all the women who came forward to accuse Bill Clinton of sexual abuse and harassment. But there is a distinction here between illegal sexual harrassment and legal sexual grossness. There is a distinction between a named accuser and an anonymous one. There is a distinction between a public lawsuit and a private incident. And there is a distinction between public and private life, a distinction which we have now effectively abolished to the detriment of our entire civil compact. One of the best aspects of the Schwarzenegger candidacy is therefore that he might actually get to be governor of California, having used drugs, taken steroids, had group sex, said all sorts of outrageous things, and lived a lively and not-always admirable private life. Maybe he’ll prove that the smears can’t work any more. And because privacy is essentially over in this country for any public figures, Arnold’s path may be the only one we now have. So I’d say: vote against the Los Angeles Times. That means: vote for Arnold.

Why is this not big news? It’s an AP report, after all.

CLOSING IN II? Encouraging news from Iraq about Saddam’s increasing isolation.

The Los Angeles Times, clearly concerned about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lead in the polls, unleashes an astonishing piece of reporting invective against him. This reeks of a politically motivated smear-job. All of these women were sought out by the Times itself. None came forward at the time or subsequently. And although the behavior is, to my mind, gross and offensive, it doesn’t rise to the level of legal sexual harrassment; and no legal action has been sought. Moreover, four of the six women are anonymous. So a candidate now has to answer charges about his private life leveled for the most part by anonymous accusers, sought out by a newspaper that is campaigning against his candidacy and that waited a week before the recall to unload the details. The press just keeps getting classier, doesn’t it? (Bonus points to Mickey for predicting the Times’ anti-Arnold shoe-drop strategy. He was ahead of the curve by one day, 2 hours and 26 minutes. In the blogosphere, that’s an eternity. Mazel Tov. He’d get even more points if it weren’t so frigging predictable.)

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post use their news pages to promote the idea of an independent counsel. It’s the only way to keep this story at the top of the page for Day Four. The predictability of all this sinks in. The administration should simply accede now rather than later, it seems to me. In the way that such scandals operate, this will be used by the Dems to do all they can to trash the liberation of Iraq, undermine any thought that Iraq had WMDs, and generally try to hammer this president. You can see why they have seized this opportunity. It’s a big break; and they’d be crazy in purely partisan terms not to exploit it. All of which is to say that if anyone in the administration did this stupid, petty, criminal thing, he or she deserves everything they get.

There is also something surreal about the whole event. This, after all, is about telephone conversations which one party will almost certainly deny and the other party likely won’t reveal. What are the odds that we will ever find out anything for sure whoever investigates? Even a pissed-off third party in the CIA or White House can’t prove what was said in such telephone conversations. And doesn’t everyone involved in this – including those calling for an independent counsel – know this already? The point, then, is to besmirch what has so far been a relatively scandal-free administration, with little chance of our actually finding out what actually happened and why, and maybe get a resignation or two if you’re lucky. A kind of perfect Washington storm – about something that will never formally become much more than nothing. I could be wrong, of course; and it doesn’t mean the investigation shouldn’t take place. But it does make it all seem a little ritualistic.

AND WHY? Like many others, I’m still baffled by the rationale. Okay, so let’s say it’s meant to intimidate other potential CIA dissidents. How was this information conveyed exactly? I mean: can you imagine what was actually said in the phone call? “Hi, Dana. This is Karl. You know that guy Wilson who gave us such grief over Niger? Maybe you’d be interested to know that his wife’s an undercover CIA agent.” So? Why are you telling me this? What’s that got to do with anything? The only thought that makes any sense to me is if someone in the administration was trying to placate neo-con or conservative reporters or pundits, who were miffed that such a partisan lefty as Wilson was deputed to investigate Saddam’s ties to African uranium in the first place. “Well, Brit, his wife’s an expert in WMDs at the CIA. She knows a lot about the region and the subject and it seemed a good idea at the time.” That’s the only way I can think of such info being slipped into the conversation. Maybe the leaker knew she was undercover; maybe he didn’t. I’d guess the latter, mainly because I find it hard top believe that anyone in this White House would be either so stupid or so petty. In other words, it was a malevolent leak but not a self-consciously criminal one. Look, I don’t know. I’m just trying to make sense of this. Right now, I’m going to stop speculating and wait for an actual new, live, breathing fact before weighing in again.