Right Pundocracy and Blog-o-maniacs Braid the Rope and Oil the Torches for the NEW YORK TIMES
Blogger Glenn Greenwald has meticulously documented a veritable feeding frenzy among top level conservative pundits and bloggers in competition to see who can raise the biggest, meanest lynch mob for the NEW YORK TIMES.
Hardly surprising, you say, given the yowls of administration outrage over the TIMES recent expose of its detailed tracking of fund transfers between banks internationally. The President, Veep, Treasury Secretary, assorted Congressional puppets, and the disciplined array cable news and radio mouthpieces lined up with unusually sharp criticism. The word treason was bandied about. Veiled and not so veiled threats of prosecution under the State Secrets Act were uttered.
But wait, what Greenwald has uncovered is an even more virulent flap over an innocuous piece in the TIMES travel section. You read correctly. A well organized phalanx of top right wing opinion makers’ ire has been raised over a puff piece on the Maryland Eastern Shore village of St. Michaels, where Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, among other high rollers, have vacation homes.
Starting with big name right wing ranter and highly paid liberal baiter, David Horowitz writing in FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE, the chorus asserted that the article purposefully exposed Cheney, Rumsfeld and their families to attacks by al Qaeda or domestic radicals. The TIMES article contained, as most such articles do, a simple street map of the village which included streets used to access the big wigs’ private road. A photo showed the end of the driveway and the mailbox of Rumsfeld’s residence. A survey of the quaint local shops also mentioned some of Mrs. Rumsfeld’s favorite stops.
Why would the TIMES do this? Apparently, in the hope that some swarthy fanatic, unable to attain access to his targets in any other way, with his TIMES treasure map in his pocket, will waltz up to the front door of one of the residences at the precise moment one of the Big Cheeses has assembled his entire wholesome and adoring family around him, and ignite his shoe, blowing to smithereens the Flower of American Manhood and several adorable grandchildren. The TIMES, its publisher, editors, reporters, photographers, and evidently the undocumented aliens who mop the bathrooms in the words of one post hate “…everyday Americans (who its principals have utter contempt for), our soldiers (who they despise) and our President (who they have an undying hatred of.)”
Now that we are clear on the motive, how about the timing? The vox populi of the right asserts it was in retaliation for administration criticism of the aforementioned international bank snooping story. That story broke on June 19. The Administration flame war against the TIMES (and curiously not against the WALL STREET JOURNAL and LOS ANGELES TIMES, conservative papers that also ran the story) began almost immediately and has continued unabated. The travel article appeared in the June 30 edition.
Any one who is even vaguely familiar with how major newspapers work, will recognize that articles in feature sections are often assigned, reported and edited weeks, sometimes months ahead of publication. It would not be difficult to identify such a time line for this story. The special sections are also virtually independently edited with little connection to either the news or editorial departments. It is safe to say that publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (who the right wing bloggers delight in calling by the nick name “Pinch”), or the managing editor of the paper were aware of the article much in advance. It is also true that special sections are often printed days in advance and later inserted into the daily paper. In other words, the timing of the story almost surely had nothing to do with the earlier flap.
Neither was the information particularly secret. Nine months earlier the WASHINGTON POST reported that Cheney was buying a $2.9 million home near Rumsfeld in exclusive St. Michaels and identified it as a home built by one of Thomas Edison’s daughter in 1930. Just how many of those could there be? That is more specific than a street address, which the TIMES never published. Ironically the conservative web page NewsMax breathlessly cited the POST article in a celebrity gossip piece when it first came out. The same NewsMax now denounces the TIMES story as “all part of the War against President Bush. “
All of this would be a tempest in a tea pot if not for the virulence of the attack and its obviously carefully orchestrated nature. Reflecting the earlier calls for prosecution for, there are even more specific threats uttered in this case. On the popular right wing blog RED STATE, a commentator insisted, “Disclosing national secrets is a criminal offense. The AG and the US Attorneys should not only consider charges, but file charges against the individuals who participated in the publication of stories-the government employees that told the reporters, the reporters, the editors, and even Pinch himself.”
Another writer on the same site wrote, “…since we’ve so civilized ourselves that it highly unlikely that and angry mob with torches will show up on the NYT’s doorstep. Pity, that.” And that was only one of the artfully veiled threats of physical violence. Several radio talkers have advocate the execution of TIMES editors, which at least infers a trial first. Others have been content just to say they should be shot, leaving to the imagination of the listeners just who might do the shooting. Of course when questioned about it they will all swear that they were only speaking metaphorically.
They have been emboldened by the success of a certain media personality, always referred to as “the leggy blonde” who publicly regretted that the TIMES building had not been blown up by terrorists. Not only did she get away with the remarks, she was rewarded with best selling books, all of the TV face time she could handle, and inch after inch of fawning coverage in the very liberal press she reviles. If she gets away with it, why can’t they?
Another blogger posted the home address of a hapless TIMES photographer. After removing to posting a day later, he invited readers to submit the photos and locations of homes of Sulzberger, Editor Bill Keller and the article writers. These were his words: “Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above.”
Now the writers of these blogs and the blowhards of the airways know that a certain percentage of their readership is not deeply tethered to reality. Some of them, in fact, seethe with homicidal rage on their best days, are armed to the teeth with the beloved totem objects of the NRA, and don’t need a hard shove to go over the edge. They are a part, maybe a sliver, but a part none the less, of “The Base.” When one of them goes off the deep-end and actually stalks down some editor or reporter and puts a well placed round in their brain, the pundits will tisk tisk and deny any responsibility.
But they know what they are doing. They are playing the game of physical intimidation to shut up the press. If some one proves that liberals are indeed good target practice, so much the better.
The trouble is, combined with tons of expensive law suites, congressional investigation, general bullying from the administration, and threats of jail, it will have a “chilling” impact. Hell, it will have a frigid impact. The mainstream press, the NEW YORK TIMES included, has not exactly covered themselves in glory in recent years telling the tough stories that might embarrass the administration. Timidity has been a by-word. Remember it took the TIMES more than a year to work up the courage to break the telephone monitoring story, conveniently sitting on it through the election. Neither have they been eager to explore the many documented irregularities in the 2004 Ohio vote that gave the Presidency back to George W., Cheney’s energy deals, or the reality of the War in Iraq. Instead of being the People’s tribune, they have been the administrations enabler.
It will now be a cold day in hell before the TIMES sticks its neck out again.
Score another round for the bad guys.
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