Re: Karl Rove Beats The Rap
On Jun 15, 2006, at 5:07 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
Add Cockburn’s voice to those who are not particularly bothered by the Rove & the Plame affair.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/cockburn
“Thank God Rove is not to be indicted, so the left will have to talk about something else for a change. As a worthy hobbyhorse for the
left, the whole Plame scandal has never made any sense. What was it all
about in the first analysis? Outing a CIA employee. What’s wrong with that?”
What a splendid column - it’s like the Ace of old. I love this bit:
Rove and Cheney, the White House’s answer to Bouvard and Pécuchet,
have driven George Bush into the lowest ratings of any American
President. Yet the left remains obsessed with their evil powers. Is
there any better testimony to the vacuity and impotence of the
endlessly touted “blogosphere,” which in mid-June had twin deb
balls in the form of the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas and the
Take Back America folkmoot of “progressive” Democrats in
Washington, DC?In political terms the blogosphere is like white noise, insistent
and meaningless. But MoveOn.org and Daily Kos are now hailed as the
emergent form of modern politics, the target of an excited article
by Bill McKibben in The New York Review of Books.Beyond raising money swiftly handed over to the gratified veterans
of the election industry, both MoveOn and Daily Kos have had zero
political effect, except as a demobilizing force. The effect on
writers is horrifying. Talented people feel they have to produce
400 words of commentary every day, and you can see the lethal
consequences on their minds and style, which turn rapidly to slush.
They glance at the New York Times and rush to their laptops to
rewrite what they just read. Hawsers to reality soon fray and they
float off, drifting zeppelins of inanity.