Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes used to tweak the liberal media
together in producing Rush's short-lived but much enjoyed weeknight
television program. Now, they're together again. They're both in the liberal
media cross hairs, both under attack for mild or imaginary offenses.
It must not be fun being Tom Daschle in the wake of losing the
Senate. Who can he blame? He can't blame the "mainstream press," which never
even considered snarling the words "architect of gridlock" at him as he
built a graveyard for House-passed bills. So, like a sore loser ... he
blamed Rush. But like so many liberals who genuflect at the altar of Bill
Clinton, Daschle wasn't content just to criticize his conservative
adversary. He actually accused Limbaugh of domestic terrorism.
Daschle slandered Limbaugh listeners everywhere by suggesting
they "aren't satisfied just to listen. They want to act because they got
emotionally invested. And so, you know the threats to those of us in public
life go up dramatically." He added, "We see it in foreign countries, and we
think, well, my God, how can this religious fundamentalism become so
violent? Well, it's that same shrill rhetoric. It's the same shrill power
that motivates ... pretty soon, it becomes physical in addition to just
verbal, and that's happening in this country."
This is not just ridiculous. It's not just offensive. It is 100
percent ugly, poisonous, vomitous dishonesty. It is political phlegm.
It must have seemed like a plausible complaint in the eyes of
the press, because most of the media ignored it as if it was unexceptional.
CNN simply found it fascinating." NBC's Tom Brokaw simply passed it on. No
one challenged Daschle to deliver evidence.
This isn't the first time Rush has been so slandered. Remember
how Bill Clinton blamed Rush and other talk show hosts for the Oklahoma City
bombing? It's no coincidence that both of these ridiculous attacks came at
times when the liberals felt their most powerless, when they felt the
conservative opinion leaders had whipped them.
And while on the nostalgia kick, remember all those Clintonian
charges about conservatives and the "politics of personal destruction"? What
about all that talk about conservative "hate"? Now, we have -- yet again --
the black and white evidence of liberal vitriol, and everyone just shrugs
their shoulders.
Just days before, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward unveiled
excerpts of his latest book, "Bush at War," and caused a big stir by
revealing that Fox News Channel boss Roger Ailes had sent a confidential
memo to the Bush White House after September 11 insisting the president stay
tough against the terrorists. Ailes denied the memo contained advice, just
outrage. But none of his competitors was buying it; the opportunity to
pounce all over the Fox Network was irresistible.
But the furor (and glee) from other media outlets was wildly
overdone and typically hypocritical. Start with Woodward. Are we to believe
this journalistic bigfoot has never sat at the feet of the powerful with his
notebook and not indulged in politicians' solicitations of his opinion? If
you buy that, you'll buy that he really got that deathbed interview with the
unconscious Bill Casey.
Then, get a load of CNN, the arch-competition of Fox, which
spent most of a day throwing brickbats at Ailes. CNN hired as their
president Rick Kaplan, an ABC producer famous for offering President Clinton
advice on how to defuse "60 Minutes" questions about the affair with
Gennifer Flowers in 1992 -- while working for ABC. He's the fellow who
wouldn't deny boasting to friends that he attended Clinton staff meetings
and set up the Clinton press operation. He's the guy who golfed with Clinton
and slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, the man who squashed negative reporting of
Clinton at ABC, and then at CNN, where he devoted hour-long programs to
"media madness" against Clinton and the evil doings of Kenneth Starr. But
one memo from Ailes about the war, (END
ITAL) not politics -- and he's the issue?
The Ailes memo is a molehill compared to Kaplan's mountain --
and the media know it. The attacks on Rush are character assassination of
the worst order -- and the press knows it. But this is how the Left in
America behaves -- and America knows it.
Notebook