Moriarity or little green footballs want to eat my congressman!

Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey was speaking about Social Security before a roomful of constituents in Ithaca, NY the other night and in the course of the discussion, one thing leading to another, he happened to mention that he believes that Karl Rove had a hand in bringing down Dan Rather.

Hinchey was talking about the ways the White House attempts, usually successfully, to cow and browbeat and manipulate and deceive the media.

"Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather," [he said.]

"Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: It originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House ... . Once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush's draft dodging. … That had the effect of taking the whole issue away."

From any reasonable person's point of view, this is hardly hot stuff. Those damn memos had to come from somewhere, and it's weird to me that we still don't know where.  Why not Karl Rove?  He has a long history of playing dirty.  I happen to think that the likelier explanation is that some well-meaning person who'd seen the originals made copies from memory and that the story is just another lesson in journalistic hubris.  But who knows?  Maybe the memos were part of some elaborate scheme and scheming is what Rove gets paid to do.

But Hinchey's audience wasn't made up of all reasonable people.  Hinchey noticed a man in the audience with a tape recorder he didn't think was a reporter.  Turns out he was right.  The guy was from little green footballs.  The local paper calls him an "operative" for LGF and I'll bet he loves that.  Probably makes him go all Jack Bauer from 24-ish tingly all over.

The operative uploaded what he'd recorded to LGF and the results were what you'd expect. Remember in The Two Towers when the Uruk-hai captain chops off the head of the orc who wants to eat Merry and Pippin and then announces, "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" and all the orcs tear into the corpse of their former comrade?

Something like that but not as pretty.

The orcs and goblins at LGF smell fresh meat and they want to eat Maurice Hinchey.  At least his legs.

"This guy needs a clue-by-blog and wake up to being a mature person," wrote mglazer.  "The old days of sitting in a little town hall and pandering to your constituents with LIES is no longer OK, acceptable or ignored – we can ALL HEAR what you say now."

Nevermind the routine wingnut blogger hubris here, which is just their basic paranoia turned around---All the world used to be out to get me, but now they know I'm out to get them back!---what I like there is the sight of a blogger lecturing a United States Congressman on what it means to be mature.  I think we can all imagine at least 47 different types of personality mglazer might be, starting with the most mature of them, a high school computer geek still fuming over that cheerleader ignoring his political rant in the line at the cafeteria, and none of them will come close to resembling an actual, functioning grown-up.

But I'm probably selling the guy short. I'm sure his job at Games-Workshop has taught him more about life and being mature than six terms in the US House of Representatives has taught Hinchey.

An LGF-er who calls himself christheprofessor, who I suspect is more likely nick-named after his favorite character on Gilligan's Island than after his actual job title typed, "I say Republicans in the House of Representative should demand an investigation of his, er, evidence, and then have him censured."

Congressman Hinchey, prepare to feel our wrath!

I don't know what they expect Tom DeLay to do though. The GOP leadership can't even get all the troops in line on Social Security.  I don't know how the LGF-ers think he can slap down Hinchey for stating an opinion that a lot of Republicans probably share.  Hinchey's not worried.  He holds a pretty safe seat. His district includes Ithaca, and we all know what's high above Cayuga's waters there, Poughkeepsie, another university town, the city of Kingston, the town of Woodstock, and, well, me.

All the rest is Catskill Mountains and deer.

So most of Hinchey's constituents are likely to think that if anything he was being too circumspect in his suggestions about the nefariousness of Karl Rove and his boss.

But here's my question? What are the LGF-ers mad at?

I thought this was the kind of thing they like about Rove. I thought they loved the dirty tricks, anything to win, when the going gets tough the tough lie, cheat, steal, and make fun of faggots approach to campaigning and governing. I thought they high five each other all the time about what a good job their guys do ratfucking Democrats.  It helps them feel like manly men.  Ayn Randian men. Gods on earth who can do whatever they want and get away with it because THEY HAVE THE POWER!

I don't read any of the winger blogs, not even Reynolds or Drudge or the Corner.  I leave that to other, tougher liberal bloggers. Bloggers with stronger stomachs and steelier nerves, bloggers like Edroso.   If I was going to start I wouldn't start with LGF any more than I would start exploring Paris via its sewers.  So the root cause of their indignation will stay a mystery to me, unless those of you who are braver and more combat-hardened than I am come back from the front lines with a report.

And if what Hinchey said makes them all Yosemite Sam hopping up and down mad, they must be on the point of exploding at CBS' Dotty Lynch floating the idea that Rove had a hand in credentialing one time web porn master and go-go boy and now aspiring journalist Jim/Jeff Guckert/Gannon.

(See John Aravosis for all good things Guckert/Gannon.)

Wait.  I just re-read this graph in the paper

There was this from mich-again.  "Rove isn't stupid enough to offer up those documents and actually think CBS would not discover the ruse. How freaking ignorant are these people?

I get it now.  It's not the accusation that Rove plays dirty.  It's the idea that he would do it in such an obvious way and get caught at it.

What they don't like is that Hinchey is slighting Rove's abilities as a criminal mastermind.  Hinchey failed to recognize that Rove is the Professor Moriarity of Republican dirty tricks.

They see Rove the way Sherlock Holmes saw his arch-nemisis Moriarity.

“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed–the word is passed to the professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught–never so much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.

“But the professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill..."

Meanwhile, back in reality:

Hinchey said he has no plans to stop making allegations against Rove and the Bush administration.  "What we are seeing is very new and very dangerous," Hinchey said. "No administration has attempted to manipulate the facts and information and to manipulate the news media to distort the facts ... as what we are seeing in this administration."

Moriarity finally tripped up.  Maybe we've got our Holmes on Rove's case at last.

(Hinchey'll stand up to these guys just fine, but I feel sorry for his staff who are probably spending a lot of time taking all kinds of LGF shit.  If you want to give them some moral support, contact any of Hinchey's offices and tell them you care.)

Comments

[roy edroso]

That's very kind of you, Lance. Now if I could only figure out why I read that crap...

I almost never read LGF. They always leave their nut grafs in plain sight; it's too easy.

[mamayaga]

For another view on why they're so mad, take a look at The Poor Man today:
http://thepoorman.net/gl/article.php?story=20050221235742234

[KevinNYC]

My girlfriend and I rented a cabin on lake in the Adirondacks last year at one of those places where you share the space with 6-10 other cabins.

I think I was trying to show her the lower-middle class vacations of my youth. At the campfire one night we were talking with the other folks who were staying there. One family was from Syracuse and one couple was from Ithaca. The woman from Syracuse said, "Ithaca, I wouldn't even drive through Ithaca!" My girlfriend and I looked at each other and said, "Um, why won't you drive through Ithaca?:

Syr: Because they got those cults down there. You don't know that?

us: No

Syr: It was all over the news, you didn't see that on the news.

us: No (thinking....I think we have enough real news in NYC)

Ith: Well I tell you I don't notice the cults so much as the bisexuals. There's a lot of bisexuals in Ithaca.

us: Um, how do you know who is a bisexual?

Ith: They got this bumper stickers they put on their cars.

We love telling that story. The folks from Syracuse wanted to know what celebrities we had seen and they were very impressed that I seen Al Roker the week before our trip.

[KevinNYC]

Lance,

I just saw your other post where you talked about Lake George.

The place I used to vacation as a kid was Bolton Landing, on the north end of Lake George. The place the Ithaca conversation took place was, I think, Bear Lake.

I was shocked to find out that in 90's Bolton Landing was discovered by the Wall Street crowd and almost all the lakefront property has been bought up and some million dollar homes have been built.

Also it wasn't last year we went up there, it the year Hilliary was running against Giuliani. I was surprised that all the upstate folks thought Hilliary was a lock and they hated her. This is before Giuliani's adultery came out and he imploded.

[Lance]

Kevin,

My parents sold their place a long time ago, but we still manage to get up to Lake George a couple of times every summer. Usually just to LG Village, but the summer before last we spent a very nice day up at Bolton Landing. You're right, a lot of expensive building has been going on, but there's a limit to how much can be done, since along most of the lake on both sides the mountains come right down to the shore and the lake and all the land surrounding it are in Adirondack Park.

Btw, one of my very first posts was on our most recent visit to Lake George. You might get a kick out of it, since you know the place.

http://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2004/09/boom.html

Don't judge Syracuse by that couple. We lived in Syracuse for 13 years, so I can tell you, it's a Democratic town. Hillary's their hero and they came out strong for Kerry. And gays and lesbians have been marching in the St Patrick's Day parade for years and years, without there ever being any fuss.

[Lance]

mamayaga,

Thanks for the link. A good one. I'm working on another post on the blogstorm and I'll include it. Post should be up this afternoon.

[yam]

i just called rep. hinchey's office and said nice things to the staffer there about his guts to call out these thugs. i'm from minneapolis, but hey, moral support is moral support...

[radish]

I dunno, maybe LGF-ers aren't all bad after all.

christheprofessor thinks that "Republicans in the House of Representative should demand an investigation of his, er, evidence..."

and that is something I could really get behind. A big, open investigation with lots of public hearings. I'm a litle skeptical that it would result in censure of Rep Hinchey, but if it's okay with Rep Hinchey and christheprofessor I reckon it's okay with me as well :-)

[Lance]

Yam, I think it's great that you called. Thanks.

Radish, I hope you didn't just blow christheprofessor's cover. I would have thought that his call for an investigation would make all the other LGF-ers suspect he was a mole, but I haven't heard he's been disappeared so maybe he's safe.

[Dave]

I say full hearings. Whoever's lying, nail 'em to the wall.

Of course Hinchey would be cleared- he wouldn't make unfounded and unsupported accusations, would he?