Wanna buy a bridge?

Can this be?

Followed the link from the Heretik to the Newsweek story on Matthew Cooper's toadying for Karl Rove.  It looks to me as though Rove told Cooper that the Nigerian yellowcake story was true, Saddam was trying to get his hands on weapons grade fissionable materials, Joe Wilson's report was a crock, and the Wilsons were a couple of untrustworthy liberals bent on spoiling the President's fun in Iraq out of meanness and because they were flakes, and Cooper just took his word for it!

Is that what happened?

Can't be.

I don't care if you don't believe that Karl Rove is a malignancy, although he is.  The man's reputation is based on his talent for lying and manipulating people.  You can think that that's clever of him, you can admire that talent even.  You can think that instead of the complaining about Rove's tricks, the Democrats should go out and hire their own master liar and manipulator.  You can be that cynical.  Fine.  But then when you talk to the man there's no excuse for your not being aware that what he's doing with you is probably what he does with everybody else.  You can admire and respect that son of a bitch all you want, like him even, but you don't trust him!

A professional liar told Matthew Cooper a story and Cooper said, "Gosh!" and wrote it down?

Leave aside the question why hasn't Time fired him yet.  How did he get his job in the first place? How did a man this gullible graduate from journalism school?

Reporters I know, a nun tells them the time of day, they call the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England to check it out.

I'm imagining Mike Royko interviewing Mayor Daley---Ok, first I have to imagine Royko actually getting in to see Daley instead of Daley, when he hears Royko's at the door, sending a goon out to beat him up.  But say Daley was in a charitable mood and he granted that life-long thorn in his side an interview.  I'm imagining Daley telling Royko, well, anything, his wife's name, his favorite flavor of ice cream, what he had for lunch that day, the score from last night's Cubs game, and I'm imagining Royko---he's laughing derisively and telling the mayor, "Yeah, right.  Pull the other one."

Now I'm imagining Daley telling Royko, "Mike, you got to stop writing all those nasty things about Chicago politicians.  You know those two alderman you called crooks and liars in your column the other day?  I swear to you, honest as the day is long, the both of them.  Poor as church mice, those guys.  Do their jobs out of the goodness of their hearts.  You can hardly persuade them to accept their legitimate salaries, nevermind the bribes and the graft.  Altruists, the pair of them.  I swear to you, MIke.   And, hey, you creep, why aren't you writing any of this down?"

No way I can imagine the greenest cub reporter in Chicago, let alone Royko, going back to his office and typing up a memo to his editors that says the aldermen are Boy Scouts, Mayor Daley told me so.

Journalists in Chicago knew what kind of guy Richard Daley was.

Don't journalists in Washington know what kind of guy Karl Rove is?  I know they've felt like they've had to bow and scrape before him for five years.  I know they print stuff he says as if they believe it, all the time.  They don't want to risk getting crossed off the guest list for the next insiders' ball or becoming suddeny invisible at White House press conferences and finding that they can't even get the lowest level aide's lowest level aides to take their calls.

I know they know Rove's vindictive and mean and determined his boss's version of the story is the version of the story everybody hears loudest and longest.

But do any of them besides Matthew Cooper believe Rove is honest, despite a few faults?

And none of the ones who know better ever bothered to clue Cooper in?

Can't be.  I've got to be reading that Newsweek story wrong.

Nobody's that dumb.

Comments

[Exiled in New Jersey]

Where are Walter and Hildy when we REALLY need them? We keep waiting for Billy Gilbert to walk in with the paper from the governor, and instead we get these clowns. I truly wonder if it were the imprisoned Miller who tipped King Karl about Mrs. Wilson's occupation.

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Royko.

Sigh.

Now I just want to go have a good cry over a beer at the Billy Goat.

[harry near indy]

lance,

i left the newspaper business about 20 years ago.

like a lot of non-newspaper people, i believe you've mixed up a reporter, who reports, supposedley just the facts and checks them, with a columnist who can more or less whatever he or she wants within current libel laws.

and royko was a reporter before he was a columnist -- he always a reporter. now these knavish pundits as seen on tv -- they never were.

and a lot of ignorant people confuse punditti with reporters. please don't do that.

check with nancy nall on the difference.

[J.]

But... but... Kevin Drum and others said Cooper is such a nice guy. Surely that counts...

[Redbeard]

For some people truth is not the goal.
A good number of these people work in the Washington Press Corps. You read the Daily Howler.

"Nobody's that dumb"

Come on, Lance, it's not a matter of dumb, it's a matter of not caring.

And Matt Cooper doesn't care.

[Jack (CommonSenseDesk)]

I thought you were on HOLIDAY!

[Arvin Hill]

Like Harry, I, too, am sick of people telling me what a "nice guy" Cooper is while unleashing the hounds of hell on Judy Chalabi. Granted, there's a bad and there's awful, but Cooper has shown himself to be a note-taking, simpering little twerp just like 99% or more of his peers. Where "nice guy" fits into that is a mystery to me.

We shouldn't be surprised if Tom Hanks portrays Cooper in a Ron Howard film within the next year or two. I get stomach cramps just thinking about it.

What a bunch of suckers.

[Anne Laurie]

Lance, I think Cooper's problem may be one my ol' dad used to warn me against: "If you eat *** long enough, you start to like the taste... "

Some have debased their standards (taste buds) more than others, but 30 years of "improving" journalism from a working-class Job to a credentialed Occupation has tracked an inverse curve for media-peoples' public inability to tell truth from falsehood. I keep hoping that each new farrago from the current holders of the Oval Office will bring back the old joke about the Boy Scout leader & the smart pills.

[ae]

Holy Hannah, Lance, when you put it that way... It just doesn't seem fathomable. I mean, it does, because we've been forced to put up w/ these shovel loads of tripe from the stenographers for many a moon, but, yeah, to think that Cooper, no matter how jaded, cynical, apathetic, or kneepaddish he was, would just jot down Rove's words as if they could possibly be construed as anything other than the Bullshit Daily Line boggles the mind. Boggles!

And Arvin Hill nailed it w/ Hanks playing Cooper in a Howard film. Perfectly cloying.

[me]

Nice line about the nuns and time of day. Royko, who worked at the City News Bureau of Chicago, would have seen your nuns and raised you its credo: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

[Downpuppy]

Cooper wrote it down in an internal memo. I didn't see where he published any of Rove's rubbish without checking. What am I missing?

[Mark]

What he said.

[Downpuppy]

He "suggested another reporter check with the CIA", and specifically recommended not running anything just based on Rove.(Granted, that should have been obvious even to Time editors) Cooper is part of a huge magazine staff, not Izzy Stone II. I read it more as passing along a dead rat for rabies testing than taking Rove's word for anything.

[Lance]

Down, the way it looks to me from the Newsweek story, Rove warned Cooper not to believe anything Wilson said and assured him that the yellowcake was there and Saddam was trying to buy it. Nowhere do I see Cooper taking that with a grain of salt. Instead he tells his editors to protect Rove and look into Wilson.

But that's why I wrote the post, to find out more about what's going on. Because we've been traveling and internet connection's been slow down here, I haven't been able to read anywheres near as much as I'd like to. So if you can point me to any stories that show Cooper was more dubious of Rove than the Newsweek story makes him out to be, I'd be grateful if you sent me the links.

Still, Cooper was protecting Rove until Time pulled the rug out from under him. Unreliable sources aren't the kind you go to jail for. I'd think Cooper must have had faith in Rove if he was willing to take a fall like that to protect him.

[pgl]

Ken Mehlman should take lessons from you. Now he makes up all sorts of BS - but you are the master. Lordie, lordie, lordie - you are living in some kind of weird fantasy world!

[Downpuppy]

Whether you believe Rove or not, it can be hazardous to the health of your magazine to ignore him. Cooper had to tell his editors exactly what Rove told him, and assuming Rove would eventually read what he wrote was another good assumption.

Cooper may well be a credulous boob, but announcing it to the world based on this excerpt seems a bit harsh. Or maybe I'm just feeling jealous. We didn't take the week in Falmouth this year, and last year was fabulous. No internet for 7 days, chasing spider crabs with a 3 year old girl.....

[Downpuppy]

Oh gawd - There's this:

"Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ..."

Sorry. Never mind. He's a cretin.

[Exiled in NJ]

"I truly wonder if it were the imprisoned Miller who tipped King Karl about Mrs. Wilson's ccupation."

I should keep my mouth shut; Mr. Rove seems to have gotten the same idea too if this morning's spin is correctly reported.

[KathyF]

Wait...I just noticed this:
a couple of untrustworthy liberals bent on spoiling the President's fun in Iraq out of meanness and because they were flakes

You're using the word "flake" pejoratively again. I'm trying to stamp out that practice.

In fact, I impose a fine: everyone who uses that term must link to a Flake.

I see you already have, though--even made me a guest star! Otherwise I'd get nasty. You don't wanna know what that's like.