Is it bad to expose Democratic corruption?

Great Debates
1

This is spin-off from some points raised by Gaderene in another thread.

In recent years, a number of people or orgnizations have been involved in discovering corruption by Democrats and making it known. They were investigators, witnesses, politicians, or media. Here’s a partial list from memory:

– Ken Starr
– Paula Jones
– Linda Tripp
– Lucianne Goldberg
– Newt Gingrich
– Richard Scaife
– The Arkansas Project
– Rush Limbaugh
– American Spectator Magazine
– House managers for impeachment trial

These people and organizations have been effectively demonized.

The question I want to discuss here is whether liberals feel that “investigating while conservative” is a no-no.

In particular, do you liberals approve of anyone who has helped expose Democratic corruption?

2

Link.

You’re a silly, silly little man.

3

Rather than list The Crusaders, how about listing the “Democratic corruption” they exposed? (FTR, blowjobs are not “corruption”)

Because right now, this thread looks extremely disingenuous.

stoid

4

It’s not wrong to expose corruption. But it is questionable to expose the corruption of only one group because of their ideological beliefs when you know another group you agree with is performing equivalent actions. And it is wrong to knowingly accept, spread, or create false information about a group because you oppose their ideological views.

5

Well, I would have to question whether those people have ALL been “demonized”, mainly because I’ve never even heard of half of them.

Of course, I’m not totally obsessed by politics, so don’t go by me.

I don’t quite grasp the OP: “…whether liberals feel that “investigating while conservative” is a no-no.”

How does one investigate while conservative? :confused: Does one put on a three-piece business suit and then investigate? What?

Hmmm…I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as though a million Pit threads were moving over to make room for one more…

6

Not really. I’d say it is in keeping with his previous posts.

7

Is “investigating” the new Republican code word for “muckracking”?

8

You cast a pretty wide loop, there, december. I don’t recall anyone on the Right supporting investigations into several serious offenses by members of the Reagan administration and I definitely remember cries of “witch hunt” being hurled at those who wished to discover the thruth behind the October Surprise, Iran-Contra, and a number of similar incidents.

As to your list of “investigators” or whistle-blowers":

– Ken Starr
In my mind the jury is still out.
He never found what he was appointed to seek out and continued to expand his searches in ever-wider circles. Was he simply pursuing “justice” or was he on a “seek-and-destroy” mission? His defenders point to his personal probity, but his actual remarks look a lot like he held a personal grudge.

– Paula Jones
Made a big deal out of a bad incident only after being approached to do so, years after the event, and then claimed that she was only trying to defend her reputation regarding an event that would have been unknown had she not brought it to the public’s eye.
Judgement: she was just going along with bad advice hoping to make a profit.

– Linda Tripp
May have started with simply the motive of forcing honesty in politics, but swiftly turned it into a personal grudge match.

– Lucianne Goldberg
I hold no particular views on Goldberg.

– Newt Gingrich
Mr. draft-dodger-born-again-as-a-war-wimp? Nothing he did was done for other than political motives.

– Richard Scaife
A pimple on the butt of humanity who used his money to create a machine to attempt to destroy Clinton.

– The Arkansas Project
A band of virulent Clinton-haters, founded and financed by Scaife, who set out to foment hate and destroy the Clintons. I’m supposed to trust a group that was started with the express intention of destroying someone?

– Rush Limbaugh
An entertainer who has been caught in numerous falsehoods which he has never retracted (often repeating them after they were demonstrated false).
He is an amusing guy.

– American Spectator Magazine
Doing their job looking for dirt to increase circulation.
I’ve got no general problem with them finding what dirt they could, but they hardly count as disinterested observers. This, of course, is especially true considering that Scaife financed the entire “Clinton investigation”: Death of the American Spectator (Their standard practice of printing unsupportable lurid detain does seem to denigrate from their “objectivity”–as does the fact that Brock has been back-pedalling madly for the last few months on what he may or may not have invented for his stories.)

– House managers for impeachment trial
I do not recall any serious bashing of the House Managers. (You must read far more liberal journals than I do.) I recall one or two intemperate remarks for which one of them was chastised, but no serious attempt to discredit them.

So, of your list, Scaife, Jones, Arkansas Project, and American Spectator are all directly interlinked with ulterior motives. Starr certainly began with good intentions (given the accolades his friends accord him), but may have wandered into personal grudges.

I’m sure that if we followed some of the Iran-Contra investigators, we might find some of the same personal axes being ground. On the other hand, I have seen no such obvious personal involvement and intertwined self-interests among those who have attempted to investigate Iran-Contra. The October Surprise was investigated by folks bearing personal grudges, and has generally been abandoned by the mainstream media when those grudges came out in the open.

9

Ya know what, the longer I think about it, the more I believe that this thread is one of two things:

  1. december’s attempt at comedy
    or
  2. december’s attempt at trolling.

december, as comedy, I give it 2 stars on the Stoidal 5 Star Scale. As trolling, I give it 1.5. If by chance you are actually sincere, I give it no stars at all.

Pretty much a washout, dood.

stoid

10

Thank you for your response tomndebb. I’m glad to know that you do not necessarily find all those examples to be bad people.

Many members of the right did support the investigations of Nixon and did call for his resignation. Nobody at all criticized Barney Skolnik, the brillilant and driven prosecutor who got the goods on Spiro Agnew.

From what I know, there’s a big difference between October Surprise and Iran-Conta. There’s no doubt that Iran-Contra happened. People debated the level seriousness and Reagan’s degree of involvement, but the scandal was indisputably real.

OTOH October Surprise almost surely never happened. There was no evidence and it never really made sense, anyway.

So far, tomndebb, you’re the only liberal on this thread to have named some of these corruption fighters who you don’t claim is a bad person.

11

Oh, goody. This week I get to be a liberal.
(Last week my sycophantic capitulation to the reactionary lords of something-or-other earned me the epithet “conservative.” I always like to know which uniform I’m wearing.)

12

tomndebb’s a liberal? Who’d of thunk it? If he ain’t a middle-of-the-road “just the facts m’am” kinda guy, then who the fuck is??

tom You shouldda fessed up before now. :smiley:

13

Congratulations, december. You’ve conclusively demonstrated that in your opinion, anyone to the left of you must be a liberal. No wonder you think the Fox News Channel is a fair and unbiased media outlet.

14

december, your premise is silly. Two points:

  1. The investigation in question revealed no corruption. The Starr report and the impeachment trial concerned perjury, etc. No charge was made about any pecuniary gain;

  2. What “demonization”? The people and organizations you list are despised by Clintonistas, hard-core liberals, etc. Do you honestly think that, if the Whitewater/Lewinsky investigation hadn’t occurred, these people would have been invited over by Friends of Bill for tea and crumpets? Of course not. They still would have been hated, just as the people you list hate liberals.

Sua

15

:eek:

No one * really * believes that, do they? Even my father, rightwing nutjob that he can often be, readily admits that Fox is about offering a rightward tilt to counterbalance the leftward tilt in the media so often complained of by the right.

Which is why I watch it. Between my hard-left sources, mainstream (soft-left but governed more and more by corporate interests) Fox, and rightwing radio, I figure the truth can be sussed out.

stoid

16

gee what to say

Once again, portraying your opposition as being mindless drones attached at wrists and ankels to ideology, while only you and those you agree with wear the white hats, suits of armor and are here to rescue us from our misguided selves, is offensive.

17

Stoid: In the thread linked above, december referred to the Fox News Channel as a reliable source, and quoted their slogan–“We report, you decide”–without a single shred of irony.

I want to start a thread about this, actually. It’s one thing if, like your father, conservatives watch (and justify) FNC because it provides a right-wing counterweight to what they see as a pervasively left-wing mainstream media. Whatever floats your boat, y’know? That’s why I read Harper’s. But it’s something else altogether if conservatives claim that FNC is an objective, unbiased alternative to the “liberal media.”

The funny thing is, FNC itself steadfastly professes to be the latter (an objective, neutral alternative) rather than the former (a right-wing counterweight). This despite the marked conservative history of almost every one of its principal on- and off-air people.

shrug Like I said, I want to start a thread about it.

18

Stoidela:

Not disagreeing with you, but what do you mean by that? Because so many of the other liberal message board junkies I know harp incessantly about the “right-wing press,” referring to mainstream media.

How did you come to the assessment that the mainstream media was soft-left?

19

Without instigating a large-scale hijack (and without presuming to speak for Stoid), I’ll give you my personal opinion. The mainstream media tends to be:
[list=a]
[li]profit-driven[/li][li]access-driven[/li][li]audience-driven[/li][li]establishmentarian–see (a) and (b)[/li][li]secular[/li][li]socially centrist-liberal–see (c) and (e)[/li][li]economically centrist-conservative–see (a), (b), (c), and (d)[/li][li]even in issues (f) and (g), neither as whole-heartedly liberal as liberals would like nor as whole-heartedly conservative as conservatives would like[/li][/list]

That make any sense? :slight_smile:

20

from dicitonary.com

cor·rupt adj.

1.Marked by immorality and perversion; depraved.
2.Venal; dishonest: a corrupt mayor.
3.Containing errors or alterations, as a text: a corrupt translation.
4.Archaic. Tainted; putrid.

Under definition #2, corrupt can mean venal, as Sua implies, but it can also mean dishonest.

It seems to me that these people were pretty negatively portrayed to the general public. The NY Times printed a letter from me defending Linda Tripp, who was the butt of many TV comics. She seemed to me to have few defenders. Linda resisted the request to commit perjury. On the other hand, Monica, who did commit perjury, was so popular that she brought out a line of some product (handbags?).

A personal story. I was at dinner with my daughter’s in-laws. They were eager to make a good impression, as were my wife and myself. The mother-in-law, Patti, started a conversational ball by mentioning how much she hated Lucianne Goldberg. Now Patti is the nicest, warmest person in the world. She’s someone who never offends. She clearly didn’t even realize that her comment might bother someone.

tomndebb, sorry for calling you a liberal when you’re not. I’m also disappointed. I thought there was a liberal on this thread who could say, “I admire So-and-so for exposing certain Democratic corruption, because integrity of government is more important to me than my party.”

And, to forestall the usual response, I will say what I already implied. I greatly admire Barney Skolnik for getting the evidence on Spiro Agnew and convicting him of accepting bribes. I admire the Watergate investigators (including Hillary Clinton) for uncovering that scandal and driving Nixon from office.

I do not agree with little nemo’s complaint against one-sidedness. I appreciate it when Dems expose Republican corruption and vice versa. It’s only natural that the two parties will go after each other.