sigh
Go back, and re-read what I wrote right after december replied.
Then understand it.
Sua – you ask some good question and make some good arguments. I’ll try to respond the best I can.
Sua, you are implying that the younger Thurmond was as unqualified for his US Atty appointment as Monica was for her UN job offer. Can you prove this?
Too true.
I’m thinking of definition #3
de·mon·ize
tr.v. de·mon·ized, de·mon·iz·ing, de·mon·iz·es
- To turn into or as if into a demon.
- To possess by or as if by a demon.
- To represent as evil or diabolic: wartime propaganda that demonizes the enemy.
In my opinion, it’s being done by Clinton loyalists and by other Democrats, particularly certian media sources who repeat and amplify the unfair attacks. I hope I’ve made a prima facie case, although I admit my evidence is far from conclusive.
He was demonized after that scandal. As has been pointed out, a weakness in my case is that I cannot demonstrate how much of a role, if any, revenge played in Newt’s demonization. However, I may give this a try if I get time for some research later.
I had totally forgotten about Koreagate. A quick glance through google points out that it implicated executives of the conservative Washington Times. Not a Democratic scandal.
Not treated as a Democratic scandal. (Irrelevent oint: McCain claims that his level of guilt was far below the other 4 and that he was named solely for the purpose of making it bi-partisan.)
Ditto to response above. I do seem to recall that Congress responded by passing a law making that sort of investigation illegal. So, they took care of themselves by something even better than revenge.
Of course, Cox became a hero by being fired (and deservedly so.) I did read ATPM, but many years ago. Why were Watergate investigators not demonized the way Tailgate investigators were? I’d say it’s because most of the media is Democratic. In some other world where Republicans control the media, no doubt Democrats would more often be unfairly demonized.
My beef is that many people who serve the public by helping to root out corruption are being punished in retaliation. This sort of thing discourages public-spirited actions. (E.g., Juanita Broadderick says that she didn’t report the Clinton rape because she was afraid of retaliation.)
What’s Tailgate? …Google search… Something about Ethernet, something about Tailhook… Oh! I get it! TAILgate! Bwahahahahahahahaha! What will those witty conservative pundits think of next? Why, the play on words is almost Wildean! Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!
Let’s ask Woodward & Bernstein what they think.
and
While W&B are certainly self-justifying, could there not be some grain of truth to what they are saying? As whistleblowers, they were held to different reporting standards than those of today. Furthermore, they seem to believe that there was some real import to the scandal they uncovered.
From another article
The journalistic climate was incomparably different. This alone can account for the change that december is trying to explain by partisanship alone, devoid of poltical and social context.
From the same article:
Watergate: thoughtful reporting.
“Tailgage”: drama.
While the article conveniently does not cite the study nor provide hard data, I find this conclusion intuitively true. It is, of course, open to be challenged.
Is it so big of a stretch to conjecture that whistleblowers on such low-level scandals are despised due to the immense amount of useless press coverage that accrues to such scandals, like barnacles on a mouldy old ship?
Well, actually I can’t, as I have no recollection of whatever job Monica was offered (the only one I remember is the Revlon job). I can tell you that Strom, Jr. is singularly unqualified to be the U.S. Attorney.
His experience thus far -
Approx. 1 year with the District Attorney’s office in Charleston (where he did mostly misdemeanor cases, with a few felony cases); and
Two years as a partner with a Charleston firm (and yes, that was a blatant ploy for political favor - lawyers do not become partners with one year experience).
If his law school grades were good, and if he got good recommendations from his previous employers, that resume would get him a job as an Assistant U.S. Attorney - certainly not a supervisory position, and definitely not the position of U.S. Attorney.
No prob with your response to points #1, 2 or 3.
I think you have to work on your Google skills. Koreagate occurred in the mid-70’s - the Washington Times didn’t start publishing until 1982. Yes, people who later became executives of the Washington Times were the people giving out the gifts, but the recipients were primarily Democrats.
Oh, and I’m sure you’ll find this funny. Donald Fraser was the Democratic Representative who led the investigation into Koreagate and who issued the Fraser report on the scandal.
Bo Hi Pak, who is now the president of the Washington Times’ parent corporation
I got that from here. http://www.usvetdsp.com/story17.htm Kinda interesting, don’t cha think? The Democratic investigator of a primarily Democratic scandal was, quite literally, “demonized” by a conservative operative. Shocking, I say.
(For points #5 & 6) Not “treated” as a Democratic scandal?!! WTF does that mean?
Ahh. But you see, there is a difference between Watergate and Zippergate. In Watergate, the investigators were proven right - Nixon resigned in the face of an almost certain impeachment and conviction. In Zippergate, the investigators were proven wrong - Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. Besides which, going by the definition you presented, Woodward, Bernstein, Cox, etc. were demonized. It wasn’t until after they were proven right that they were considered heroes.
But, you see, they didn’t “root out corruption.” The relevant legal authority (i.e. the US Senate) acquitted Clinton of “corruption.”
The O.J. prosecutors are the butts of jokes now, because they failed to do what they set out to do. They wasted all of our time. Are they being “demonized” or fairly mocked as incompetents?
Similarly, the people you list put this country through a great deal of angst, with the end result being that nothing happened. They lost their case. Either (a) there was no corruption, or (b) they were incompetent. Either way, they were failures. This country has never been kind to failures.
Sua
“Juanita Broderick didn’t report the Clinton rape…”
Excuse me? Rape? Which you lay out so offhandedly, like this is common knowledge? Clear this up for me, will you, december. Is it your contention that Bill Clinton actually raped this Juanita Broaderick!
When you use a word like that, pal, you better be ready to back it up, bigtime! Further, I insist you do so at once or eat these words like the scurrillous turds they are!
Bill Clinton is a politician, hence a crook, a liar and a poltroon. It goes with the territory. But rapist!
If you can’t prove this, you’re so full of crap your eyes are brown!
-slight hijack-John, I did as you suggested and checked Man of the House out of the library-so far it looks VERY good. 
BTW, the Congressman Newt was attacking was none other than Edward Boland-of the Boland Ammendment-which Iran Contra broke?
Don’t know if THAT pertains to anything in this thread, however, I just found it interesting…
Not his contention - hers. Are you unfamiliar with this story, or do you just not believe it? In any event, read The ugliest story yet.
I wrote, “Juanita Broaddrick says that she didn’t report the Clinton rape because she was afraid of retaliation.” Maybe this is slightly ambiguous. On re-reading, I ought to have used the phrase “a rape” rather than “the rape.”
JB said Clinton raped her and JB said she didn’t report the rape because she feared retaliation by the Governor of Arkansas against her business. The story was reported in all the major media. JB was interviewed by Lisa Meyers on NBC TV.
I can’t prove whether JB was telling the truth. There’s no other witness. She appears to have had no reason to lie. She came across as honest. OTOH she had signed some document (I think it was an affadavit) denying the rape many years ago.
However, recall that Anne Marie Smith, the flight attendant who had an affair with GAry Condit, was asked by his lawyer to sign an affadavit denying the affair. In this case, she refused to sign the false affadavit. I find it plausible that JB might have agreed to sign a false affadavit, since her business could be harmed by the Governor’s bad will.
You can find lots of references to Broaddrick via a search engine. Again, the rape is her story; it hasn’t been independl;y verified.
Well, I was inclined to doubt this story myself. That was before you put this evidence before me. I humbly admit that I hadn’t even considered how a flight attendants affair with Gary Condit could be relevent to the issue.
Truth be known, I’m too stupid to see it now.
December: your claim, from the beginning, has been something along the lines of: “anyone who investigates corruption among democrats will be demonized”.
(a) I’m sure that it is true that there are some people who are so rabidly pro-democrat that they will treat as an enemy anyone who besmirches any democrat in any way
(a1) The same is surely true of republicans
(a2) But the vast majority of people in the country, in either party, and on this board, are not in that group
(b) There are probably also some people who view it as their job to support the political fortunes of their party, and would thus use a variety of means to discredit those who they view as political opponents. Thus, some amount of mud is likely to be slung at anyone who brings or pursues charges of corruption against any politician of either party.
© Up to this point, I kinda doubt anyone will disagree. (Anyone? Anyone? Beuler?) But you seem to take things one step further (although I don’t want to put words into your mouth) and state that anyone who attacks or investigates any democrat is automatically demonized with such effective and amazing ferocity that they become a subject of very widespread public ridicule and scorn, a la Linda Tripp and Rush Limbaugh. Is this in fact your contention?
(d) If so, all that one would have to do to disprove your point would be to come up with any single example at all of a scandal in which it is revealed that democrats were at fault, in which even one of the parties involved in investigating that scandal was not demonized. Correct?
(e) Many such scandals have already been pointed out (how it is that you dismiss the Keating 5 as not being a Democratic scandal is somewhat of a mystery to me). In addition, there were numerous (somewhat minor) scandals early in the Clinton years, such as something involving the white house travel office, and a multi-hour haircut at LAX, in which (as far as I know) no one who investigated them was demonized. Would you care to provide counterevidence? If not, I believe that your original argument is baseless.
(f) Could you argue something along the lines of “some people who have investigated/attacked democrats have been smeared/villified/attacked”? Easily. How about “some people who have investigated/attacked democrats have been unfairly smeared/villified/attacked?” Well, you could certainly argue that if you wished, and if wish to do so, please go ahead and make that argument. Could you argue “people who have investigated/attacked democrats have been unfairly smeared/villified/attacked moreso that those who have investigated/attacked reuplicans”? Well, that would be a long and bloody Great Debate that would probably end up going nowhere. But you go far beyond any of those claims, and thus, I believe that unless you clarify the heck out of your position, and backpedal from many of your implications, then your original claim is just plain false.
Here’s a CNN story that supports the theory that Democratic attacks on Newt Gingrich were revenge for his exposure of Democratic corruption. Given CNN’s liberal tilt, their support for the revenge theory carries more weight.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/gen/resources/infocus/gingrich/
I don’t have cites handy, but I can vividly recall the NY Times editorials during these hearings. They had over half a dozen editorials blasting NG. I’ve never seen them repeat an attack, day after day, the way they did then.
There’s strong evidence that the Maryland prosecution of Linda Tripp for taping her own phone was motivated by revenge. According to liberal Salon magazine:
Not surprisingly, the conservative National Review agrees.
See: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment052400c.html
It’s not surprising that Clinton operatives set out to demonize Paula Jones. What is noteworthy is that Newsweek Magazine followed their lead.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1994/mw19940701nbites.html
In summary, I have now supplied direct evidence my thesis: Democrats actively set out to demonize people who helped expose their scandals and some major media contributed to these attacks.
Today’s homework assignment, december: learn the difference between “demonization” and “revenge.” Refer back to the posts in which I twice mention how Gingrich’s tactics toward Wright set off a decade of congressional scandal politics.
Oh, so that was your thesis? That a political party might sometimes attack people who have attacked it? That a political party might sometimes act out of revenge? The shock! The horror!
Oh, no, wait, I thought this was your thesis (cleverly phrased in the form of a question):
You strongly implied, what with your little list of people all of whom had been demonized, that democrats would savagely attack anyone who ever investigated or attacked any democrat. You further strongly implied, what with referring to “Democrats” as opposed to “politicians”, that that was a trait that was unique to (or at least exaggerated in) the Democratic party. To the best of my recollection, you have not provided any evidence for either of those claims.
(If your original post was, in fact, an inncoent question, well, I’m more liberal than I am conservative, so to answer your question, I don’t feel that “investigating while conservative” is a no-no. And my approval, or lack thereof, of someone helping to expose corruption is based not on the political party of the person being investigated, or of the person doing the investigation, but of the level of corruption exposed, the tactics used, the amount of public money spent, the spindoctoring that goes on, etc.)
So here’s the big question: Do you support the people who exposed Gingrich’s ethical violations? (And he WAS punished by the House Ethics Committee, quite strongly, as I remember.)
How on earth does “very rare” demonstrate that Linda Tripp’s Maryland wiretapping prosecution was “motivated by revenge”? Can you identify an instance of wiretapping in Maryland that was anywhere near as high-profile as Ms. Tripp’s, or demonstrate that the likelihood of criminal prosecution is somehow independent of the prominence of the crime?
I think the following actions, which I just mentioned, were attempts at demonization:
[list][li] Democrats filing dozens of spurious ethics claims against Newtie.[/li][li]Maryland Democrats filing criminal charge against Linda Tripp, knowing that conviction was impossible.[/li][li]Newsweek Magazine falsely describing Paula Jones as, “a groupie, who, far from acting like a victim of harassment, hung around Clinton’s office `giggling and carrying on’ after her alleged hotel encounter.”[/li][li]The NY Times running over half a dozen editorials powerfully blasting Newtie.[/li]
I fully accept your description of Gingrich’s tactics. What’s your point? It sounds as if you’re agreeing that the Democrats were demonizing him, but saying it served him right. You may have a point.
However, Linda Tripp and Paula Jones were middle class women who were not involved in the rough and tumble of politics. Their “offense” was telling the truth. Did they also deserve to be demonized?
MaxTheVool, I appreciate that you could approve of someone who helped expose Democratic corruption in principle. I’m curious to know if you do actually approve of any such people, in practice. E.g. Tripp, Jones, Gingrich, Starr, Goldberg. (If you don’t approve of any of them, then I will postulate that the demonization had its intended effect.)
Minty, as I said in an earlier post, I have the utmost respect for the people who exposed Nixon and Agnew, such as Sirica, Skolnik, Woodward, Bernstein, Cox, etc.
Somewhere in another post I explained why I disagreed with Newt’s ethics finding. Investigatons of Newt’s organization by the House and by the IRS found no viloations of the tax law. (Although media coverage gave the opposite impression.) His ethics conviction was for failure to seek legal advice. This sounds pretty minor to me, especially since he had acted legally. His punishment was unjust, in my opinion. (OTOH a lawyer might think that failure to seek legal advice is a capital crime. ;))
Minty, you didn’t name the people who attacked Newt. I couldn’t name them, either. We can’t name them, because they weren’t demonized. I contend that if a group of Republicans filed dozens of spurious charges against a Democrat, they’d be blasted in the media (and they’d deserve it.)
MaxTheVool wrote:
I believe I have now made all these arguments.
Minty, you questioned whether Linda Tripp’s prosecution really was based on a desire for revenge. The revenge motive was blatant:
But just to be precisely clear, you are not claiming that everyone who investigates/attacks democrats are villified? Because if not, well, then I’m not going to say that I agree with you, but your statement really becomes one of opinion that is hard (and meaningless) to argue with. You say that republicans are unfairly demonized? Well, that’s going to be a position that is close to impossible to argue against, both because the word “unfair” is so hard to define, and because it’s almost certainly the case that there have been some examples of quite inappropriate behavior among democrats that you could point to. To put it another way, if one were to discuss the Ratio Of Republicans Who Investigate Democrats And Are Unfairly Demonized (RORWIDAAUD), and you were to claim that it was 0.7 and I were to claim that it was 0.3, well, we could talk at each other until we were blue in the face without accomplishing much… if someone were to claim that it was 1.0 (as you sure seemed to be doing initially, I must say), then it would be worth discussing. As it is, I don’t feel it worth saying much more.
(Drawing comparisons to a similar situation, it is my opinion that there is far more vitriolic hatred directed towards the Clintons than (a) is deserved, (b) is healthy/productive and © has ever been directed at any other similar figure in the past. You might claim otherwise. But measuring something as amorphous as “amount of hatred” is not going to be an easy great debate to undergo… thus, I will not start a thread on that topic… but if you argue that there is no such hatred at all, I will challenge you on that.)
I approve of whoever investigated the travel office scandal. As far as I know. I have no idea who it was who did so, which is strong evidence that they were not particularly well demonized.
It is inarguably true that there is a group of people who have been opponents of Clinton who many liberals passionately hate, and who many other people disdain. All of those that you list are certainly on that list. It is possible that they were all the targets of incredibly effective liberal smear campaigns. It’s also possible that they are all scumbags. Most likely every one of them is somewhere between those two extremes, and we would probably disagree as to where on that scale they fall. If you want to debate each such case one by one, feel free to do so (with someone other than me), but as long as you’re not claiming that the RORWIDAAUD is 1.0, winning any one of those arguments (which I personally doubt you will do) (unless you wuss out and argue for the existence of some trace amount of demonization, as opposed to arguing for total demonization) will prove nothing.
The Washington D. C. branch of the National Organization for Women, said that their own national organization was demonizing this Clinton critic.
Me: Prove Linda Tripp’s prosecution was motivated by revenge.
december: lindatripp.com says so.
Me: :rolleyes:
The cite showed that two groups of Maryland Democrats sent letters to the State’s Attorney pressuring her to prosecute LT. These letters exist, regardless of the source of the information about them. (Otherwise, LT’s lawyer would have committed a serious ethical infraction, and they’d be in big trouble.)
These letters were obviuosly motivated by revenge. What other reason could there be for sending them? Were Maryland Democrats upset about a rampant, out-of-control crime wave consisting of individuals recording some of their own telephone calls?
I don’t think so.