Lanny’s Last Gasp for Joe
08 August 2006 8:10 am by Taylor Marsh
Lanny's Last Gasp for Joe
| Ned Lamont and his home team go to vote. |
You'd think after Bill Clinton's presidency was hijacked in the 1990s, Lanny
Davis would have gotten a clue.
If Lanny Davis wanted to really understand how Joe got in trouble he would
have asked the people of Connecticut. I don't know how many other ways to say it, but it's the people of Connecticut who gave Lamont his standing, not the bloggers, unless you're talking about the locals, yet again.
But the oddest thing in this op-ed is Lanny's claim that a friend of his was
afraid for his life, because he was supposedly threatened when he spoke out for
Joe. He cites others who post on the blogs who use hate speech, while labeling
all of us in that group.
Yesterday, CNN did a story on the blogs without bothering to speak to
one person who actually owned a blog. Oh, except they did interview Charles
Johnson of LGF about his fake Reuters picture posts. No liberal bloggers were
featured anywhere, at least that I saw.
I've got a hate mail page filled with just a few of the emails I've received; those
that are fit to actually print. If you recall not long ago, during my digging
around of Duncan Hunter smearing Murtha, Amanda Doss ran and hid behind another
site because she was afraid of hate mail. Raw Story did a piece on it, interviewing
me and citing my hate mail as an example of what a lot of us get.
Today, Lanny's memory seems erased of what happened with the hunting of Bill
Clinton, and instead uses the most hyperbolic description available to label
a very large group with a very ugly brush. It's “McCarthyism”.
My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on
the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning
for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right
wing–in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his
tirades against “communists and their fellow travelers.” The word
“McCarthyism” became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far
right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a “communist” or “socialist”
who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the
poor, and to level the playing field.I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and
hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free
speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us.
And in recent years–with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol
displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage–I
held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful
than the right. …Liberal McCarthyism
Bigotry and hate aren't just for right-wingers anymore.
Oh, but it gets better…
But the issue is not just emotional outbursts by these usually anonymous
bloggers. A friend of mine just returned from Connecticut, where he had spoken
on several occasions on behalf of Joe Lieberman. He happens to be a liberal
antiwar Democrat, just as I am. He is also a lawyer. He told me that within
a day of a Lamont event–where he asked the candidate some critical questions–some
of his clients were blitzed with emails attacking him and threatening boycotts
of their products if they did not drop him as their attorney. He has actually
decided not to return to Connecticut for the primary today; he is fearful
for his physical safety. …
Want to take a guess who that “lawyer” is? It's just a guess, nothing
concrete mind you, but you've likely seen
him before, because he made the local Connecticut papers for harassing Ned Lamont. He's
the guy in the “Lieberman” t-shirt. The guy who was all over the
Lamont events causing trouble. A lobbyist working for Joe. Nothing wrong with
that, but fearing for his life? Nice try, Lanny, but your friend gave as good
as he supposedly got. In fact, Goodstein has a “dirty
tricks” past of his own. I can't imagine the
picture shown here did his business much good either.
The “hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side” is something
that likely exists, but the people Lanny cites are simply commenters, not “bloggers”.
It doesn't seem Lanny knows the difference. That's really part of the problem.
He doesn't understand the medium he attacks. However, no doubt there is hate
and vitriol out here among the left. I've seen and read it, but it pales in
comparison to what's become a multi-million dollar industry of manufactured
hatred that's spun off in sequel after sequel from Ann Coulter to Michael Savage,
but never to forget Rush Limbaugh, who repeated on the air back in the 1990s
that Bill Clinton had actually murdered someone, straight out of Reverend
Falwell's right-wing screed machine.
But if you want a good laugh about Lanny, I received this in an email yesterday.
It's hilarious. It recounts a certain plane ride Lanny had with George, fellow
frat boys returning to the scene of their youthful crimes, so to speak. It explains
so much about Lanny and why he's running to the Wall Street Journal with his
tale of blog commenters and a friend who felt attacked in Connecticut.
Three letters explain how former Clinton attack dog Lanny Davis scored an
Air Force One ride to Washington after President Bush's recent Yale University
commencement speech: DKE (Delta Kappa Epsilon), the fraternity Davis and Bush
joined as Yale undergrads. The duo chatted for a long time on the ride home,
mostly about the old days, like the time Bush hazed DKE recruit Davis. The
lawyer tells us that he faced the normal five-hour hazing, ending with him
standing beside a DKE brand shoved in a vat of hot coals. At this point, Bush
and the others blindfolded Davis and asked him to lift his shirt. He did.
Then Davis felt it: the hot sizzle of skin. But it was only a cigarette. “They
really psyched me out,” he says. – U.S. News Premium Archive
As the person who emailed me the above stated in his email, Davis was actually
“branded by Bush”. Hey, at least he didn't get kissed.
