I have relegated Scott McLellan to the weekend because that is when most soft news stories take place. If I was not so busy at a serious policy conference discussing Islamofacism and other issues that actually matter, I would not have banged out such a quick column on pure fluff.
Scott McLellan may or may not be more relevant than Paris Hilton, who I mention solely to generate more hits for my blog. Also, some bimbo readers might accidentally stumble upon this column and learn something with substance. For that reason, Scott McLellan matters as much as Anna Nicole Smith.
I have not read his book. I will not read his book. There is no reason to do this. People who claim I am closeminded are the same people who suggest I look at books denying the Holocaust to hear other points of view. I do not need to read idiocy to know about it.
So why would Scott McLellan write a book lambasting President Bush?
He did this because he is an insignificant man desperate for some recognition. He is a failed bureaucrat looking to be liked. He suffers from Arianna Huffington Syndrome.
Huffington Syndrome is when one matters to nobody, and desperately wants to be liked. In high society, this means becoming a liberal.
Arianna Huffington was known in the 1990s as a right wing person who people knew because she was married to somebody who mattered, at least somewhat. Other than that, people knew her as somebody whose husband left her, announced he was gay, and left her to speak about elitist theories in a funny accent. This is not a criticism, just a recitation.
Some will say that McLellan is merely being “principled.”
In elite circles, being principled is code for being liberal. Another euphemism is to say that a President has “grown” in the job. Liberals praise former President Bush, forgetting how they used to excoriate him. He is simply seen as liberal compared to his son. If the current President Bush wants to be remembered fondly, he should be succeeded by somebody even more conservative than he is, so he can look good by comparison.
When Chuck Hagel, a republican, crosses party lines to condemn a war, he is seen as principled, courageous, and heroic. When Joseph Lieberman, a democrat, crosses party lines to support a war, he is lacerated.
Try finding an article in the Jayson Blair Times praising Lieberman for his war stance.
Principled people do not sit by and put their own self interest above doing what is right. If your boss asks you to do something illegal, you resign. That is called honor. Even the military, where the chain of command is sacred, values integrity more. Officers have the obligation to disobey illegal orders from their superiors.
Scott McLellan enjoyed the proximity to power, as many people do. He was somebody, almost. He was always seen as a fairly incompetent press secretary, sandwiched by far superior talent before and after him in the forms of Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino. I have met and spoken with both of them. They are competent and capable. McLellan was neither. Those who ask how I can come to that conclusion without meeting him are the same people that criticize President Bush because he fractures his syntax.
McLellan’s assertions are simply what the left wants to hear.
The left does not care about evidence. They never have. President Bush is evil, therefore any story about him that casts him in a negative light has to be true because it fits that world view.
What the left fails to grasp is that it is theoretically possible that President Bush could have done things badly in their eyes, yet not be responsible for everything from robbing Idlewild Airport to shooting the Easter Bunny.
There are two premises that liberals reject.
The first premise, is that somewhere in this world, an atrocity or evil deed is occurring that President Bush did not support, cause, or have anything to do with.
The second premise is that somewhere in this world, something overwhelmingly positive is occurring, and President Bush is responsible for it.
Both of these premises are reasonable. They offer a possibility of something less than a black and white, all or nothing world.
Liberals who wish to flip these around on me would be disappointed. I disagreed with President Bush on steel tariffs. I simply like him on more issues than I dislike him on, by a wide margin.
I am a thinking conservative, while many liberals are “reflexive” liberals.
It is reflexive to think that Libby, Rove, Cheney and Bush outed Valerie Plame when Richard Armitage said that he did it. It is reflexive to rage about a covert agent that is not covert. She was posing in Vanity Fair (while this happened after she was outed, her pattern of behavior was always public). Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were caught lying. This is factual. Yet facts do not matter to those who are reflexive.
Those who rush to now praise McLellan with the love usually reserved for a Huffington are not even contemplating that the book could be bogus. It is anti-Bush, so it must be true.
The fact that Scott McLellan put out a tell all book trashing a republican in a society where the media throws ticker tape parades for those who do so is not even concern for pause among the reflective left.
This book was written for money and fame. It was not written out of principle. It was done for pure capitalism. I am not criticizing capitalism. I am just debunking the notion that this book is altruism.
Those that will now worship McLellan are the same people that rave about Enron even though they do not know what it is. They will scream about Halliburton even though they do not know what Halliburton actually does (those who are going to the internet to learn right now are cheating).
Scott McLellan will get his brief fame in the great tradition of Andy Warhol. His fame will disappear as soon as somebody else criticizes the President more loudly.
I could write a column tomorrow blaming President Bush for the death of my pet Iguana back in the 1980s. The Daily Kos would then sing my praises and let the world know that President Bush murder innocent animals, but only after torturing them first.
This is not about McLellan. It is about a culture of stupidity that blindly follows a line of thinking without questioning it. The left will argue that this is why we went to war. No. It is the current left that cannot possible come up with a single solitary ability to analyze my the war might possibly have just been the right thing to do.
Once a liberal rejects that assertion, and declares the war illegal and immoral they can then apply those labels to President Bush.
Once a human being has been dehumanized, every shred of that person is fair game. It is acceptable to slander his wife, rip into his daughter at her wedding, and kick his dog. All is fair in war. Conservatives are waging war against terrorists. Liberals, who hate war, are waging war against President Bush.
President Bush has been dehumanized by the left. They admit this, and say it is justified.
It is that line of thinking that led to my family members being slaughtered by the Nazis.
Yes, it absolutely does apply.
Feeding frenzies draw blood, leaving innocent victims dead.
eric
“Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were caught lying. This is factual.”
Where’d you get that “fact” from? The NRO?
LOL!
I was wondering when you were going to get around to this. The book, from what I understand, doesn’t really personally bash Bush so much as his “administration,” and as all “thinking” people should know, there’s a huge difference there. I think Scott was angry, yes, specifically over being dragged into the Plame affair. But I also think that in general, he does not want to be remembered as yet another sleazy administration yes-man lackey who helped push the cart over the cliff, though really, that’s exactly what he was. I think he was also probably surprised and dismayed that the rather moderate governor Bush became the rather zealously reactionary rightwing president Bush. I haven’t decided whether to read the book or not yet, though I heard it was unusually well-written for a pol. I do find it odd that people have such vehement opinions about a book they’ve never read (and refuse to read!). I guess you conservatives are just too “reflexsive.” LOL! ;)
JMJ
Blacktygrrr;
“This book was written for money and fame. It was not written out of principle. It was done for pure capitalism. I am not criticizing capitalism. I am just debunking the notion that this book is altruism.”
Well, it certainly stands to of been written out of some form of stupidity, cuz so far he’s gotten the fame , but only 75,000.00.
He’s also on record in the last couple of days saying he supports Obamas message of change and will not say if hes a republican anymore.
This is the equivalent of flashing the papparazzi while not wearing underwear.
JMJ:
“I was wondering when you were going to get around to this. The book, from what I understand, doesn’t really personally bash Bush so much as his “administration,”
You dont understand much obviously.
You yourself have said that everything stems from Bush due to the fact that it was him who selects the cabinet. But now you make some exception for Scott.
When actually he has said publicly in the last couple days that Bush oversold the war.
Yea , as far as reflexive goes.
I know how to make sh** on a shingle without having to buy another cook book.
Now, if someone in the Bush administration who actually makes important decisions writes a book I might read it.
Besides that, I think Scott knew his political career was over when Tony Snow came around along with the reality that he would never amount to anything more than a crappy press secretary. The book he figured would probably propel out of the hole hes been in lately,listening to him was like watching paint dry.
And yea Jersey, who cares how well it was written ?
You can dress up a turd all ya want, its still a turd.
There have been and will be many books written concerning the Bush Administration, the Iraq War etc…McLellan’s will most likely not be one of those best referred to…His performance as Press Secretary was of no benefit to the White House, diplomatically speaking…Eric hit the nail right on the head when he noted McLellan in respect to Fleisher and Snow…McLellan seems to me like one of Bush’s Austin cronies who was presented with a position too large for his talents.
How many folks today remember David Stockman? How will McLellan’s name be any more prominent in 20 years than Stockman’s?
This is no Smoking Gun…and McLellan and his book will probably blow away with the wind in a short time…
“This is no Smoking Gun”
No, there’s been plenty of those.
JMJ
Yea Jersey ?
Where?
When ?
If I remeber correctly Bills gun got smoked pretty well.
And if so, there certainly is no smoking gun in Scotts book, its all subjective opnion.
Its just one mans account.
Personally, I think way too much has been made of this book. Republicans are too up in arms and democrats too effusive in their praise. It is one man’s impressions. I am sure there are many perspectives on the events of this administration, some will be published and most won’t be. I probably won’t read the book, because there are many more books I would find more interesting (mostly fiction to be honest). I suspect it is how he truly feels, but so what. I’d have said the same thing if his book had said the exact opposite. These administration “tell all” books are usually self serving and not very interesting.
It’s odd. I was riding home with my friend last night (after a day of supporting big business in the suburbs, thank you very much) and I swear I had almost this same criticisms of this waste of trees and glue. We’ve been dating just shy of 3 months (you’ll remind me of that mark, right?), is it normal that we should be thinking alike already?
Not that this instance is a leap of logic.
For the purposes of this website, I’m a liberal. In real life, I’d prefer not to be part of the continuum, but apparently being devoid of substantial political opinions is not an option when your boyfriend is a right wing, Jewish, political rising muckety muck. I’m a researcher, I like to understand the data collection behind the numbers I ingest to from opinions, so sue me. Desipte my reputation on this blog, I’m not a good representative of the knee-jerk left.
But since I’m a sucker for numbers and their meaning, I’d like to address this $75K that keeps cropping up. To my mind, a publisher selects the amount of money for an advance by considering a) how much money they think they’ll make on the book and b) how much money they think it’ll take to keep an author’s attention and squeeze a book out of him/her. That Karl Rove got a seven figure advance on a book is probably more indicative of the fact that he has better things to do with his time and has had a long enough political career that what he has to say will be generally interesting to large audiences than his being unreliable. He probably also has decent taste in ghost writers.
That being said, I have not seen any published discussion of McClellan’s future royalty earnings. It may well be that he’s picking up his gold (or pieces of silver, as the Bush administration has so biblically put it) on the back end of the deal, since in this case a big advance would hurt his credibility.
I won’t read this book. But I also won’t read any political books in the near future, because I never do and frankly by the end of the summer semester in July, I really hope to have the mental capacity to read Elle and the names on bottles of nail polish (I favor OPI, and some of those color names are *long*).
Another fabulous, right to the point blog Eric. Keep up the great writing !!
I cant wait til Cannonball and Tygrrr have kids.
Hey Micky,
Watch that kids stuff, you’ll get a girl to hyperventilate :) I think I need a paper bag…
LOL.
M.
Sorry Cannon.
Sometimes I have a bad habit of speaking my thoughts.
But I’m sure if it ever did happen…
I would feel like some kinda proud uncle, of sorts.
I like the WISDOM OF JOHN McCain!!!
I hope that Obama is up to the challenge!
I HOPE that “BILLORY” let’s go…the rest of the world have seen enough of “CLINTONS “penis!!!”
Cosmo Kramer, please.
If, as we now know, that Judas was an obedient servant of God’s Will, then how does that make him a bad person?
As far as the charge goes that McClellan wrote this book was simply to ‘make money,’ well I thought that ‘making money’ was the #1 Republican Cardinal Virtue that one could have and aspire to, or am I missing something here?
And what’s this nonsense about him being incompetent?
You’re kidding, right?
Love him, or hate him there is one fact about little Scotty McClellan that you can’t take away from him, that is while he didn’t look great up there at the podium, no matter how hard he got hammered on any given day, *he never gave anything up.*
Ever.
Not once.
And he did it for a solid 2 and a half years in very high pressure circumstances, only to be mocked, humiliated and otherwise laughed at.
2.5 years of doing that job, at the level he did it at, is a pretty damn good track record by any measure, I’d like to see anyone on here even begin to match what he did.
So that slam about him not doing his job carries no weight either.
Maybe if he had gotten treated with a little more respect by those that he served that sent him up there to do their bidding, including passing along lies, then he might not have felt compelled to do what he did.
This is their mess, they, not Scott McClellan, created it and there is nothing “puzzling” about it.
One thing I’d be worried about is that since he’s been so misunderestimated, now that the pressure is off he might turn his skillset on to other causes in a more relaxed way and that could turn out to be real nightmare for those who get on the wrong side of him.
That is, unless, (not that the Busch’s are vindictive in any way), of course, they get to his wife, kids, grandkids, parents, cousins, nieces, nephews, in-laws, and anybody he’s ever met or said hello to on the street, first.
For the crime of speaking up when he saw some wrong-doing perpetrated by those who betrayed McClellan’s trust in them being Good Republicans.
Whatever.
The line about Officers having to resign if they are given an illegal order sounds great on paper, but I can tell you from my 4 year military service in the US Marines, it’s a bit more challenging to do that in the real world, I’m just glad I was never put in that spot when I was in.
Elvis Presley once said that it’s hard to judge another man until until you’ve walked in his shoes, so maybe McClellan had pressing concerns, like, y’know, eating that kept him in place. Certainly wouldn’t be the first, or last, person that swallowed ginormous shit sandwiches at work and compromised their own personal value system because they wanted to keep their job, in fact I bet that’s a pretty universal experience for anybody that doesn’t have a stack of ‘fuck you’ money stashed in the bank.
It’s not all that “puzzling.”
Back in 1956 when Khrushchev gave a 4 hour speech condemning Stalin for the crap he pulled, a speech so dramatic that a few people in the hall had heart-attacks and a couple more committed suicide within a few weeks after it, at about 3 hours into it somebody in the room yelled out:
“Why didn’t you say anything then when all this was going on and it would have made a difference?”
Khrushchev stopped his speech and bellowed as only he could
“Who asked that question?!?”
Silence.
Crickets.
So Khrushchev repeated his question again and again there was no response.
To which Khrushchev said ‘The answer to your question is that the reason I didn’t say anything then is for the very same reason you’re keeping quiet now.’
Lastly, as you well know, it’s George Busch and his team that gave America $4+ bucks a gallon gas, and rising by the minute, and since it’s a free country, feel free to defend him and them all the way to the poor-house.
1 out of every 3 people in America will gladly go on that ride with you, may you all enjoy each other’s company and get everything you want out of life.
~Nyc
Just a couple of minor items I missed above. Speaking as the first generation American son of an East German refugee, (who lost 200 members of her family in one night when she was 4 years old, in the Dresden firebombing of WWII), who came to New York City to work as a restitution claims counselor for survivors of the nazi Holocaust, who, over the course of 15 years working 5,000+ cases that brought in millions for their families, one thing I learned from her many clients that visited our home over those years is that being Jewish, and even being persecuted for it for 5,000+ years, does not necessarily bestow sainthood on a person.
God didn’t lay down the 10 Commandments on Moses and the Israelites because they were the best behaved people on the planet, but because they were party monsters that had a really bad habit of taking things too far in pursuit of a good time. At least in the Biblical times as depicted in the Bible. Certainly things have changed since then. Or not. Sadly, as you know, the word ‘kapo’ did enter our common lingua franca out of those deathly camps.
Which brings us to Ari Fleischer.
From what I see on this site you may be inclined to give him a pass because he seems to be to you a nice Jewish boy from a good family, and that’s alright, I’d prolly do the same thing if I were you, but even with that gimme, there’s not a lot of there there to work with, is there?
Remember, not even with the benefit of all the genuine 9/!! 9/!! 9/!! goodwill Ari got from the press during his relatively brief tenure, (that was barely enough to justify writing a hardly bestselling book about it), was enough to elide over the fact that he’s just not a nice person and really just a flat-out unlikeable and contemptible human being, which is why he was hated on so much and therefore didn’t last as Press Secretary.
Tony Snow?
Sure, he’s collegiately genially friendly, amiable in fact, and quick on his feet and all, and, unlike Dana Perino, Tony would never be caught flat-footed on something as elementary as knowing, or not knowing anything, about the the Cuban Missile crisis, but, not to get back to the whole ‘making money’ thing, didn’t Snow resign one of the coolest jobs on earth because he wasn’t ‘making enough money’ at it and needed to go off and do something else that would pay a whole hell of a lot better, (even with the stellar government health benefits he got, that, thank God, successfully drove his dreadful cancer back), then his coveted WH Press Secretary’s job?
I mean, like, huh, Dude, what?
Snow goes on to be a lucrative career as a highly compensated media shill whose got a strong right partisan bent, while McClellan rolls the dice on one book, that may or may not be able to financially carry him for the rest of his life, where he’s not regurgitating and parroting, but trying to relay things truthfully as he saw them at the time, someone else’s lines for a very large, and very quick buck, like Snow is now doing, (check out the rate he’s getting per speech, it’s pretty hefty), and Scotty’s the bad guy?
By what standard?
I guess it depends on what you value more, making money or telling the truth.
BTW, It’s not snitching if you’re on crew on the bridge and the Captain willfully and gleefully smacks the ship into an iceberg just to see what will happen and then refuses to do anything about it.
At that point it becomes your duty to sound the alarm and alert as many people as you can that’s there’s a life or death problem that needs to be addressed pronto.
OK, here’s a deal to consider fo’ ya, Comrade…
How about if there’s an Honest-To-Betty-Lou-Truce declared and Liberal Loony Left out there in Kossackville allows that you guys were, like, y’know, totally right, like, all along, and they should have listened to you Righteous Religious Republican Gals and Guys a whole lot more carefully when it came to those out and out sociopaths, The Clintons, (loved your recent slam-piece on Hillary, instant classic, everybody I know has gotten a copy in their inbox), if you’ll simply agree to give the Busch Family Dynasty, and all they’ve accomplished, another considered look, through the prism of time and more information?
Sound fair?
Take your time and mull it over, I’m sure they’ll be be waiting for your response, even if you dismiss this incredibly generous offer out of hand as sheer nonsense.
Or you can choose to go on like this for as long as you like:
“A rabbi is walking along a high ledge next to a lake where alligators dwell. Suddenly, he loses his footing and falls, hanging precariously onto the ledge.
The alligators are just waiting for him to fall in, so he begins to pray, “Lord, please send me some help! Amen!”
Just then a man drives up in a truck and asks him if he needs any help. He replies “No, thank you, sir, I prayed to the Lord, and he will help me!” The truck driver shrugs and leaves.
Next, a ship shows up below him and calls to him. asking him if he needs help. He repeats his previous answer, and off they go.
Finally, a helicopter comes up whose pilot asks him if he needs help, and once again, his answer is the same.
Shortly afterwards, he loses his grip, falls into the water, and gets devoured by the alligators.
When he meets up with God in Heaven, he asks Him, “Lord, why didn’t you help me?”
“I sent a truck, a ship and a helicopter. Not my fault you didn’t accept it, you Schmuck.”
You can pick up this olive branch and do anything you like with it.
Feel free to.
Or not.
Scott McClellan’s ball’s are in your court.
Have fun.
:-P
~Nyc
Step one: go back and edit this blog post. I counted an obscene number of typos.
Step two: While you’re editing, take out all the ridiculous WWII comparisons. 1) Mclellan’s book is not analogous to a book by some fanatical holocaust denyer. Mclellan was a friend of GWB and worked for his administration. Therefore, his testimony regarding the administration has far more value than that of most critics. He’s what you might call an “insider,” whereas most people who deny the holocaust are nut-jobs with too much time on their hands. 2) The left’s criticisms are of GWB are nothing at all like the Nazi dehuminization of the Jews. To suggest so is twisted and offensive. First of all, there is nothing racial in the left’s criticisms of GWB; the Jews on the other hand were equated with vermin and parasites and considered inferior based on false genetic “science.” Second, while it is impossible to commit genocide against an individual, I know of no one who advocates the state sanctioned killing of GWB; the Jews, on the other hand, were systematically killed by the government in Nazi Germany.
Step three: Reconsider your point that GWB has been dehumanized by the left. George W. Bush has not been dehuminized by his critics on the left. Those who criticize him still see him as the subject of a life, as someone who has had a great number of experiences that color who he is as a Human Person. Mclelan’s portrayal is case in point (granted Mclelan is not on the left, but many on the left share this narrative). Mclelan sees Bush as someon who started out with good intentions — ie. to fix washington’s culture of corruption — but ended up getting wrapped up in the culture of partisan politics and corruption. Others see Bush as unable, or unwilling, to grasp the complexities of human beings and reduces to them to overly simplistic categories (good/evil etc). Note that this is exactly what you say his critics on the left do to him. On the whole the left has been kinder to Bush and has treated him with more humanity, than Bush has, in his rhetoric, towards those he considers “evil.” When the left condems Bush it is usually alongside some, usually sympathetic, narrative by which he is understood to be a complete person who has made bad decisions for the country.
Put simply:
To dehumanize is to think of someone as less than human. The left sees Bush as a human being who has done one wrong thing after another and should be judged accordingly.
Bob Dole really said it best.