Something has been gnawing at me since I read Lawrence O’Donnell’s blog entry in the Huffington Post, earlier today.
Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week.
Exactly how many people are we talking about? Just how many inside-the-beltway bum-sniffers have been sitting on the Karl Rove as Plame identity leaker story. Dare I say it? What did the press corps know and when did it know it?
Apparently, I was not the only one who was irked by this. Digby raises the same question on his blog. As per Digby, Wonkette indicated it was Rove last Wednesday.
Facing jail, Matt and Judy might talk, or — worse for He Who Must Not Be Named (Karl Rove) — they’ll go to jail with lips still sealed but outrage on the part of friends and colleagues will shake lose which White House source outed Plame to smear Wilson.
Digby asks:
The question now is how many other people in Washington know who the leaker is? Clearly, Wonkette thinks she does. The panel on Mclaughlin was unruffled at the revelation…. Moreover, is it normal that members of the press know the answer to a major mystery but they withhold it, as a group, from the public? [emphasis added] I thought their job was to reveal the answers to major mysteries. In fact, this seems like the scoop of the decade. Back in the day, reporters were racing to get the news of semen stains and talking points on the air mere seconds before their rivals. Now, they all keep quiet?
Indeed! Whom does the press corps serve — the public or the White House? Have they lost all capacity for presenting information that wasn’t issued in a press release? Lately, I feel like a pauper, pressing my nose against the glass, while the press club sips champagne at government soiree’s, and occasionally lets me sift their garbage for scraps of food they’ve tossed in the bin.
Well, my analysis of the press is that they are self-serving and subservient.
They are subservient to their corporate paymaters, of course, and self-serving to their own interests.
Reporters who actually “report” instead of taking marching orders get pink slipped and find themselves correcting ad copy in the Podunk Weekly Shopper.
The large media conglomerates? Bush has been shoveling bribes in the forms of FCC-approved giveaways of the public airwaves and tax breaks right and left as soon before he unpacked his suitcase in the White House.
The only hope we on the left have is to develop our own “spin generating” machine, something comparable to Fox–and even that may not be enough. But I don’t see anything like that in the works.
I am one who doesn’t think much will come of the “Rove outed Plame” story. Look at what the press did when they were handed the deliciously juicy Jeff Gannon/Guckert scandal–that’s right, they dropped the football and looked at it as if it were a turd.
Look at what happened to Newsweek, Time, Dan Rather, and others who DID attempt to report some of what Bush, Rove, et al are doing–scandalised, disgraced, sacked, some of their reporters jailed.
While Robert Novak, who increasingly resembles the portrait of Dorian Gray in its final days, sits on his carbuncled arse and pontificates–when his bum ought to be warming the bench of a prison cell.
Damn, I need a drink.
Look at what the press did when they were handed the deliciously juicy Jeff Gannon/Guckert scandal–that’s right, they dropped the football and looked at it as if it were a turd.
Speaking of Gannon/Guckert, I have a hunch that his “source” and his sugar-daddy is Rove. And, I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t another open secret inside the beltway. I have no evidence of this, obviously. But, can anyone honestly say that Rove doesn’t send their gaydar to full tilt? Gannon/Guckert was also very much in the loop on Plame. A lot of people have speculated that McClellan is his friend inside the White House, but I don’t think so. I think it’s Rove.
It is Criminal that what are supposed to be the public airwaves, and what was the once upon a time purpose of the press has been totally abandoned to the corporate interests. It will be interesting and no doubt infuriating to watch this unfold. I can hardly imagine anyone taking the high ground on this one. . .I am wondering how much Time Mag. is giving back the whipping they took over the last round with BushCo. The powers behind the scenes will be busy at something, and I can’t really figure out that it will be anything helpful.
It’s one of those things that just makes me grit my teeth and growl.
Linda McQuaig, of the Toronto Star, says the US media has become “Pravda.”
I worked in media, and I developed a very jaded view, but even so, I am astounded at what has occurred. I don’t recognize my country. I don’t recognize the media. I’m not even sure I recognize myself, in the mirror.
Two thoughts:
There is one question, if i could get a chance in asking it, and that is to Novack…..would you do it again? I just wonder if he would…I would think he would…he has done it before the plame case and he is certainly one of the bad pilgrams here. I think he needs at least 3 years to sit in jail and think about his wrong doings through out the years……let him repent like colson did and maybe he can help lead others to Jesus…:o) actually I think life in prison is not too bad for the ugly/hateful old man that he is…and I say it from what he is inside not outside.
Novak seems to be escaping all consequence, even though he’s the one who actually named Plame, in print. It’s baffling. Except that I increasingly get the sense that the publication of her name is the tip of the iceberg. It seems like there is a nasty web of intrigue around this, and that the press are complicit in both the crime, as per SusanHu’s fine front page diary on Miller’s possible role, and the cover-up. It’s damned hard for whistleblowers to gain any traction, if the press is in it up to its elbows.
It’s also possible that Novak’s conviction is so certain right now that they don’t feel a need to go after him. Though a more likely explanation is that he did not actually commit a crime, while his source did. I seem to recall hearing speculation to this effect.
I think Gannon was probably deeply involved as well. Remember that one of the first things that got people interested in him was his role in the Palme Mess. The media’s refusal to touch his story seems to support this, though they could also simply be afraid of offending someone high-up at the White House, or even their own bosses. (I remember someone mentioning on DK that the closeted Republican community was highly-placed and tightly-knit) It’s really a shame that we didn’t investigate his professional “private life” more closely while the media spotlight was on him, but…
(I remember someone mentioning on DK that the closeted Republican community was highly-placed and tightly-knit)
Bingo! See, this has been my vibe, from the beginning with Gannon/Guckert. He’s deeply enmeshed with people high up in the administration, many of whom are married, and who are on the “down low.” If Rove isn’t a closet-case, leading a rather twisted double-life, I’ll eat my hat. This whole thing reeks.