Monday, October 10, 2005

Serious As A Federal Indictment

Atrios wrote:
A few people wrote in to say that a little while ago on Hardball, Tweety and the gang were suddenly taking the whole Fitzgerald investigation very seriously. Anyone see it?
I think this segment of Hardball is repeated at 7 PM eastern. Guests in the opening segment about the Plame crimes were Howard Fineman of Newsweek, Michael wolff of Vanity Fair, and one of the authors of Bush's Brain (I believe).

They were certainly taking it seriously. Matthews, even. (Tweety had his usual adoration of the republicans by going out of his way to indicate that probably no crime had been committed (huh?). Recently he asked a guest if Fitzgerald understood how hardball politics is played, indicating that any crime involving national security is ok by Matthews so long as a republican is doing it. Matthews really is a horrible creature, and none to bright or detail-oriented.)

My favorite aspect of the show were several archival footage montages of Rove in different settings (walking with Bush, talking to the camera, in an office, etc.).

These are precisely the type of montages used on live news coverage when a public figure dies. This time, let's hope, it's a political death. Of course, Republicans resuscitate criminals to be either pundits (Oliver North, Gordon Liddy, Lawrence Kudlow, et al.) or within the administration (Eliot Abrams, anyone?).

I was pleased to see Rove in these "bye-bye" montages. Let's hope he is indicted.

Update: I thought of another aspect of Hardball that made it far better than the usual Tweety-fest. Matthews and David Shuster both pointed out how the White House slapback against Wilson (which dragged in Plame) was over the lies about Iraq's nukes. Matthews essentially held that the fear-mongering about Iraq's nonexistent nuclear capability was what pushed American public opinion over to support the invasion of Iraq.

If there were no fake story about Hussein with nukes, there would have been no Iraq war. That's why they started sliming Wilson-- to ensure their war. And that's a very strong case that the war was waged on knowingly false pretenses, not just "mistaken intel."

That point should be rammed home over and over. It is the moral abcess at the center of the Bush administration. And Americans have died due to this lie.

Matthews colored in a bit of that story in his Hardball show on Monday.

Firedoglake is a great stop for Plame-crime-related writing. They pointed out to me that Crooks and Liars has some of Monday's Hardball up for viewing online.

Well worth watching.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Matthews et al are so obsessed with bringing down Rove that they fail to understand one thing; the reason hardball is the worst rated political talk fest on network or cable today is because he and his hand picked hens just don't get the fact that their agenda does not resonate with us "red necks".

Web Analytics