Although it has largely ignored the by Corporate Media, Robert F. Kennedy's Rolling Stone Article, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" has generated a firestorm of debate in the blogosphere, a harsh response from Fahrad Manjoo of Salon, whose many errors in fact and logic have generated hundreds of letters of protest, (as well as responses from Kossack Malcolm, Bob Fitrakis at the Free Press, and Bob Herbert at the NYTimes) prompting a defense by Salon's Editor Joan Walsh.
Now Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again has stepped up to the plate with a letter to Salon which they refused to print claiming "In terms of the Ohio election fraud issue," wrote Jeanne Carstensen, "we don't feel your letter, as passionately argued as it is, adds anything substantially new to the debate, which we've covered the hell out of already", but has instead been printed in the Huffington Post.
First he addresses Salon long history of extreme skeptism on this subject.
And so Salon has, for the last six years, been searching earnestly for "evidence" of fraud, and finding nothing but "unproven charges." If I may say so, this version of your history is not credible. First of all, it begs the question -- for there is vast evidence of fraud, as the letters you've received make wholly clear. Certainly you have the right to keep insisting that there is no evidence, and Manjoo certainly has every right to quibble with whichever single claim he may perceive as bogus or exaggerated. Neither move per se, however, can negate the copious, precise and ever-growing evidence of massive fraud in 2004, any more than the tobacco companies could negate the evidence that cigarettes are lethal, or the US religious right suppress the evidence of natural selection, or of global warming.
First he points out some rather strong reporting previous done by Manjoo -- Before Nov 2, 2004.
Back then he did a fine job covering several sinister developments, including the shenanigans of Nathan Sproul, a theocratic activist whose firm, Sproul & Associates, conducted bogus voter-registration drives in at least six states, covertly registering people as Republicans without their knowledge, and often trashing forms filled out by Democrats. (As I point out in Fooled Again, my book on the 2004 election, SEC records suggest that Sproul may also have abetted the subversion of the recount in Ohio.)
Miller even used much of Sanjoo's work in Fooled Again, but since then things seem to have changed.
ex post facto he seemed far less interested in dealing with the evidence of GOP malfeasance than in jeering every effort to discuss it. Instead of careful scrutiny of that evidence, he resorted mainly to sarcastic hooting and ad hominem assault -- the same tactics that the Bush Republicans themselves have always used to cast all argument about their unexpected win as sheer insanity.
On Manjoo's claim that "Nothing was New" in the Kennedy article and that "if you've read Fool ed Again you're already familiar with everything Kennedy has to say".
Crispin, author of that very book, disagrees.
That claim is quite false. Kennedy and Rolling Stone have given us a shattering new view of the Ohio travesty, based both on prodigious journalistic synthesis and remarkable firsthand research. Its interviews alone -- especially with Lou Harris, the polling eminence, who deems Ohio stolen by Bush/Cheney -- are, or ought to be, big news. While I am proud to say that Kennedy considers Fooled Again a major inspiration, I cannot claim that he derived much information from my book. His focus is entirely on Ohio, whereas Fooled Again devotes only some 15 pages (out of 350) to the crimes and improprieties committed in that state. My book deals with the election fraud committed nationwide in 2004 -- as Manjoo knows. Why, then, would he say that Kennedy had cribbed it all from me? Far from wanting Salon's readers to assess the evidence themselves, he seems to want people not even to know about it -- certainly a strange objective for a writer with "an open mind."
Yes, Strange indeed. I have to admit I haven't yet myself read "Fooled Again", but I have decided that it's now a must. The tactics of Manjoo to make Kennedy into some sort of plagarist while making it appear that all the arguments brought forth by both him and Miller are "old news" - parellels quite closely the tactics used to tamp down the Downing Street Memos, which subsequent evidence has shown were precisely on the mark.
This odd and unexplained switch by Manjoo from intrepid investigative reporter to corporate shill is a very frightening trend. One that betrays a greater split within the Democratic Party itself. While Mark Hertsgaard at Mother Jones was talking to Ohio Dems in order to poo poo any while tin-foilish discussions of Election Fraud - John Conyers, Stephanie Tubbs-Johnson and others were snubbed and ignored. Sometimes even when they happen to be the same person, if they're story doesn't fit the pre-ordained script.
According to the journalistic groupthink, any Democrat who duly exculpated the Republicans was necessarily (a) well informed about what really happened on Election Day, and (b) being completely honest, on the record. In fact, some of those Democrats were clueless, or reluctant to go public with the truth. For instance, Bill Anthony, the Democratic chair of Franklin County's Board of Elections, has quietly contradicted what he said both to Manjoo and Baker, telling Bob Fitrakis, on the record, that he does believe Bush/Cheney stole Ohio, largely by fiddling with the numbers in the rural counties in the state's Southwest (a major vote-theft, as Kennedy explains in Rolling Stone).
He discusses the DNC report, which concludes that fraud didn't occur - but at the same time confirms the massive shortages of voting machines in democratic precints and appears to be more of political statement than a factual analysis of Ohio 2004.
Most of the rest of his article is largely an attack on the theocratic aspirations of the Bush Regime, and how Democrats repeated refuse to stand up to it.
The movement now in power is not conservative but radical, intent on an apocalyptic program that is fundamentally opposed to the ideals of the Enlightenment, on which, lest we forget, this revolutionary secular republic was first founded. The movement frankly disbelieves in reason, and in all the other worldly goods that every rational American still takes for granted: pluralism, checks and balances, "the general welfare," freedom, progress, the pursuit of happiness. For this movement, condom use is worse than death by AIDS, however many millions the disease may kill; the ruination of the planet should be hastened, not prevented, as it means that He will be returning soon; the "war on terror" is a matter not of geopolitics but metaphysics, as our national enemy is "a guy named Satan"; homosexuals should not be citizens, the US having been conceived as a "Christian republic"; and -- most relevant to this debate -- the movement's adversaries, which means all the rest of us, are not human beings with divergent interests but literal "agents of Hell," demonic entities against which any tactic, however criminal or sinful, is permissible, because they are likely to use any tactic, regardless of its sinfulness or criminality, to force their evil program on the Righteous Ones.
This is a bit more religiously focused than what I've observed. I myself believe that Bush's own religiousity is little more than a pose, one designed to place himself as the object of focus of the hard-core religious right - but that his own Personal Jesus is wealth, power and influence - not the Almighty.
I believe the Left Behinders are merely his pawns, the shock-troops in his army of Hatred and Diviness, while his own his aims and goals are more geo-economical than metaphysical. I've likened the New Right to the New Klan, covert and circumspect in their intentions - yet openly using Hate Speach against Liberals in order to indirectly say the things about minorities, women and gays that couldn't be said it polite or any other type of company.
The Original Klan was a religious organization as well, but few would argue that their actions were God-like in their intent or results.
The tragic reality of what has been occuring for the last 6 years in this country, the impact of Bush policies on our children, our elderly, our treasury and our dedicated soldiers will haunt this nation for decades, if not centuries. We are living in a very dark time, but pulling the covers over our heads to keep out the cold sinking feeling as the underpinings of our Democracy our slowly eroded away is the wrong response.
While we're standing around arguing in the courtyard about whether we might have been lied to and robbed yet again - the GOP is headed out the back door with what's left of our Freedoms tucked under their arm.
It's high time we focused on catching and stopping these bastards, on steming the tide of their facism and racism, before it's too late and the damage is nearly irreversable.
It's high time we focused on catching and stopping these bastards, on steming the tide of their facism and racism, before it's too late and the damage is nearly irreversable.
Time's running out.
Update: Mark Crispin Miller himself posted a Diary (just a few minutes before mine) about his letter to Salon and the general silence by the Liberal Media (by which I believe he means Salon and Mother Jones) on this issue. My concern in this diary and others isn't so much the reluctance by some of left to accept the truth of election fraud and to quibble about whether it was "deliberate or merely inadverdant - that issue is IMO largely irrellevant to the question when we will begin to FIX IT which so far we've completley failed to do.
Update II Let me take a moment to distinguish my point of view from Miller's. He seems appalled and surprised to be receiving the level of intense push-back on the issue of Election Fraud that has so far occured. I find this view counter-intuitive. OF COURSE people are reluctant to accept the idea that our entire democracy is founded upon a pile of lies and deception. There is no way for such a pill to go down easily. Yes, people want to cough it back up - even involuantarily. They'll perform all types of self-heimlich manuevers to accomplish this, contorting their positions into a pretzel - and still never quite managing to get the job done.
I'm not surprised by this - I welcome it.
The real challenge for those who beleive strongly in widespread election fraud in 2000 and 2004 is to patiently and methodically unbend the pretzels one twist at a time. Address the issues, leave the personalities out of it. State your evidence, document your sources and methodoligies.
Make your case.
In both his letter to Salon and his post here on Dkos, Miller, unlike Fitrakis and Herbert, has largely failed to do that, and instead has spent most of his article pointing fingers at other liberals. It's true that some of what he's saying is justified, but the claim is more strongly made when one makes a purely factual arguement rather than an emotional one.
We must rise to the challange that stands before us, one which we must meet and defeat. If we can't win this battle amongst ourselves, how do we expect to change the mind of anyone else?
Vyan
No comments:
Post a Comment