By now you might have heard the vicious attack Bill Moyers of PBS launched against Karl Rove. This report comes from the Public Broadcast System Ombudsman, Michael Getler:
One long angry and vicious attack directed at Karl Rove, President Bush, conservatives and Christians. And all being produced with taxpayer money!The Ombudsman Column
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
By Michael Getler
August 24, 2007...Moyers, of course, produces informative and often powerful public affairs programs and has a large and loyal following. But he also draws fire from others for his approach to some issues and that, for the most part, is what keeps an ombudsman busy.
So, here we go again. Last Friday, Aug. 17, Moyers ended his program with what can only be described (by me) as an editorial. Here's the transcript of how Moyers bid farewell to White House political strategist Karl Rove:
...
BILL MOYERS: There is, of course, more to be said. What struck me about my fellow Texan, Karl Rove, is that he knew how to win elections as if they were divine interventions. You may think God summoned Billy Graham to Florida on the eve of the 2000 election to endorse George W. Bush just in the nick of time, but if it did happen that way, the good lord was speaking in a Texas accent.
Karl Rove figured out a long time ago that the way to take an intellectually incurious draft-averse naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket and make him governor of Texas, was to sell him as God's anointed in a state where preachers and televangelists outnumber even oil derricks and jack rabbits. Using church pews as precincts Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat — a battering-ram, aimed at the devil's minions, especially at gay people.It's so easy, as Karl knew, to scapegoat people you outnumber, and if God is love, as rumor has it, Rove knew that, in politics, you better bet on fear and loathing. Never mind that in stroking the basest bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion.
At the same time he was recruiting an army of the lord for the born-again Bush, Rove was also shaking down corporations for campaign cash. Crony capitalism became a biblical injunction. Greed and God won four elections in a row — twice in the lone star state and twice again in the nation at large. But the result has been to leave Texas under the thumb of big money with huge holes ripped in its social contract, and the U.S. government in shambles — paralyzed, polarized, and mired in war, debt and corruption.
Rove himself is deeply enmeshed in some of the scandals being investigated as we speak, including those missing emails that could tell us who turned the attorney general of the United States into a partisan sock-puppet. Rove is riding out of Dodge City as the posse rides in. At his press conference this week he asked God to bless the president and the country, even as reports were circulating that he himself had confessed to friends his own agnosticism; he wished he could believe, but he cannot. That kind of intellectual honesty is to be admired, but you have to wonder how all those folks on the Christian right must feel discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a skeptic, a secular manipulator. On his last play of the game all Karl Rove had to offer them was a Hail-Mary pass, while telling himself there's no one there to catch it.
And of course the same liberals who say "how dare you question my patriotism" even though no one has, seem perfectly willing to attack someone for their personal religious beliefs.
Ombudsman Getler goes on to describe the simple process by which he debunked Moyer's phony, personal attack against Rove's religious beliefs. Any person desiring to maintain their intellectual integrity would have had just as easy a time discovering the truth, or avoiding making a statement without any evidence to support it. But as we've learned from liberal commenters here at Mike's America, intellectual integrity never gets in their way if they can help it.
Fox News Asks Rove to Respond. Moyers Attacks Again!
On Sunday, August 19, Karl Rove appeared as Chris Wallace's guest on Fox News Sunday (transcript). When asked about Moyer's description of his faith, Rove told Wallace: "
Fox News SundayWhen faced with a more complete set of facts, a wiser person might remain silent. Someone with integrity might apologize for the error. But Moyers, Like most liberals, when caught making an error laden smear against a conservative, his impulse is to attack again.
August 19, 2007
ROVE: I'm a Christian. I go to church. I'm an Episcopalian. I think he may have taken a comment that I made where I was talking about how — I have had colleagues at the White House — Mike Gerson, Pete Wayner (ph), Leslie Drune (ph), Josh Bolten and others — who I'm really impressed about how their faith has informed their lives and made them really better people.And it took a comment where I acknowledged my shortcomings in living up to the beliefs of my faith and contrasted it with how these extraordinary people have made their faith a part of their fiber.And somehow or another he goes from taking it from me being an Episcopalian wishing I was a better Christian to somehow making me into a agnostic. You know, Mr. Moyers ought to do a little bit better research before he does another drive-by slander.
Moyers did just that. The following video is from Fox News Sunday, August 26 with Chris Wallace reading a letter Moyer's sent in response to Rove's interview the previous week:
Wallace responds that Moyers failed to follow basic journalism "101" methods which would have saved Moyers the personal embarrassment he seems so intent on calling attention to.
And of course in leftie land, any response to a Democrat smear attack is denounced as an attack. And the Wallace response is no exception.
How corrupting it is to be able to say or do anything, then when anyone dares criticize you, you simply insist that the person responding to your attack is the one attacking.
Further proof, not that any was needed, of how deranged these lefties have become!
No comments:
Post a Comment