Radio Rant of the Day: Rush on the Wilson/Plame Flameout

You have until about 6 PM to get this one for the hard drive before it goes behind his subscription wall, or you’ll have to settle for the excerpt below the fold.

You’ll notice that I’ve checked off the “Business Moves” category in this post, with good reason.

• The WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as the formerly Mainstream Media) had to know, after a pretty short time, that this story represented the height of boredom for the rest of the nation.
• It is becoming increasingly clear that they had to know at some point there was no real story here (except the fraud of Wilson and Plame). But they pressed on, in an attempt to flood the zone and dupe dazed readers and viewers into thinking that there was a real scandal here.
• Even though it became increasingly clear, despite Scooter Libby’s bogus indictment, that there was no scandal, driving down the Administration’s poll numbers, credibility, and the perhaps even the nation’s support for the War On Terror became more important than retaining reader and viewer interest.

The coverage accorded the Wilson/Plame Flameout Fraud has, in my opinion, served to accelerate the downward business spiral the Big Media companies find themselves in. It was truly a bad business move.

Who did the JonBenet fraud damage? Okay, we’ve had a fraud here with this John Mark Karr, but who did it damage? You can’t say it damaged the media because the Drive-By Media has been damaging itself for years. Who did it damage? Who did it really damage? The JonBenet fraud is just boob bait to catch an audience. All it was was headlines for circulation and ratings, filler for 24-hour cable TV. It’s exactly what it was intended to be. It served its purpose. These people are all upset in the media about a media frenzy having been created by the DA and by this pervert. The fact of the matter is this is exactly what the Drive-By Media has become. They ought to be celebrating today. They did it precisely because they got their ratings up. It’s what they do. It’s what they always do. No harm, no foul, chump change. This is just like Hurricane Katrina.

How about the media frenzy over Hurricane Katrina and all the people that lied about the aftermath there? The real media embarrassment — what did Howard Kurtz say? Oh, yeah, one of the “greatest media embarrassments in modern history.” The Plame game, the CIA leak story, the White House vendetta story, that story did real damage. That story did real damage to real people during a real war to a real country, the entire fiasco that has been the Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson story. Wilson is an incorrigible liar, he is an egomaniac. His wife was not damaged in this but a whole lot of people were; real damage, real people, during a real war, to a real country, ours. Even worse, this fraud was not perpetrated by the so-called gossip media, perpetrated by the highly esteemed opinion-molding media.

….. The Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame fraud was not a fraud for ratings and circulation. It was a fraud to manipulate you. It was a fraud to manipulate the nation, to undermine our war effort, to possibly bring down a president. The media is all in a tizzy over what happened here regarding this John Mark Karr fraud. The big fraud is the Valerie Plame leak scandal case. I want to ask, will the exposing of the Plame game fraud get a gazillionth of the exposure that the John Mark Karr fraud got? Maybe even more important, will it get a gazillionth of the outrage from Howard Kurtz or anybody else, Allison Stewart, anybody, Chris Matthews, who lived on this story for two years? Will they feel as though they have had a fraud perpetrated on them? No way, ladies and gentlemen.

That story accomplished everything it was intended to. It drove down the president’s approval numbers. It got one of the president’s men indicted. It portrayed Joe Wilson and Valerie Wilson as innocent pawns of a malicious, vicious administration trying to destroy two wonderful public servants, the first time in my life I can remember anybody in the Drive-By Media or the American left caring a whit about a CIA agent or the CIA. Everything was 180 degrees out of phase on this story. Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Wolf Blitzer, Brian, any of these people going to feel like they were misled, they going to wonder, what about this media frenzy? I doubt it. I’m not going to hold my breath; after all, it’s an election year.

Now, there’s a blogger out there by the name of Ray Robison. ….. What he did, he went and looked at the polling data during this whole episode of Plamegate, and he points out the degree to which the Drive-By Media sold you, the public, on the false notion that the Bush administration behaved unethically.

Now, most tellingly he contrasts the polling data with polls surrounding the Lewinsky affair when the press was covering up and pushing a pro-White House line in a scandal which involved genuine scandal. Now, you can say that if the media has any honor, and there’s no expectation of that here, they would as prominently highlight the collapse of this whole Plamegate enterprise with the same vigor they pushed visions of Fitzmas, frog marches, and other assorted details. But as I say, don’t hold your breath.