Monday, June 03, 2013

Man Quits Job. Gets Another Job.


 ...A couple of months ago, a friend who works in DC sent me the below [above] video, which he entitled "the care and feeding of a young imperial bureaucrat", on how Tommy Vietor, Obama's former National Security Council spokesman, is now monetizing his access and influence. There's something unique about how this video viscerally (albeit unwittingly) conveys the sleaze driving this whole process (note, too, the numerous Obama posters Vietor has adoringly hung on his walls the way pre-adolescents venerate teen idols and boy bands: understandable in Vietor's case, even if somewhat creepy, given that it is his connection to the president that will now generate great personal wealth).
OK, two things.

First, according to Mr. Greenwald, admiring the President for whom you worked is "creepy".

Really, Glenn?  You're really that bitchy? 

How about you take a tour of any C-list actors' home -- or craft service worker's shack -- and count the number of pictures they have of Paul Newman or Christian Bale or Ron Howard from the time they worked on that thing "together". Or visit any county water district assistant commissioner's office and take a close look at the half dozen autographed photos of every minor potentate who ever stopped in to used the head. Or drop by Manny's on South Jefferson or Miller's Pub or Army and Lou's (back in the day) to learn what the word "festooned" means, as in "Man, the walls here sure are fucking festooned with snapshots of the owner and every celebrity or pol or bishop or visiting author since Valentino." Hell, take a tour of my late ex-grandmother-in-law's house back when she was still with us and note the number of pictures of Harold Washington and Dr. King proudly on display. (Also, with the exception of my ex-grandmother-in-law, whatever sentimental value they may have, those pics were/are all also definitely resume-builders; all designed to generate some modicum of "personal wealth".)

Let me clue you in to a deep and terrible secret of life in America, Glenn.  People other than "pre-adolescents" have hung pictures of Presidents they admire!  They have, in fact, built museums and monuments to Presidents they admire.  Generations have named towns and cities and colleges and states and cars and children after them.  People have put their pictures on the fucking money, Glenn.  They have blown mountains apart to make their faces immortal. Does this really come as shocking news to you?

Second, Mr. Greenwald also avers that the awfulness of what this video reveals about Mr. Vietor getting a job based on what he did in his previous job is somehow "unique" in the visceralness of its sleaze.

Others of us in the real world call this phenomenon "having a resume".

Seriously, Glenn, for all the good work you have done, the roar of your need to vent your "Worse than Bush! Worse than Nixon!" spleen over every infraction and keep your myrmidons constantly fed so you won't lose them to Instapundit or the Democratic People's Republic of Breitbart or some other 24/7 Obama-bashing outfit drowns out the rest of what you have to say.

Want to see actual, big boy sleaze enough to really churn the viscera? Read any article about Hizzoner Richie Daley's sell-off of Chicago's parking meters at fire sale prices and note how Da Mare and his friends rigged up sweet post-City gigs for himself and his friends as a part of what was objectively, a grotesquely bad deal -- one that screwed the taxpayers who footed the bill for the damn meters in the first place.  Look up "Whispering Vic" Reyes. Check out Robert Sorich and one of many until-recently secret Chicago clout lists.  Check out what happened the day the special prosecutor found a fucking heroin ring operating out of Chicago's already-synonymous-with-corruption Water Department.

Unless he's going to work cooking meth or muling state secrets to the North Koreans, what Mr. Vietor is up to looks to be no more or less sinister than what any member of the resume-burnishing kick-line of Harris School grads are up to  as pass through City Hall to trade a year or two of being the unloved cat's paw for the Man on the Fifth Floor for a paragraph on their resume worth a small fortune over the course of time.

But of course that story is not uniquely sleazy enough to satisfy real Greenwald red-meat gourmets.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looking forward to the video entitled, "the care and feeding of a young imperial Libertarian blogger" expaining how Glenn Greenwald successfully monetized bitching in the wind.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

of course, the real issue that Greenwald has is that all of that has as its object, a Democratic President. And if you don't loathe this particular President with full Greenwaldian abandaon, you are emblematic of TRUE EVIL.

Unknown said...

Isn't it amazing what an adjustment to the officeholder (replacing an R with a D, a white with a black face, and a backwater dimwit with an urbane intellectual) can do for the empire's true believers.

Greenwald's great virtue, despite the liberal inclinations he shares with Droneglass, is to confirm that the empire is a system - not a policy or an officeholder.

The same Greenwald article Droneglass sources for today's post
provides this instructive link:

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/29/imprisoned-cia-torture-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-pens-letter-from-loretto/

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Greenwald's great virtue, despite the liberal inclinations he shares with Droneglass, is to confirm that the empire is a system - not a policy or an officeholder.

Really? You think that is something that needs confirmation?

An empire is also not a handbasket, a four-wheeled vehicle, or an intelligent shade of the color blue.

But the 'liberal inclinations of Greenwald' bit is sure to have 'em rolling in the aisles at the Cato Institute.

Unknown said...

ZRM, Are you in favour or opposed to the system of U.S. imperialism?

mahakal said...

I don't think LL actually reads anything DG writes, he just comes here to shill GG and troll the comments.

driftglass said...

By Grabthar's Hammer I promise LL is not a sockpuppet I dreamed up while drunk and thumbing thru a "Man of Steel" comic just to underscore how unhinged many of Mr. Greenwald's most loyal fans are.

Unknown said...

As a frequent, and often appreciative reader, I find Droneglass' constant and dishonest attacks on his fellow liberal GG, lamentable. His solidarity with U.S. imperialism (in reference to which he uses 'we' as a synonym) is as sad/funny as the zeal of a Walmart greeter eloquently identifying with the Walton family... (though the greeter is at least getting paid.)

Despite his liberal illusions in capitalism, Greenwald at least permits the evidence of systemic criminality to speak for itself.

Hamfast Ruddyneck said...

I'm guessing that for LL, "liberal" chiefly means "antiwar", whereas Drifty uses a different definition.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, in the wake of the Vietnam War, "liberal" pretty much meant:

Favoring the welfare state for the common citizen, and equal rights for women and minorities (we Anglo palefaces were still a majority at that time), while opposing most U. S. interference in the affairs of foreign countries.

Only later did I learn that once upon a time in the USA, many conservatives opposed most U. S. interference in the affairs of foreign countries. Only when our former ally, the Communist USSR, was declared the Great Enemy did a majority of USAmerican conservatives convert to the worship of Mars (the Roman god, not the planet named for him).

A remnant of the old isolationist conservative tradition still survives. Many conservatives of that sort can be found on the site antiwar.com, along with a few of us liberal types who share their reluctance to bend the knee to Mars.

The Malefactors Of Great Wealth bought my country--the same MOGW who both paid for the campaign which installed the current President, and who staged the coup of 2000 which installed his predecessor, who began the imperial wars that the current President continues--and now the MOGW use my country as a murder weapon in their filthy imperial wars.

Glenzilla opposes that, which is why I'm willing to overlook his flaws. Politics makes strange bedfellows and all that.

Unknown said...

Liberals believe in capitalism with a human face, which usually just means ignoring its real face.

In that sense GG is all the more exceptional.

Anonymous said...

"By Grabthar's Hammer I promise LL is not a sockpuppet I dreamed up while drunk and thumbing thru a "Man of Steel" comic just to underscore how unhinged many of Mr. Greenwald's most loyal fans are."

I think L.L. is actually G.G. himself, leaping to his own defense in single bounds of trolly verbosity.
Notice how his slavish insistence on orthodoxy pervades his every comment.
By merely disagreeing with whatever latest drivel GG spews out, you ("Droneglass"..and isn't that just too stupid to bear over and over again..it's like Obummer or Hildebeast..not even clever the first time) become a capitalist tool and lackey of unbridled American Imperialism.
How tedious must one's existence be..to be a blog troll? I hope he's GG because otherwise, he is just too pathetic to think about.



Anonymous said...

Sigh.
Long time reader, first time commenter.
Look, Driftglass, I'm a big fan. I read you every damn day, I've sent money for your pledge drives, and I'll do so again. You're awesome.

But I just do not understand your levels of hate towards GG. Seriously.

Look, are you or are you not deeply disappointed with some of the decisions that Obama has made since being elected?

If you ARE disappointed, then how on earth is it a bad thing to call attention to those decisions?

You yourself have effectively and eloquently shown the Democrats' shameful rightward slide over the past 30 years. Clearly, left to their own devices, that's what they're doing. Obama, sadly, is no exception. If they aren't pulled from the left, then WTF do you think they're gonna keep doing? Who else is gonna hold their feet to the fire?

Sheesh.


-Davin