On My Teevee?
This is Larry C. Johnson.
This evening he is/will be/will have been on three prominent, national teevee shows talking terrorism
- CNN sometime during the 7 pm ET hour
- Jim Lehrer Newshour / PBS
- Larry King Live tonight — 9 pm ET hour
-- which is what he used to do for a living.
Until he lost his mind (from The American Prospect):
Larry Johnson's media career has covered a lot more territory than I've touched on here, but that's not really the point.Larry Johnson's Strange Trip
...
In November Johnson posted his first anti-Obama broadside, "Why is Obama in Bed with Karl Rove?" on NoQuarter and Daily Kos. The Obama campaign had used a Robert Novak column as grist in an attack against Clinton; in Johnson's eyes, an unforgivable sin. ...
On Dec. 26, 2007, Johnson unloaded on Obama in a Daily Kos post, accusing "pro-Bush Republicans" of "hyping" him to Democrats. The Daily Kos version of the post drew 1,157 comments, most of them negative. The night of the Iowa caucuses, Johnson called the state "a pimple on the gnat's ass." "Obama, What Drugs Are You Using?" he asked in a Jan. 6 post about Obama's New Hampshire campaign chair (and pharmaceutical lobbyist) Jim Demers. On Jan. 12, Johnson announced that he was "all in for Hillary"; the next day, he pounded the drug theme again...
...
It was ... in late April -- that the "whitey tape" rumor started, mostly among pro-Clinton Democratic donors in New York. One of the earliest versions of the rumor, according to one reporter who heard it in April, was that researchers for Rudy Giuliani had their hands on a tape of Michelle Obama at Trinity United giving a speech where she attacked white America using the word "whitey."
Johnson told me over e-mail that he heard the rumor for the first time in early May. On May 16, he claimed to "have it from four sources (three who are close to senior Republicans) that there is video dynamite -- Michelle Obama railing against 'whitey' at Jeremiah Wright's church." The next day Johnson posted a fresh rumor of "an ultra conservative Republican billionaire" who "hates John McCain" and had put out a $1 million bounty on the tape.
The new story came from a "major Republican operative" who told Johnson that "Karl Rove and his political allies control the tape." It was corroborated by "a retired CIA buddy" who was "friends with a lawyer who saw the tape." Two days later, with this story still uncorroborated, Johnson speculated that Barack Obama's angry response to criticism of his wife came from fear of "the ticking 'whitey' time bomb."
On May 26, Johnson, for the first time publically, explained that he'd originally heard the story from "two friends," one a Democrat and one a Republican, who didn't know each other, but each claimed to have seen the tape.
...
On May 30, Rush Limbaugh dropped a mention of the rumor of a tape that shows "Michelle going nuts in the church, too, talking about whitey this and whitey that." The next day Johnson promised "new and dramatic developments" to come on Monday morning. The day after Johnson's "bombshell" post, Roger Stone appeared on Geraldo Rivera's Sunday Fox News show and gave his own version of what he was hearing.
"There's a buzz," Stone said, "which I believe now to be credible, that some indelible record exists of public remarks that Michelle Obama allegedly made, which are outrageous at best, but could be termed racist, including some reference to white people as whiteys, allegedly." NoQuarter bloggers Bud White and SusanUnPC used the Stone video as proof of the story's veracity; NoQuarter even uploaded the segment onto YouTube.
...
Hillary Clinton dropped out of the presidential race the weekend after Johnson posted his accusation about Obama's "non-denial denial." The "whitey" story had spun itself out. And on June 12 Obama's campaign launched a site called "Fight the Smears" which provided a no-frills response to the rumor: "No such tape exists. Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit of Trinity United and has not used that word."
It was the denial that Johnson didn't get a week earlier, but he wasn't satisfied. On the contrary, the fact that Obama's campaign told Time magazine that they'd heard about the rumor in April convinced Johnson of the veracity of his sources. Reached over e-mail on June 12, Johnson was unrepentant.
"There is a recording of Michelle saying disparaging things about white people," he wrote. "A person who saw the tape said the word 'whitey' was used. I don't know when or where she made the remarks. I do know that the Republicans who are circulating the tape don't want this out until after the convention. Those are the facts as I know them from multiple sources who do not know each other. I stand by their accounts."
The point is that, hardly more than one year ago, Larry Johnson stomped into the spotlight to commit about as loud and spectacular an act of Ritual Credibility Suicide as I have ever seen.
And hardly more than one year later he has been shriven, forgiven and put back in front of three teevee cameras in one day.
Because, like the Chicago Clout List, once you've been let into the Big Media Clubhouse, it really doesn't matter how much of a lunatic or liar or fuck-up you prove yourself to be.
Once you're in the club, you're in for life.
15 comments:
Only you, Dg.
No one has your phrase chops.
Someone should be putting together a dictionary of your coinages.
Thanks for staying on top of the media circus for us.
S
Ritual Credibility Suicide
_______________
I wondered who that FF was, he was the last thing I saw before I turned it off. That was right after I clicked on ABC to celebrate FF Charlie Gibson being gone and his nemisis', the blond, her name escapes me, taking over which he apparently hated. God what crap, thanks for pointing out just how crapp, it exceeded my expectations.
Yet more confirmation that a load of crap from my basement being taken to the dump in exchange for my TV was one of the best deals I ever made.
A fascinating thread, Drift.
It's all getting curiouser and curiouser.
In a way, Obama has created these media leeches, by his refusal to continue to articulate and define the shit they and their handlers have created, and which he has inherited. If he'd been in the trenches with us, grubbing away at these bastards, the battle would have been fairly joined, and "big win" or not, the political vacuum that they thrive in simply would not have existed.
They couldn't get away with pretending to be unbiased observers while ignoring things like the retiring CEO of Cigna, Edward Hanway, getting a $73 million dollar handshake PRECISELY as the Senate passed the bill that will mandate 40 million new customers (who have no public option as an option) into the shearing queues of the health insurance companies.
His connection with Clinton piques my interest, too. I'm getting more convinced of the strong possibility of her bailing out of the State Department to run against Obama in 2012, with practically every week that passes.
I think the political climate is going to be closer to utter chaos, beginning with the mid-terms, than it's been in our lifetimes. I hope I'm wrong, but with the kind of confusion and vitriol that I fear is gaining ground, I don't see a Lincoln, that "cool aloof, genius..." as Gore Vidal called him, to dig in his feet and protect us from the demagogues and fools on the right, and from some of the democrats, too.
All is not yet lost, but we are heading that way, I'm afraid.
Good grief, is that a contemporary picture of Johnson? I mean, he always had that whacked-out Caesar 'do, but now he looks like a bag-man for a C-grade Russian oligarch-wannabe.
I'm so naive, having simply assumed he was the only among the gilded answering the phone over the holiday....you know, low man on call...
Spooky Larry's got a pornstache now? I bet Roger Stone gets a tickle out of it.
;>)
One may only commit Ritual Credibility Suicide by either
* being Prematurely Correct, or
* attacking a Village Pet (that is, a Republican or Conservadem like Holy Joe -- Liberals on the other hand should be frequently kneecapped, to keep them in their proper place)
Larry didn't make either of these crucial, unforgiveable mistakes; just let him air out a little and give him a spritz of Eau de Serious -- he's good to go.
That bloated cocksucker racist wouldn't be where he is were it not for me. When I did my first Fox News at its Finest post a few years ago, Johnson lifted the entire post, reposted on No Quarter and all without attribution (he tried to claim to me there was no way he could've known who wrote it).
At the time, his little dogshit blog was getting less traffic than mine (4000 hits daily to my 5000). The day the post went viral, he got over 150,000 hits and I, the guy who did all the spadework, only got 33,500. That's because five major blogs and websites linked directly to him instead of the originating site.
From that point on, he never looked back while I was almost completely forgotten.
That, plus his "whitey" post, flogging a video that never surfaced, and his racist jibes against Obama made me an enemy of his for life. It just kills me that guys like him get put on TV while I'm lucky if I and other bloggers get more 300 hits a day without some major, transitory linkage.
Many moons ago I was doing podcasts featuring the best blogging at that time (driftglass, jurassicpork, etc). I don't remember the subject but I had done one on something Larry had written. Shortly thereafter, he went off the deep end with some nonsense and every time I checked back to see what he was up to it was more nonsense. He's lost all credibility with me now and what better place for knuckleheads with wrong-minded ideas than the Teevee. The vast majority of stuff coming out of the tube is bullshit. If it wasn't for Discovery and the History channels (and even then...a grain of salt), my TV would be in the garbage.
Back during the primary I took Larry Johnson to task for the "whitey" tape claim, on one of the "D" list blogs that nobody reads and everyone hates. Damn if the Hillarians didn't defend him, claiming he was only trying to protect the Democrats from potential embarrassment.
He’s a rank opportunist, willing to say anything to self-promote, and current TV “news” media is his natural environment. The wonder is that they didn’t recognize his talent and potential before this.
And Oh Hell tanbark, leave off a bit. Obama didn't create these leaches, they were always around just waiting for a convenient victim to wade through the Swamp.
"Obama didn't create these leeches."
No, but he's sure as hell doin' what amounts to rehab on the bastards.
The political vacuum in which they breed and fester, right now, is his baby. He came in with a golden opportunity to define these jerks for what they are, and, in large measure, push them a bit further into the dustbin of history.
Instead, he's let them assume the role of the "loyal opposition", and given what they've done to us, that's like manna from heaven falling on them.
Ah, tanbark, not at all. You've been watching "Rosemary's Baby" too often, or perhaps were raised Catholic.
These lampreys thrive regardless of what is done to try and eradicate them. The "political vacuum" as you term it is not a result of Obama policies, which are actually quite vigorous in their Conservative pushback against the Radical Reactionary Right, but rather the product of the MSM who are hoof-in-claw with VRWC spokescretins and wannabe suckups like Johnson. If Obama were more outspoken, they would feed on that just as enthusiastically and with more points of attachment.
We on the Liberal and/or Progressive Left don't have a lot of good choices; never have. Mostly we can have shit sandwich or shit sandwich with sugar on top. I blame the American people, who in the majority are gullible fools and bigoted idiots. They need to be convinced to do something other than what they've done for most of the last 40 years. Meantime, I need to eat and so I'll take this round of shit with the Obama-flavored sweet topping. It is, barely, better than nothing.
Our longer-term assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to find ways to convince the gullible bigots that their better interests lie with Progressive policies rather than Regressive. You'd think that would be easy, but it is not because of the bigotry. Any suggestion, and most of all leadership, regarding how to do that is welcome. Actually, I'm begging.
Bashing Obama for actions by others that are not his fault will not help us. You are a smart person; screw on your thinking cap a little tighter and help figure out how to push the Muddled Middle towards a Progressive direction. I wish to suggest, ever so gently, that in engaging that task a positive mental attitude is key.
he even looks like a douchebag
Dear Graham, I have only watched "Rosemary's Baby" once, and the notion that I am a Catholic, based on what I've written, is truly bizarre.
But, I digress. I like your description of our options as shit, or shit with sugar on it.
Except, they were not, and are not, graven in stone. Not by a damn sight.
Barak Obama came into office with more pure-assed momentum for real change than any president since FDR. The "gullible fools" and "bigoted idiots" you speak of, gave him one hell of a mandate for change. I believe I'm correct in saying that they also provided he and the democrats with bigger majorities in both houses, than Bill Clinton ever enjoyed in his 8 years.
Now, he's hard at work squandering that power, and no amount of confused logic of the sort you're peddling can hide that.
If he'd gone to bat with and for progressives, we could have run the republicans back under the trollbridge for, at the least, the eight years of the two terms he would likely have enjoyed.
Clearly, he either didn't realize this, or he realized it, and just chose not to make political hay out of it, for some not-completely-known reason.
The fact that you are, on the one hand grousing about the people who elected Obama, at the same time you criticize me for pointing out that he's actively crapping on them, should tell you something about your thought processes.
I'm not interested in your "long-term" mission assignment. Why should I be, when you, yourself, are complaining about 40 years of stupidity on the part of people? (again, the same ones who elected him and whom are now being shat upon by him...) I have no intention of using my little grain-of-sand influence in trying to move even MORE voters into the democratic column, only to be fucked over by a candidate who handed his balls to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the jellyfish herd in congress.
We in the progressive community demonstrated in no uncertain terms what can happen when the people in whom we placed a lot of faith, throw us under the bus. WE are the ones responsible for derailling Hillary Clinton's triangulation express. The nomination was hers to lose, and she lost it, by the asinine political theory that she stood to gain more by dumping liberals and moving to the right, than she would lose.
It was the stuff of idiocy, and when, for example, she sat on that enabling vote for 5-plus years, until she saw her campaign imploding around her ears, we made her pay for it, big time.
If Obama doesn't get off his slack ass and start at least trying to do the things that we hired him to do, we'll do the same thing to him.
THAT, you did read here first.
:o)
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