Guilty (40 page)

Struggling pensioners, grandmothers from Iowa, and other average Americans from across the country who had never bought a stock before called brokers to find out how to buy $50 worth of stock that Monday. Before the opening bell, there were two minutes of silence to commemorate the dead, followed by the singing of “God Bless America.”

And George Soros said: Sell! Sell! Sell! The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 685 points that Monday. Speculators like Soros became even richer off of America's misfortune, while truckers and waitresses lost their money.
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But as Soros told Steve Kroft on CBS's
60 Minutes
of his collaboration with the Nazis, helping them confiscate property from Jews, it was “just like in markets—if I weren't there, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow.”
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You almost can't blame Soros for betting against America when the markets opened after 9/11; it's not as if he's an American. Soros can barely even speak the language. It's curious that the Democrats loudly
boast about speaking for the average American, but their three unelected spokesmen—George Soros, Arianna Huffington, and Daily Kos's Markos Moulitsas—all speak in the accents of their foreign upbringings. Couldn't they at least wait a couple of generations and let their grandchildren do the America-bashing? Whatever you can say about Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and Sean Hannity, they at least grew up in America.

Soros's money was used to defeat Lieberman in his 2006 primary against Ned-the-Red Lamont, forcing Lieberman to run against—and beat—his own now Soros-controlled party. Soros's money was used to publish the “General Betray Us” full-page attack ad on General Pe-traeus in the
New York Times.
Soros's money was used to propel Obama to victory in the 2008 Democratic primary. When your party is controlled by a billionaire rootless international financier who expresses “no sense of guilt” for collaborating with the Nazis,
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you might want to ease up on lecturing the rest of us about the evil rich.

IN ADDITION TO BEING BEAUTIFUL, COMPASSIONATE TRIBUNES of the downtrodden, liberals are brave. I know that because they're always telling me how brave they are. Why, five nights a week, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann courageously books guests who completely agree with him! It doesn't get much braver than that. If anyone dissents from the prevailing worship of one of these beautiful and well-dressed liberals who has taken a vow of poverty to fight for the peasants from their beachfront estates, liberals claim they're being attacked. But not to worry: The media will rally to their defense, hailing the rich and powerful for their courage.

If the liberal is a female, the media will portray any mention of their heroine's failings as sexism, even when their heroine is trying to socialize the nation's entire health care system, or alternatively, when their heroine says that “as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station”
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and calls America a “downright mean” country. (And she dresses like Jackie O!)

In 1996, Dee Dee Myers said Republicans' ferocity on Whitewater was partially explained by sexism.
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Baltimore Sun
columnist and emasculated male Mike Littwin said Hillary was a victim of the “strong woman syndrome,” noting that for some, “you're not allowed to be a
strong woman.”
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Between photos oozing with respect for women,
Playboy
magazine touted Bill Clinton for being “completely unthreatened by the equally strong woman standing beside him.”
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There were more column inches devoted to denouncing the putative sexism of conservative attacks on Hillary than there were column inches delivering the actual attacks.

The media's interest in “strong woman syndrome” seemed to dissipate during the Bush years, but came roaring back for Michelle Obama in 2008. CNN contributor Roland Martin explained away any criticism of her as a psychological failing of conservative men. “I think what you have,” he said, is “some weak men on the conservative side who frankly don't like strong women.”

Yes, liberals love a strong conservative woman! They love strong conservative women so much that some of them pay hundreds of dollars an hour to be humiliated by one of them because they've been very bad and must be punished.

Where was all the indignation about attacks on a strong woman when Sarah Palin came along? The moment John McCain introduced Palin as his running mate, liberals switched from being the primary advocates for stamping out sexism toward women in politics to being the primary perpetrators of sexism toward women in politics. The media chorus went up that Palin was chosen only because she was a woman. In fact, she was chosen because she was pro-life, pro-gun, pro-drilling, and pro–tax cuts. Also, she didn't have clownish hair plugs and a tendency to make offensive statements on camera. The media hysterically denounced Palin as “inexperienced” even though she had more executive experience than B. Hussein Obama—the guy at the top of the Democrats' ticket.

In Palin's first interview after being chosen as McCain's running mate, ABC's Charlie Gibson had this exchange with her:

What Gibson claimed were Palin's “exact words” were nothing of the sort. Here are Palin's actual “exact words”—as quoted by NPR, no less: “Pray our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country—that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan.”
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On Gibson's theory of an “exact quote,” ABC's Charlie Gibson said, “you're old” and “God, are we fighting a Holy War!” With some selective editing, those are “exact quotes,” too.

Gibson came from ABC's morning show
Good Morning America
where he used to demonstrate omelet recipes and offer hints on inexpensive weekend getaways, but now he's an intellectual because he's wearing glasses. Gibson also asked Palin if she agreed with “the Bush doctrine.” Palin reasonably responded, “In what respect, Charlie?” Gibson refused to tell her what he meant, requiring her to try to pry it out of him. Eventually Gibson exasperatedly informed Palin that “the Bush doctrine” was that America has “the right of anticipatory self-defense.”

Cut to: the Politburo issuing hysterical denunciations of Palin for her alleged inability to identify Charlie Gibson's definition of “the Bush doctrine.” Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, which can be “edited” by anyone, promptly rewrote its entry on “the Bush doctrine” to correspond with Gibson's definition. The
New York Times
claimed Palin “visibly stumbled” and “did not seem to know what he was talking about.”
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But in short order, columnist Charles Krauthammer, no slouch on foreign policy matters, pointed out that there is no one “Bush doctrine” and named at least three distinct possibilities for the title. The
Washington Post
ran an article quoting a half dozen foreign policy experts from the Carter, Clinton, and Bush administrations, who agreed on one thing: There was no single “Bush doctrine.” The only exception was Richard Holbrooke of the Carter and Clinton administrations, who gave a direct quote from a Bush administration strategy document as “the Bush doctrine.” But Philip D. Zelikow, one of the principal authors of that very document, told the
Post,
“I actually never thought there was a Bush doctrine.”
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All the Left's leading intellectual lights expressed their disdain for
Palin. Foreign policy/home video porno star expert Pamela Anderson told Palin to “suck it,” while domestic adviser/aspiring lesbian Lindsay Lohan called Palin a “a narrow-minded, media-obsessed homo-phobe.” Tara Reid, rumored to have passed out in a puddle of her own vomit, was unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, Palin's Democratic counterpart, serial plagiarist Senator Joe Biden, was walking around with bean sprouts coming out of his head, a botched eyelid job, and a son and brother charged with fraud in a lawsuit by a former business partner. But you had to search obscure right-wing blogs to find any negative information about Biden.

Palin was subjected to such an unending stream of abuse that even Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist, told CBS News that the media were losing credibility. “When you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed,” he said, “if they don't do that for all four of the candidates, they're on very dangerous ground.” Penn added that the media had been “the biggest loser in this race.”
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Palin wasn't being attacked because she was a woman; she was being attacked because she was conservative.

The media do treat women differently, but it's always different in the same way. Linda Tripp and Coleen Rowley were two almost identically situated government whistle-blowers. Tripp told the truth about a president's felonies, and Rowley told the truth about the FBI's old computers and refusal to racially profile the presumed “twentieth hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui. Both were about the same age, and I defy anyone to tell me Rowley was better-looking than Tripp. But because Rowley blew the whistle on the FBI during a Republican administration, she was portrayed as a modern-day Joan of Arc. Because Tripp blew the whistle on a Democrat president, she was treated like a female Freddy Krueger.

On the
New York Times
op-ed page alone, Frank Rich called Tripp a “snitch”
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and “that dulcet-toned human wire Linda Tripp,”
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Anthony Lewis called her a “malignant gossip,”
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and Maureen Dowd called her a “dingbat”
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and a “witch.”
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Even the
Times's
Russell Baker had no complaint with “satirists”—they're “satirists” when they
attack conservatives—who made “fun of her physical appearance,” because, he said, “she made her bed, let her lie in it.”
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The ABC News blog asked this question:

But Tripp's liberal doppelgänger, Coleen Rowley, who didn't even have a particularly scandalous story about government malfeasance— FBI computers are old!—was hailed for speaking truth to power. (Rowley also complained that the FBI didn't racially profile a potential terrorist, but the media played down that observation.) Dowd called Rowley “the blunt Midwesterner”
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and a woman “of ingenuity and integrity.”
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Frank Rich called her “a forthright American woman.”
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Anita Hill, who less than a quarter of Americans believed had told the truth about Clarence Thomas, was called in for a special op-ed in the
Times.
She praised Rowley for rising “through the ranks of male-dominated institutions” and yet having “the conviction to act on values that were apparently in conflict with those of the leaders in their institutions.”
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The
Hotline
did not exaggerate when it titled coverage of Coleen Rowley “A Star Is Born.”
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When that much praise pours forth from powerful media bullhorns about someone speaking the truth to power, only one thing is certain: Truth has not been spoken to power.

Where were the blaring trumpets for Linda Tripp's and Sarah Palin's bravery? Bravery, as used in public discourse, bears no relation to what most people think of as bravery. No matter what liberals do, they are brave. No matter what abuse conservatives take, they deserved it.

And why isn't Bush ever called brave? He has been subjected to more abuse than any president in recent memory—even accounting for the fact that liberals are lying when they say they didn't despise Reagan at the time. Bookstores overflow with anti-Bush books. By my
count, roughly one in four books in print in the world at this very moment have the words “Bush” and “Lie” in their title. Barnes
&
Noble was forced to add an “I Hate Bush” section. I don't believe there are as many anti-Hitler books.

Speaking of which, Al Gore called the Bush administration “digital Brown Shirts.” Plutocrat George Soros has compared Bush to the Nazis—which raises the question: If Bush is like the Nazis, why isn't Soros collaborating with him? In the July 2008
Vanity Fair,
James Wol-cott also made the totally novel comparison of Bush to … Hitler! Wol-cott wrote that Goebbels's reaction to meeting Hitler was similar to Karl Rove's reaction to meeting Bush.
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(Whereas my reaction to meeting James Wolcott was similar to my reaction when I accidentally walked into a gay bar.)

Liberals produced a mock documentary depicting the assassination of George Bush. That film won the International Critics Prize at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival—not to mention “Best Date Movie of 2006” by
The Nation
magazine. A novel released in 2004 advocated the assassination of President Bush “for the good of humankind.” Liberal columnist William Raspberry referred to President Bush as “the Devil.” Remember the good old days, during Bush's honeymoon with the press, when he was just Hitler?

Compare Bush's cheery disposition in the face of constant abuse to a recent ex-president who reacts to the mildest criticism with purple-faced rage.

On the campaign trail for his wife in 2008, Clinton bitterly denounced the press for treating him badly, saying, “Ken Starr spent $70 million and indicted innocent people to find out that I wouldn't take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon.”
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This was a decade after Ken Starr wrapped up his investigation and eight years after Clinton was out of office, but Clinton was still babbling about Starr in moments of stress.