Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (9 page)

It is hardly surprising that liberals are terrified of campaign finance laws that allow ordinary people to participate in public political debate by contributing to political campaigns. Relaxed campaign finance laws are dangerous because they allow hoi polloi to get their two cents in. Noticeably, the news organizations frantically hawking the “money in politics” stories continuously neglect to mention that the media is wholly exempt from the campaign finance laws they adore.

There’s no time to mention the media exemption when there are important stories to be run on courageous politicians like Senator John McCain, who champion the media’s utterly self-interested demand for campaign finance restrictions. Carrying water for the media is known as “fighting powerful interests”—powerful interests that are not quite powerful enough to prevent the entire media from erupting in joy at the mere mention of McCain’s name. The sinister, powerful interests McCain confronted were little old ladies sending $20 checks to the Christian Coalition. Even if the little old lady is Imelda Marcos, in politics power is information, and no special interest group in the history of the universe has wielded the power of the modern media in America.

Despite all the hysterical news accounts of money corrupting politics, what liberals really believe is that the power to influence elections by persuading voters should reside exclusively with the media. Thus, complaining of the campaign fundraising by Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton in early 2000, Neal Rosenstein of the New York Public Interest Research Group told the
Washington Post:
“Hillary and Rudy are already in the paper every day.”
⁵⁶
The media should be the sole purveyors of information about political campaigns.

In the left’s doomsday scenario, the campaign finance laws would permit political speech by people who worry about taxes and crime, don’t have $200 million or a position with the elite media, or—God help us—have traveled overseas only three times. Liberals malign such people as “the rich.” Only the mind-boggling resources of the left could persuade so many people that these elitist snobs speak for the little guy.

THREE

How to Go from being a “jut-jawed maverick” to

a “clueless neanderthal” in one easy step

E
xcerpt from a deposition of a staffer in Senator Bob Packwood’s office, 1975-1976:

[I] entered his office....

Senator Packwood was alone, and he immediately closed the door and did not say anything to me, but grabbed me and had me pinned backwards with my back to the wall. And before I could say anything—I was very shocked—he stuck his tongue in my mouth and was French kissing me, without ever asking me or saying anything, without any warning.

He grabbed and embraced me and kissed me against my will. And I could not remove him from me for quite a while... -
¹

Senator Bob Packwood had been madly chasing, groping, and slobber-kissing female staff and lobbyists since at least 1969.
²
By his own heavy-breathing account, there were “22 staff members I’ve made love to and probably 75 others I’ve had a passionate relationship with.”
³

All this was well known to Packwood’s feminist supporters for decades, but he was never exposed. Packwood was “good on women’s issues,” which consisted primarily of his enthusiasm for killing off anything that might result from one of his successful sexual conquests.
⁴
But things changed dramatically when feminists didn’t need him anymore.

Back when the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League wanted Packwood’s pro-abortion vote, the establishment media could not produce enough luminous adjectives about the man. Invoking the blabocracy’s favorite words for utterly typecast tax-and-spend liberals, Pack-wood was called a “maverick” or a “gadfly.” He had “courage” and “political savvy.” There are literally hundreds of news items using these words in connection with Bob Packwood.

With the searing insight and novelty of expression that makes the
New York Times
a giant among giants, that paper dubbed Packwood a “jut-jawed iconoclast.” Indeed, the
Times
blew through the whole arsenal of fawning adjectives on Packwood: “Audacity, individualism and political savvy have become Packwood trademarks.”
⁵
In fact his trademark was: Voting the editorial position of the
New York Times.
In the watchdog media’s typical take-no-prisoners style, only Packwood’s friends would be quoted in articles about him. (Articles about disfavored Republicans quote only adversaries.) Thus, Representative Les AuCoin (D-Ore.) called Bob “one of the shrewdest political thinkers I’ve ever met.”
⁶
Another audacious individualist, far-left former Republican Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut—a “maverick” as the
Times
put it—said he admired Packwood’s “candor, courage and political common sense.”
⁷

Packwood’s canny individualism was revealed to the media by his capacity to recite, nearly verbatim, the liberal catechism on abortion. Flush with favorable press on “choice,” Packwood added to his growing popularity with the adversary press by periodically denouncing Ronald Reagan.

Liberal Republicans attacking conservative Republicans invariably produces widespread acclaim in the usual church circulars. Packwood spouted anti-Reagan clichés, and the
New York Times
instantly sprang to action praising Packwood as a “skilled legislative tactician” and a “canny political organizer.”
⁸

Inebriated on the favorable press, Packwood made the astonishing charge that Reagan was clinging to an “idealized concept of America” that left women behind. Republicans believed, he alleged, “women shouldn’t be working.”
⁹
Packwood, by contrast, wanted them right there in the office within groping distance. He also revealed to a gullible press that Reagan got confused in private meetings.
¹⁰

The media were in a swoon. Packwood could have been the Boston Strangler, for all the adversary press cared. As long as he supported a woman’s right to “choose” and engaged in delusional one-sided debates with Reagan, Packwood was protected. And not merely protected. Packwood was hailed in hallucinatory press notices ceaselessly citing his “courage.”
¹¹

What was the evidence of this much-vaunted courage? The
New York Times
explained that Packwood had “emerged as a leading defender of abortion” and yet “does not scare easily.” This is on the order of saying “the president rides in a bullet-proof car, and yet does not fear snipers.” The press was glorious precisely because he was a “leading defender of abortion.”

Though the threshold for liberal “courage” is rather low, the media impose an inordinately high threshold for sexual harassment charges against liberals. As long as Packwood was a “leading defender of abortion,” the media would studiously ignore his legendary ham-handed groping.

The fairy tale affair between Packwood and the media, however, came to a tragic end the second feminists didn’t need him anymore. In January 1993, feminists got themselves a president who was at least as committed to abortion as Packwood (and for pretty much the same predatory reasons). There was no possibility that President Bill Clinton would appoint a Supreme Court Justice who would vote to overrule
Roe v. Wade.
There was no possibility that he would sign into law even the most innocuous restriction on abortion. In fact, abortion may be the only issue on which Clinton did not flip, repeatedly vetoing a series of partial-birth abortion bans passed by large majorities in both the House and Senate.

Ironically, the very Republican administrations that Packwood had taken such glee in maligning for twelve years had indirectly been his salvation. Only after the 1992 election that put abortion’s truest friend in the White House (and returned Packwood to the Senate with the vigorous support of the National Abortion Rights Action League) would Packwood’s half-century of lechery finally see the light of day.

Florence Graves, the reporter who exposed the blow-dried predator, first learned of Packwood’s serially lewd behavior in April 1992. As Graves remarked, it was, of course, “very likely” that loads of Washington journalists had known about Packwood for years. Despite her interest in pursuing the matter, “several news organizations” informed Graves they “were not interested in financing the story.” She was able to scare up “no institutional support.” A deal with
Vanity Fair
fell through.
¹²
Consider that this was in 1992—after Anita Hill had saved America by raising the critical issue of sexual harassment. Though Packwood had been molesting dozens upon dozens of female staffers and lobbyists for decades, they evidently weren’t much interested in pursuing the matter, either. Luckily, he tended to be surrounded by women who shared his well-known devotion to abortion.

In one typical molestation story from the mid-seventies, Packwood grabbed and kissed Mary Heffernan, founder of the Oregon chapter of NARAL. Explaining her years of silence on the episode, Heffernan said: “For me, abortion rights were on the line. What would be the outcome if I called him on the carpet?”
¹³
In another almost insignificant incident, an eager abortion rights advocate on Packwood’s staff described sitting in the senator’s private office watching an abortion-rights video while he chatted up the staff in the office suite. He returned as the video was ending and proceeded to read a series of sexually explicit jokes to her.
¹⁴

Only after Clinton was elected president would Packwood be cut loose from the protective adjectives of a pro-abortion press. Regurgitating
New York Times
editorials as his personal philosophy would not save him now. The moment Packwood’s abortion-rights armor dropped, not only was his reprehensible personal behavior revealed, but everything else about him changed as well. His background, his intelligence, his personality, his looks, the state of his marriage—indeed his whole life story—were suddenly completely different. Once a “jut-jawed iconoclast,” Packwood soon became a “graceless clod.” Overnight, he went from being a “voracious reader” to being “clueless.” Instead of being an audacious senator with “candor, courage and political common sense,” he was a self-absorbed “baby.” He had “no self-awareness, no sense of a world beyond his own little fiefdom, no comprehension of how others might view him.”
¹⁵
Packwood finally found out what it was like to be a real Republican. It’s not so much fun when the press doesn’t like you.

Even granting that Packwood’s abuse of women cast a different light on him, he was still the same man. But in the press accounts, all the shiny laudatory details about Packwood’s career, family, wife, office, and home were summarily washed down the memory hole.

What happened to Packwood is a stunning example of the media’s power both to destroy and to protect. It’s absurd enough when the media describes Teddy Kennedy as a man of principle and Jesse Helms as a pandering bigot. In the case of Packwood, the media’s good dog/bad dog descriptions were applied to the exact same human being.

When they needed him . . .
Packwood was destined for “political stardom,” according to the
New York Times.
He was called “a successful lawyer and bright young man.”
¹⁶
.

As soon as he became dispensable. . .
Packwood was a man who “might have been successful selling insurance or probating wills back in Oregon.”
¹⁷

When they needed him ...
He was the grandson of “a member of the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention.”
¹⁸
.

As soon as he became dispensable...
He was the “nerdy son of a timber lobbyist in the state legislature.”
¹⁹
When they needed him. . .
His “partner throughout has been his wife, Georgie, 51, who met Packwood while working on his first campaign.”
²⁰
(Where, evidently, he meets all his girlfriends.)

As soon as he became dispensable...
He was a pathetic divorce, “estranged” from his children and “nearly broke.” His Oregon “residence” was a trailer.
²¹

When they needed him
... A “voracious reader,” his office was lined with books on British history and biographies of Disraeli and Oliver Cromwell.
²²

As soon as he became dispensable.. .
His diaries were “pitiful for their lack of self-awareness.”
²³

When they needed him .. . People
magazine chirped: “Packwood’s Senate staff currently has only three men, a source of considerable amusement to the 16 women.”
²⁴

As soon as he became dispensable...
His “staff seems set up as a personal sorority of cheerleaders for the captain of the football team to dip into,” stated a column in the
Baltimore Sun.
²⁵

In the final coup de grace, making absolutely clear that he had been cut loose, the
New York Times
called Packwood “Nixonian.”
²⁶

It kind of makes you wonder: Was Packwood ever all that canny, shrewd, and courageous, really? There is no intellectual honesty whatsoever in media descriptions of politicians. Journalism is war by other means.