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May

The Other Idiotic Controversy

by John Cole

I talked about this briefly in the comments of another post and was going to ignore it, but this Mickey Kantor nonsense is pretty offensive.

I am not talking about his alleged remarks- I am talking about the people pushing this crap. I don’t care, and you shouldn’t care, what a Bill Clinton campaign manager said in 1992. It has no relevance in an election in 2008, and I am really sick to death of this guilt by association crap.

And that is before we even look at the videotape and realize that you simply can not tell what he actually said. Taking what could have been anything and turning it into a sort of racial smear is tawdry, cheap, and offensive. It may be the sort of crap some in the Clinton campaign would do- but that is why folks like Sidney Blumenthal are scum.

So knock it off. Quit asserting Kantor said something he most likely didn’t and you can’t prove anyway. You want to get upset about something outrageous, look no farther than Howard Wolfson. Wolfson has been a one-man fountain of bullshit for months, providing an endless stream of steaming nonsense. Just this week he has come up with new rules for determining the Democratic nominee (the popular vote- but only in states that count), he has lied about whether or not super delegate Andrew is actually from Indiana, and now he is lying about what Clinton actually said during her interview with O’Reilly. I am to the point that I think it is an actual startegy of the Clinton campaign to have Wolfson just make up so many lies and spread so much nonsense that no one in the press will call him on anything, because by the time they have somewhat pinned the slimy bastard down on one lie, he has uttered ten others and they have to play catch-up.

Back to the point. Back off Kantor. It is stupid, and if someone was doing this to the Obama campaign you would be correctly livid.

Election 2008 | 2:39 pm |

13 Responses to “The Other Idiotic Controversy”

1
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
ThymeZone

I am to the point that Ithink it is an actual startegy of the Clinton campaign to have Wolfson just make up so many lies and spread so much nonsense that no one in the press will call him on anything, because by the time they have somewhat pinned the slimy bastard down on one lie, he has uttered ten others and they have to play catch-up.

Hey, it worked for Bush.
2
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
KCinDC

Has there been any word on who created the video with the bogus subtitles in the first place? At this point I’d put even odds on whether the person was a Clinton opponent doing something stupid or a Clinton supporter setting a trap (in the vein of the infamous forged memo).
3
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
firebrand

Hear, hear John. Who cares what a Clinton associate over 16 freaking years ago may or may not have said when we have Clinton backers right now pushing the craziest bullshit I’ve ever seen since the Bush campaigns of old. Who gives a shit about Kantor? It’s lunatics like Wolfson and the people who defend him that I’m worried about.
4
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Josh E.

Has there been any word on who created the video with the bogus subtitles in the first place?

No but apparently Ben Smith has spoken with him. It’s all very strange.
5
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
DougJ

As much as I hate this bs, I hate Carville and Stuffy even more, and at some level, I’m glad to see their candidate get hammered on account of this absurd self-mythologizing piece of crap. “War Room” my ass.
6
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Genine

Back to the point. Back off Kantor. It is stupid, and if someone was doing this to the Obama campaign you would be correctly livid.

That is why I try to focus more on abstract concepts rather than “sides”. That way, I can call “bullshit” no matter who does it and it lessens cognitive dissonance.
7
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
SpotWeld

by the time they have somewhat pinned the slimy bastard down on one lie, he has uttered ten others and they have to play catch-up.

That’s be the Gish Gallop method, wouldn’t it?
8
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:13 pm
t jasper parnell

Or be irritated by this from Bill Clinton:

The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it’s by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules,” he said. “In West Virginia and Arkansas, we know that when we see it.
9
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Libby Spencer

Just thinking out loud after a very long day mostly offline, but it occurs to me that this one could have been floated by the Clinton camp itself, in order to generate some sympathy. False allegations, easily defused but gets her a ton of press. Otherwise, it’s so dumb, I can’t imagine why anyone else would bother.
10
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Stan

Thanks, just what I was thinking. Throw that on your plane crash and missing white girl pile.
11
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Zuzu

it occurs to me that this one could have been floated by the Clinton camp itself, in order to generate some sympathy. False allegations, easily defused but gets her a ton of press

I dunno. Doesn’t seem like they’d pick a clip of someone generally acting like an arrogant jerk even without fake subtitles.
12
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Pb

Who cares? Apparently he does, as he’s already been out there about it, lawyering up, threatening people, and denying that anyone could possibly decipher whatever it is that he said, despite the fact that they are. I think it’s pretty stupid too, but sometimes “the cover-up is worse than the crime”—that is, I’m sure it would be if this were a Rev. Wright story, but this guy isn’t a potentially scary and/or angry black man, so he should be ok in our media.
13
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Balloon Juice

[...] If nothing else, this will at least give the other vehemently pro-Clinton sites an opportunity to show some intellectual honesty and maybe rally around a defense of Obama. Will they take it? Is there room for Obama in Hillary’s big tent? Will they behave responsibly like some blogs did during the Mickey Kantor BS? [...]