Lenfestation, Part III: "We're Above All That"

The nice thing about Sue Lenfestey, Minnesota writer without portfolio, is that she's a boundless font of material.

The not-so-nice thing is that she has a job in the media at all.

You know - the media that takes itself and its credibility so seriously. Like the Star-Tribune.

Nick Coleman (remember him?) should be thankful for Lenfestey; but for her, he'd be the undisputed worst writer in the Twin Cities media. Lenfestey is lazier, more smug, and has even fewer redeeming qualities than the Nonmonkey; Susan Lenfestey couldn't write this if her life depended on it, for example.

But I have to hand it to her; if I could make money by recycling rants from the Daily Kos and the Janeane Garofalo show, I'd probably take a stab at it. It must be like pennies from heaven.

Lenfestey:

As this administration bungles from one disaster to another, our president urges us not to look back at how we were bamboozled into this holy hell of a war, but to look ahead to the plan for victory -- as if there were one.

Bamboozled?

You mean, the one the entire Congress voted on? The one where they saw the same intelligence the President (and Tony Blair, for that matter) saw?

The one where even that noted right-wing tool, the New Yorker (Nicholas Lemann, in this case) noted:

In his State of the Union address, President Bush offered at least four justifications, none of them overlapping: the cruelty of Saddam against his own people; his flouting of treaties and United Nations Security Council resolutions; the military threat that he poses to his neighbors; and his ties to terrorists in general and to Al Qaeda in particular. In addition, Bush hinted at the possibility that Saddam might attack the United States or enable someone else to do so. There are so many reasons for going to war floating around—at least some of which, taken alone, either are nothing new or do not seem to point to Iraq specifically as the obvious place to wage it—that those inclined to suspect the motives of the Administration have plenty of material with which to argue that it is being disingenuous.

The war that 403 Representatives, including all but three Democrats, voted to continue just last month when called upon to vote on Rep. Murtha's "cut and run" plan?

I was about to write "The problem with Lenfestey is that she speaks in vague, inflammatory generalities"; seeing things like this...:

And we are urged to be more moderate in our criticism, more civil in our discourse. But that presumes that we have a moderate and civil government, and anyone with one eye open knows we don't.

...reinforces the point (ah, the old "anyone with one eye open agrees with me!" gambit! I know when I'm beaten!).

But then it gets worse; she tries to write about specifics!:

Seymour Hersh, the most tenacious war reporter of our generation [In a just universe, Sy Hersh would be working as Michael Yon's pedicurist. Sy Hersh wasn't fit to carry the late Steven Vincent's backpack -- Ed.], writes about the little-covered air war in Iraq. Unlike the Vietnam War, in which the military gave daily accounts of the air strikes, there is no such reporting in this war.

Why would that be?

Because it's hard to embed a reporter in a single-seat aircraft?

Or because as good and difficult a job as pilots do, the hard fighting in this war is on the ground?

Just a hunch...?

In the 2004 siege of Fallujah, for instance, bombing raids were conducted day and night for three weeks.

One wonders if Lenfestey has any idea what she means when she writes this.

Ms. Lenfestey: you're facing a building full of enemies (in your case, say it's a building full of Republicans); they want to kill you, and don't mind dying in the process. What's better - to go in and tangle with them yourself, face to face, hand to hand? Or point a laser at the building and call in an F-18 and indulge them wholesale?

Alternate question: Why the moral indignation? Do you even know?

More alarming, Hersh reports on the administration's plan for drawing down American troops by backing up the barely functional Iraqi Army with American air strikes. According to Hersh, military commanders oppose this scenario because it leaves the Iraqi ground forces able to call in sophisticated laser-guided bombs to targets that the pilots can't verify. With old feuds to be settled and the likelihood of a civil war, American bombs, they say, will hit increasingly indiscriminate targets.

So do you want a pullout or don't you?

Or do you merely advocate leaving while the Iraqi army is still "barely functional?"

• The story broke that the U.S. military had been paying "journalists" -- in fact military operatives and an American public relations firm -- to write articles favorable to the U.S. mission in Iraq and place them in Iraqi newspapers as if they were independent news stories.

In a related article, Susan Lenfestey - a "journalist" whose only "writing" experience would seem to be writing overheated lefty screeds like, er, this article and a couple of dozen identical ones - somehow keeps getting work, too.

Let's see, secret American gulags in countries known for their squishy laws on, um -- interrogation, the disgrace of Abu Ghraib and our administration's refusal to disavow torture, and now this mockery of a free press.

The woman is irony-proof.

Three words, Lenfestey: "Fake But Accurate".

Who's the mockery?

Speaking of mockery, I'm not done with Lenfestey yet

• A memo leaked to the Washington Post revealed the heavy-handed politicizing of the Justice Department under Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales. Although Justice Department lawyers and staff unanimously concluded that the Tom DeLay-inspired 2003 Texas redistricting plan, which diluted black and Hispanic votes to assure a Republican majority in the Texas congressional delegation, violated the Voting Rights Act, they were overruled. High-ranking Justice Department officials ordered them not to discuss the case and quashed the release of the recently leaked 73-page memo. The same officials then approved the plan, and Texas picked up five Republican congressional seats in the 2004 election.

Renault: "I'm shocked, shocked, to hear that gerrymandering has been going on in Texas..."

Flunky: "The representatives from California and New York are on the phone, sir..."

Renault: "Ah, show them in".

The worst thing, to Lenfestey? Not that you couldn't tell from the rest of her "body of work", but being polite to all those ickypoopy conservatives just makes her skin crawl:

While it's true that the Democratic leadership should remain civil and do a better job of spelling out a constructive agenda, the rest of us, especially the media, cannot afford to be moderate, or polite.

I repeat: Fake But Accurate.

Posted by Mitch at December 13, 2005 05:26 AM | TrackBack