Bob Novak (1931-2009): R.I.H.*

by Ken

So Bob Novak has gone to his reward -- presumably, the torments of hell for all eternity. (Could we maybe make it two eternities?)

Good riddance. Novak was an ideological zealot of the Far Right masquerading as a journalist. He was a bully, a thug, and a serial liar whose agenda was built on a volcano of (well-earned) self-loathing -- he seems just naturally to have assumed that the world at large was as irredeemably savage and hateful as the heap of toxic sludge he saw whenever he looked in a mirror.

And that has nothing to do with his outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent -- except insofar as his entire career establishes him as just the sort of sleazeball who would commit an act of treason for the sake of punishing Joe and Valerie Wilson, two people who had served their country honestly and admirably while he struggled with the torments of his ideological delusions and vendettas.

Right-wing campground HumanEvents.com has a tribute to this cancer by Karl Rove crony Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the former Reader's Digest editor who was unleashed on the Voice of America and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by the Bush regime, with a mandate to transform them into puppet propaganda outlets for the Far Right. That's right, he's the genius who on his own say-so, and without even disclosing it to his board, spent $10K of CPB money to get the goods on that scourge of the hate-mongering right-wing loons Bill Moyers, the fairest and least corruptible soul in the journalism racket.

Of course for people like Tomlinson and Rove and Novak, concepts like truth, fairness, and incorruptibility appear literally beyond the capacity to comprehend. I begin to wonder, could it be an actual defect in the brain architecture?

Here are some of the comments added to the Tomlinson blowjob of Novak:

"Wow, this is sad news indeed. American journalism has lost one of its giants."

"RIP Bob: You are home with Jesus. What a wonderful and honest reporter. He lived the words. The truth will set you free."

"We lost a giant in political journalism today and a proud Fighting Illini! Rest in peace, Bob."

In fairness, a saner commenter notes: "He stopped being a journalist when he outted a undercover CIA agent for political reasons. Journalism lost nothing today." In truth, any journalistic impulse Novak ever possessed had long since been subordinated to his ideological zealotry and hooliganism.

With the following comment, however, I can at most quibble:

"One of the great conservative voices is gone. Requiescat in pace."

A "great conservative voice"? Yes, I'll buy that. (If I were a conservative I would be offended, on the ground that surely somewhere there must be a "voice" speaking from reason and a quest for truth. But by the standard of available conservative voices, yeah, our Bob was aces.) Just understand that this is rather a different thing from journalistic greatness or journalistic integrity. But this commenter makes no such claim.

The one thing I would have to quibble with in this comment is the R.I.P. crap.

*I say R.I.H.: Rot in hell.


OUR BOB'S, UM . . . NO, NOT FINEST . . .
ER, MOST NOVAKIAN MOMENT?



To this day, I can't begin to guess what was going on in our Bob's head at that moment. But then, that was -- as I just wrote to Howie, who dug this clip out -- a very strange head.

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