Credit Michael Gerson with blowing the whistle on one aspect of the right-wing assault on truth

Yes, I know we just looked at this wonderful Lee Camp clip on Wednesday. Well, here it is again.

"O’Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie. . . . There is no ethical canon or tradition that would excuse such deception on the part of a professional journalist."

-- Michael Gerson, in his WaPo column today,
"The NPR video and political dirty tricks"

by Ken

The good news today is a reminder that at least around the edges of the hard-core Right there are occasional evidences of limits to the assault on reality and truth.

I really don't mean to go into the specifics of that crusade tonight. Goodness knows both Howie and I have already had plenty to say about that. However, I can recommend Paul Waldman's excellent piece for The American Prospect, "Crushing the Democrats' Base," which covers a lot of this territory, and argues that the Right is getting the better of the ongoing struggle because they think bigger and more decisively -- yet another demonstration of the point we we heard the other day from that dazzling funnyman Lee Camp: "Bad people have plans."

Here's Paul Waldman's basic premise:

Put simply, Republicans are conducting a radical attack on the Democratic Party, aimed at the roots of Democratic power and sustenance. The battle is occurring in Washington and around the country, and even if the right doesn't succeed completely, the fight will almost certainly leave Democrats weakened and defensive.

Look at the targets conservatives have taken aim at in the last couple of years: access to the ballot box, unions, organizations representing the poor, organizations protecting reproductive rights, and more. The assault is not just on ideas or policies (though there's plenty of that, too) but on the institutions that undergird the Democratic Party and the progressive movement.

It hasn't always been a tightly coordinated effort overseen by an authoritative hierarchy, but conservatives quickly moved into action at the right opportunities.

Among the specific his Paul goes on to talk about is the assault on ACORN, underpinned by then-rising right-wing dirtbag James O'Keefe's video orgy of lies. O'Keefe, of course, is a central figure in one of the current right-wing assaults on NPR, and it doesn't seem to matter how appalling his track record is. Even though he always, always lies, each time he drops another of his dirty bombs, instead of being greeted with catcalls and rotten tomatoes and cries of "Shame!," he's actually taken seriously.

By now we know the drill. Just wait a bit, until people who aren't known pathological liars get access to the video materials he's tricked up and show how he's done his dirty work -- too late, of course, to even limit, let alone undercut, the damage. It's a measure of how weak-kneed NPR is that the organization just kind of rolled over, presumably hoping that the quick resignations of the two Schillers would allow the manufactured scandal to just sort of go away. Which was crazy, because just-sort-of-going-away is exactly what the rampaging Right did not have in mind for the broadside against NPR, which ironically actually bends over backward to be "fair and balanced," in contrast to that other broadcast organization that's gotten so much mileage out of pretending to be while conducting an unadulterated propaganda war.

I keep making the point that the current-day Right has a seemingly unassailable advantage in having gone off the reality standard, that being a modern-day conservative has come to mean not just a total disregard for truth but an unmitigated militant all-encompassing hatred for the truth. And of course when you're sitting on the Right's other major strategic advantage, the seemingly limitless gazillions of dollars available for its crusades against truth, those crusades take on a pretty high likelihood of success.

Which is why it matters, at least a little, when one of the Far Right's trustier sideline enthusiasts blows the whistle. Now Michael Gerson is known for occasionally parting company with the hardest-core loonies of the movement, as I've had a number of occasions to note here. He actually does have an ethical streak. Most of the time he's able to keep it in check and soldier on with his cheerleading for vicious, sociopathic ideologues. And of course even when he takes a stand at variance with most of his ideological brethren, there's always enough weaseling to compromise the point.

But this is still a pretty tough piece. He lays out pretty clearly how outrageously and intentionally dishonest O'Keefe's video editing was, and does a thoughtful job of exploring "deeper issues about the ethics of undercover journalism" he thinks this latest episode raises.

Oh sure, predictably Gerson does a certain amount of right-wing whitewashing. And so, while countering the claim of O'Keefe's defenders "that he is not really a journalist but a new breed of 'citizen journalist'" leads Gerson into some interesting thoughts about the subject of "citizen journalism" (including the conclusion, "These tactics are not a new brand of gonzo journalism. They are a sophisticated version of the political dirty trick"), he might at least have noted in passing that this is not, in fact, O'Keefe's claim. Every time he drops one of his video dirty bombs, he can be heard intoning into all those microphones pointed at him (surely a major object of the exercise) that he's simply using accepted journalistic techniques.

Similarly, in considering "the popular justification" for behavior like O'Keefe's -- "that the other side does it" -- he is dishonestly "even-handed." Yes, there are lots of awful Democratic pols and strategists, and we write about them a lot here at DWT. But they really are modeling themselves on their Republican counterparts, and there are still lots of Dems who don't do this, and many others who try to keep it to a minimum. Contrast this with the all but exception-free run of present-day Republicans, among whom (sorry to have to keep saying this, but doesn't somebody have to?) the only applicable standard of truth is what makes the beholder feel good to pretend is true.

And so, in the following statement, which on the whole represents a bracingly outspoken stand, lumping together as "equal and opposite abuses" what O'Keefe does and "a liberal journalist call[ing] Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin pretending to be a conservative donor, fishing for incriminating quotes" amounts to, well, kind of a flagrant lie. The liberal journalist didn't have to do much fishing; he simply made Walker feel comfortable saying what he clearly actually believes. He would have a tough time claiming that he was in any way misrepresented Was a line crossed? Yes. But that isn't remotely equivalent to Gerson's own characterization of O'Keefe's activity in the anti-NPR travesty: manufacturing an elaborate lie.

That said, this remains a strong statement:

Abuses are employed as excuses for equal and opposite abuses. The result is more than a race to the murky journalistic bottom. It is the triumph of a thoroughly postmodern view of politics: Power means everything. Truth means little. Ethical standards are for the weak and compromised. Influence is gained, not by persuasion, but by deception and ruthlessness.

This escalation is really a descent.

Again, it would be nice to have some recognition that what Gerson is describing became standard operating practice for Republicans by the time of the Bush regime, under the tactical leadership of people like Karl Rove and Tom DeLay (with much of theoretical underpinning for the "deception and ruthlessness" being supplied by opportunistic consultants, more often than not Frank Luntz), nevertheless, these are words that deserve to live and be reheard periodically, even if all too often they'll come up again in connection with people Gerson has gone back to cheering on.

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