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.

#

DARK DAYS FOR THE DARK SIDE: LAURA BUSH MUST BE LOCKING UP THE LIQUOR CABINETS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Gee, I turned on CNN when I woke this morning, around 5AM, and it was all about how Gonzales' support among Republicans had eroded. While I was sleeping? They even had professional South Carolina ass-licker supreme, Lindsey Graham, one of the most contemptible rubber stamps the Bush Regime has ever been emboldened by, on for an interview. Even the rarely rational, closeted homophobic senator, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is now admitting that Gonzales "has said some things that just don't add up."

And Republican senators, none of whom have an ounce of credibility after 6 years of conspiring with and enabling the Bush Regime to rape and pillage everything Americans hold dear, are one thing. Hard right propagandist Robert Novak is something else again. He has an even more dire message for the Rove and Cheney dead-enders than do Specter, Hagel and Graham.

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.)... praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."


...The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

The way they claim anything? By brazenly lying and getting their media shills to echo it.

CAN YOU GUESS WHICH PARTY ROBERT NOVAK IS CALLING "THE STUPID PARTY?" GUESS AGAIN

I'm not saying Newt Gingrich got it right when the Repugs won the House in 1994-- he didn't-- but as the NBC and CBS News video clips Crooks and Liars dug up clearly show, he wasn't pussyfooting around when it came to subpoena power and investigations. Of course he was investigating travel agents, stains on a blue dress and some kind of whacky real estate deal, none of which panned out. Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman have some far more serious things to investigate. With Bush's approval rating hovering between a quarter and a third of our fellow citizens-- a new all time low-- "those surveyed said by nearly 2-to-1 that they want Democrats to have more influence than President Bush on the direction of the nation."

I'm not saying New York is typical but last week's results there sure are devastating for the GOP-- and not unlike the results in other Northeast and Midwest states (think New Hampshire and Ohio and Pennsylvania for examples). "Last week’s losses by New York Republicans are finally sinking in: Democrats swept every statewide office for the first time since 1938. Eliot Spitzer amassed a record 69 percent landslide by winning 59 of New York's 62 counties. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton carried all but four. Three House seats changed hands, consigning Republicans to their smallest share of the state's Congressional delegation ever."

And Republican prospects for the long-term are even worse-- with Democrats poised to take the State Senate in 2 years. D'Amato is getting ready to say kaddish over his near-defunct party. One of the few Republicans left in the NY congressional delegation, Peter King, sure to lose his seat in the 2010 redistricting, whined that it was "a rough year to be a Republican" and that "there is no Republican base anymore." They're all in Alabama, Utah and Texas.

So what's the GOP doing in response to this? Well, vicious fighting has commenced between the most radical and extreme fanatics, represented by lunatic right Mike Pence of Indiana and the hard-right (but corruption driven) wing represented by the old DeLay/K Street machine: Blunt and Boehner. Novak is going crazy that Blunt and Boehner will probably be re-elected to their positions. (Hastert is retiring, probably from Congress altogether, but definitely from the leadership.)

In private conversation, Republican members blame Majority Leader John Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt in no small part for their mid-term election debacle. Yet, either Boehner, Blunt or both are expected to be returned to their leadership posts Friday. For good reason, the GOP often is called "the stupid party."

While an unpopular Iraq war and an unpopular George W. Bush were primary causes of last Tuesday's Republican rout, massive public disapproval of the GOP-controlled Congress significantly contributed. While abandoning conservative principles, the spendthrift House has become chained to special corporate interests represented by K Street lobbyists.

As Novak points out, the ultra-rightists (Pence and Shadegg) and the pretty ultra-rights (Blunt and Boehner) have "nearly identical" voting records. "The difference between them was demonstrated last Thursday when Blunt went to the Heritage Foundation to campaign for his retention as whip. He delivered a defense of earmarking. That is the view that led Republicans to earmark a "bridge to nowhere," and hundreds of other projects in competitive districts, hoping it would save them on Election Day. The House has been a place where Rep. Don Young (a notorious Alaska porker) was setting national transportation policy, where the "Cardinals" on the Appropriations Committee established earmarking records, where the pharmaceutical industry had a pipeline to party policy and where even Hastert was making personal profits on an earmark. Maybe that's what Republicans want to retain, even in the minority." Today even the hard right Club For Growth demanded Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis resign.

So is this curtains for the G.O.P.? I wish. But there are forces working in their favor. There is little double that the corruption of Rahm Emanuel and his political machine-- currently moving to take over the Democrat Party with aid from ideological allies in the DLC-- will prove every bit as venal and scandalous as the Republicans have. As Mark Taibbi wrote in a brilliant Rolling Stone essay about GOP corruption last January, "The Democrats, whose innocence in the crimes of the last five years to date corresponds exactly to their lack of opportunities for corruption, may now get a chance at the helm."

The Emanuel/Hoyer battle to undermine Pelosi and insert themselves into power positions within the House leadership is a clear indication of what we can expect in the future. I was fascinated today to watch the media being played by their machine and using two total worthless shills, newly minted "Democrat" Tim Mahoney and Democrat-most-likely-to-defect Heath Shuler as examples of newly elected freshmen. Both were parroting the Emanuel/Hoyer line about how Hoyer is the preferred candidate for Leader over Jack Murtha. No one in the media seems to have thought to go a little further than what was spoon fed to them and maybe ask John Hall, Carol Shea-Porter, Jerry McNerney or other actual Democrats how they see it.