Secrets and Lies

I Am The Eggman. I Am The Eggman. I Am the Douchebag!

“You know, just when I think you're the shallowest man I know, you somehow manage to drain a little bit more out of the pool.”
Elaine to Jerry—Seinfeld, Episode #59, “The Implant”

I know not to expect anything remotely resembling class from a bottom-feeding miscreant like Matt Drudge, what with his track record for blaring, and then cowardly running away from self interest-serving lies, operating as an unabashed smear hit-man for the right, and of course covering the asses of his wingnut benefactors through widely disseminated push-back (written by them). He's a disingenuous hack, masquerading as some sort of next-wave “journalist”, when in the end he couldn't write his way out of a wet paper back if his pen had a diamond tip. The key to his “success”? It is in no way related to the quality of his “reportage”. It merely is the manifestation of something my father used to tell me all the time about seeming unfairness and how merit oftentimes does not win out.

“Sometimes son...it isn't about being good. It's about being FIRST.”

Drudge? Merely the dude with an idea and a faster baud modem than his pre-histor-internet peers.

Add to that good timing a petty, and vindictive personality and his having all the scruples of a rabid jackal loping about the unguarded newborn wing of a hospital and you get the man in whole.

However, give the devil his due. The one thing the marble-mouthed cyber-thug has going for him is a well-cultivated network of snitches and lapdogs waiting with bated breath for his every gutteral utterance.

Thus, when he breaks a story—regardless of how damaging—it can hit with the force of a stray spark in a vapor-filled gas main.

He did just that late last week when he blared in a banner headline the till-then-clandestine presence of Britain's Prince Harry's serving with his fellow British troops in Afghanistan. Clandestine because of known threats against the young Royal's life, and his unit should his location become known.

Just...wow. (via Crooks & Liars)

Tsk...tsk...tsk...
The 23-year-old prince was posted in mid-December to the restive Helmand province of southern Afghanistan under a cloak of secrecy following an unusual agreement reached between the media and the army.

However, the arrangement collapsed after news was leaked on the US website, the Drudge Report, yesterday.

The ministry said the decision to withdraw the prince, who is third in line to the throne, was taken primarily because “the worldwide media coverage of Prince Harry in Afghanistan could impact on the security of those who are deployed there, as well as the risks to him as an individual soldier.”

So, this lunk-headed bomb-tosser basically jeopardized not only Prince Harry's life, but that of his unit-mates just-fucking-because? I am no fan of war—it's a disgusting, life-coarsening thing whether justified or not, but I will give serious credit to those who put their asses on the line to fight—for the poor grunts humping it for college money, or a sense of duty or family tradition. And for someone like Prince Harry who deigned to serve when he—unlike the VAST majority of the children of political privilege here in this country—could have sat on his ass, sippeing at Pimms and Sevens till he was a silver-haired do-nothing King. Via birthright he could have ducked anything—he could probably garotte “Who Want's To be A Millionaire's” Chris Tarrant in the middle of a programme and in the end, walk away unscathed.

But...he chose to serve and was doing so with an understanding that it would be kept secret as a matter of national security until apparently Matt Drudge ran out of unflattering Hillary pics to run and ran dry of synonyms for ragheaded darkie to pillory Obama with—so, he went with a stupid, attention-getting, red-cheeked shit-in-the-street leak of confidential and potentially danger-increasing information.

You know Goddamned well that were it one of President Bush's responsibility-phobic daughters' Apple-tini sodden asses on the line in a secret war-zone location, Drudge would've made the Sphinx look like a sodium-pentatholed Chris Tucker with not only his silence, but a vicious lashing out at anyone daring to break that silence.

And that's the crux of it—his naked partisanship and a-moral “fuck propriety—I'll run with any manner of story about anyone who isn't fellating me with deference and perks” style. He'll trash you not out of any sense of wrong or right (or whether what he's pushing is actually true or not—as Sidney Blumenthal, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton all would painfully find out), but just because he can, because it serves his wingnut masters, and because dirt fucking sells.

The ultimate irony is that for all his incessant muckraking on others, he's often the first to rail about someone or some entity endangering national security or his backers' interests through their actual tough investigative reporting. And the right-wing media he funnels his swill to join him in that double-standard. “How dare you release the Abu Ghraib pictures! They're inflammatory!” “We need to prosecute those in the press who leaked about this goverment's illegal secret prisons!” “Someone must pay for daring to talk about the depth of our illegality in spying on Americans”. But of course, you've barely heard a word about Drudge's shitty little line-step because he's “their boy”. Add into the mix the fact that Drudge has some nasty “secrets” about himself that he litigiously fights with all of his hypocritical, indignant might—via Crooks and Liars:

Many have asked about the egg reference in my earlier post. It comes from an article in Salon back in 2000. Jeannette Walls had a spat with Drudge over her book entitled “Dish” in which she revealed some of Matt Drudge’s preferences. She actually never mentioned anything about eggs in the book. Matt brought it out into the open:

After a mutual friend of both gossips tipped off Drudge as to just what these “lurid allegations” (about him—LM's note) were—a nasty case of pubic lice, a penchant for fully clothed sex in the shower and a bizarre egg fetish—he began to spread them himself….

“He likes to have sex with eggs. He likes them smeared all over naked male bodies.”

“It’s all very well sourced,” she told the New York Post’s Page Six. “If he offers you a bite of his omelet, take a pass.”

Splat!

And here, via Raw Story:

Drudge is a fine example of a nut-job. He’s obsessed with being known—starting non-gay rumors about himself, pestering big papers to get coverage—but wants absolutely nothing “out” about his personal life. Certainly not the kind of details he’d splash across his page, anyway. Unless it’s a rumor he tried to start about himself and Laura Ingraham. He even reportedly asked the New Times that no full body photos accompany that interview. That is either one of the gayest things I’ve ever heard or one of the craziest.

Pretty secretive little panty-sniifing (or should I say,“tighty-whit-ey sniffing”), garbage-picking parasite...ain't he? He uses his contacts and “ins” all over the place to gather dirt on pissed-off, would-be retaliators to keep them from ratting out his own creepy-fuck behavior. The day's gonna come though when somebody bigger, badder and with a more powerful “gun” than him will cut him off at the knees and leave him choking on the refuse cloud in history's dustbin. It happens to 'em all. His political and temperamental forefather Walter Winchell saw his once-mighty influence first blunted, and then quickly drained away as people finally tired of his knee-jerk reactionaryism and then saw himself mocked mercilessly in the media—particularly the scathing classic film (One of my all-time favorites) “Sweet Smell Of Success”...

“The real Walter Winchell, no longer as powerful as he'd been in the 1940s but still a man to be reckoned with, went after (screenwriter) Ernest Lehman with both barrels upon the release of Sweet Smell Of Success. Winchell was not so much offended by the unflattering portrait of himself as by the dredging up of an unpleasant domestic incident from his past.”

In the end, the once omnipotent and widely read Winchell was reduced to standing on a Hollywood street corner handing out mimeographed copies of his “column” for free to disinterested passers-by like some sandwich-boarded, nudie-show barker passing out coupons for “Live Girlz!” Drudge's years of hypocrisy—just like Winchell's—and rank amorality will certainly bring him low when the worm turns, as it always does at some point. It'll be the ultimate comeuppance for a turd-gobbling little cyber-thug like him. Countless people unfairly outed. Security and highly sensitive relationships fatally compromised. Reputations...trashed. Lives actually endangered.

All for the sake of a nasty addiction to running people down, spreading gossip, and shilling for parties who mean no one well. All that and what cheap, fleeting fame it grants. That day of payback's pimp-slap'll be a sweet and vicious one...as it is for all “can't take it” bullies.

The prescient words of a then-Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson come rushing to mind...

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

How true those words rang...especially when the bullying Tyson would ironically find himself on the receiving end of a sea-changing “punch in the mouth.”

Do “dirt” and you set yourself up for a “dirt-nap” Trade in shit, and you'll find yourself eating it. Callously play around with people's lives and you'll eventually see your own ruined.

Pimp a secret...push a lie. When fate bites back...don't wonder why.

There's more...

Your “Round'-The-Way” Vocabulary Phrase Of The Week:

“WOLF TICKET”

Just Ask Dear Sweet Emily...oh, never mind!—NOT!

WOLF TICKET: The phrase wolf ticket is a corruption of woof ticket, an African American slang expression for the practice of verbal intimidation, ”sellin' (or passin' out) wolf tickets,” that was misinterpreted. Over time, the misnomer has become accepted terminology in some quarters.

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“Selling wolf tickets” is the act of engaging in threatening or intimidating verbal aggression, usually without the intent of doing actual physical harm. In West African and African-American cultures, verbal sparring and physical displays traditionally were employed as proxies for physical violence to preserve life and maintain peace and order. Woofin' also can be a means of “calling someone out,” of challenging an opponent to a verbal or physical match.

As we've been discussing a little bit of slang terminology and all that downpage a piece, colloquial words and phrases have been a' buzzin' in my head much of the day. The phrase “Wolf Ticket” is one that Black folks of a certain age used up until about twenty years or so ago. If you were on the playground, or on the corner, or a stoop, and some punk-ass clown was just flappin' his lips about all the stuff he was gonna do to “X” person, and you knew he was all about bullshit with his reasoning and swaggering, that fool was basically selling a “Wolf Ticket”.

Especially if the idiot later had to do a public backdown.

Yesterday ladies and gentlemen, some verrrry prominent people got busted selling “Wolf Tickets”.

From The Times yesterday afternoon:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold, contradicting an assessment two years ago that Tehran was working inexorably toward building a bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to be explosive in the middle of tense international negotiations aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear energy program, and in the middle of a presidential campaign during which a possible military strike against Iran’s nuclear program has been discussed.

The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran’s ultimate intentions about gaining a nuclear weapon remain unclear, but that Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.”

Now remember these infamous howls?

“I’ve told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III,” said the President. ”It seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

“Arooooooooo!” to the second power!

“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions,” Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies.

He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow them to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that “the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time.”

If Iran continues on its current course, Cheney said the U.S. and other nations are “prepared to impose serious consequences."”

Prune-faced, old Mildew Wolf let loose his hoarse little howl reaaaaaal early in the game too:

“WASHINGTON - A prominent Democratic senator urged the Bush administration to directly engage Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program and that preemptive military force should not be ruled out.

"I don't want to saber rattle, but I wouldn't take anything off the table," said Senator Joe Lieberman...

-------------------------------

But he told defense reporters Iran “is on a path to develop a very significant nuclear weapons program” and is working hard to develop missiles with ranges capable of striking targets in Europe as well as the Middle East.

And rounding out the minyan of mini-dicked machismo is just who you'd suspect:

In October, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Mr. Giuliani said: “As we all know, Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and they’re threatening to use them. If I’m president of the United States, I guarantee you we will never find out what they will do if they get nuclear weapons, because they’re not going to get nuclear weapons.”

You know, when people said to folks like these four lily-livered assclowns that caution should be observed because of the “debacle” of the wholesale swallowing of the lie-filled, administration massaged, bullshit faulty intelligence used to justify war with Iraq, said folks pooh-poohed those concerns and madly rattled sabers like seizure-addled, empty suits of armor.

Now we come to find that those concerns were well founded. Iraq had apparently dialed their offensive nuclear plans back years ago, in spite of the “I-am-too-tough!”, bantam-rooster rhetoric from Ahmadinejad.

I will say this bluntly. It is the rankest nadir of evil to cavalierly play “tough guy” with the lives of American soldiers. They are not expendable pawns to be thrown away willy-fucking-nilly. And these above noted combat-ducking skunks were perfectly willing to burn the lives of said soldiers over the sketchiest, bully-boy posturing. Bush and his people sat on the NIE report for almost a year, hoping to pressure the compilers of it to see things “The Cheney Way”, and use those findings as an impetus to go to war, throwing more of America's sons and daughters, and potentially the lives of millions of innocent Iranian civilians, who matter less than an amoeba to them— on the pyre of egomania and messianic, “new world order” crazythink.

It takes a special, demonic kind of hubris for a draft-dodging frat boy, a system-gaming quintuple-deferment-nabbing coward, and a couple of sanctimonious, deferment-hungry scolds to practically salivate at the idea of sending somebody else's kids into death's maw for shits, giggles and nubbin-dicked over-compensation.

But that's exactly what they did. Along with their aides de camp in the pundit class like William (“Let someone else get bloody”) Kristol and the near entirety of the wingnut blogosphere—punkass chickenhawks all in a row. They, as a whole care not a whit about the lives of people beyond themselves. Sacrifice for thee, but not for my rubber-chicken munching, ball-going ass. These are evil people. Evil, death-horny “people”. And this exposure of the bogusness of the Iran intelligence they were so furiously beating off to confirms it without a doubt. My God..the last time I saw people so proud and arrogant about being so horribly wrong, 3,882 American soldiers got pine-boxed home, another 29,451 were wounded, and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a faraway land who “threw flowers at our feet” got themselves D-E-A-D for their trouble. The next time one of these war-pimping fuckers lets the line “Support The Troops”, or “Bringing Democracy” ooze from their venomous lips, may Almighty God, Yahweh, or a random, non-denominational thundercloud just lightning-strike them dead in their hypocritical teeth.

I mean, I know selling “Wolf Tickets” is pretty damned easy for people who've never had to lift a soft, non-worked finger in their miserable lives and have always relied on someone else doing all the fighting for them...but this ain't a fucking game of Stratego we're talking about here. It's real people who bleed, and die, and are never seen again once nutjob, eliminationist think-tankers and their administration counterparts' neo-Crusade and “glass parking lot” fantasies of a peaceful, perfect Mid-East comes true.

They don't understand that, though. The President just got through grumping, hissing and finger-pointing his way through a press conference where after his “Wolf Ticket” selling was exposed for all to see by the truth, he continued to jump bad and as we say nowadays in lieu of “Wolf Ticket”, “pop shit”.

I remember a loudmouth dude years ago on my Junior High playground selling “Wolf Tickets” about how he was gonna do this, and he was gonna do that to some other guy he was running down just because he could. We'd all tired pretty much of his yammering until from nowhere...or more factually, a school window a couple of stories above us, a large cup of lunchroom pudding exploded against the back of this clown's head, neck and back—“BLAP!” He turned to where the pudding cup came from—“What the fuck”-ing to beat the band, when somebody from behind the handball court wall chucked an open container of milk at him too—“BLAP!” again.

Loudmouth whipped his head around the other way now, as we all laughed our best “Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids” gang-laugh at the discredited, pudding-and-milk-soaked charlatan.

Dubya...I may not get my lightning-bolt dream to come true, but, uh...you may wanna get a Handi-Wipe or two.

That NIE-brand pudding and milk you've got on you will leave a nasty stain if you let it set too long.

UPDATE:

One of our frequent commenters here calls attention to something in comments, and I must say was ahead of the curve on the point some of our well-paid pundit “thinkers” are now saying 24 hours after he first noted it at his own blog. Props to The Wanderer:

“After a while, as the legend of the Boy Who Cried Wolf will tell you, a person's lies diminish in influence to unattractive returns.. Sounding the drumbeat for war against Iran because of its WMD program rang hollow with many of us because of the abject and utter failure of the Bushies to find any WMDs in Iraq (which I beg to remind the wingnuts in the audience, was the first reason for invading that country).

Now, with new evidence and a new assessment by the 16 US intelligence agencies, you can expect denials and spin galore from the White House, and the corpulent bulk of Dick Cheney, like Falstaff "larding the lean earth with his footsteps," rampaging through the corridors of certain buildings in Langley and Washington leaving blood and entrails in his wake.

One may wonder, "Why would the intel community throw the Administration under the bus like this?"

Simple answer: The intel community got thrown under the bus by the Bushies post-9/11 and were blamed for the Iraqi WMD thing. The notion that the intel was cherry-picked, marketed and spun to fit peoples' fears was silently swept aside.

Moral: Don't mess with the bureaucracy; they can do terrible things to you.”

He nails it. And gives me a chance to deploy this piece of art again:



True that.

There's more...