Guckert Story Fits “The Template”

Boortz today looks at the Guckert story and notes:

For some reason, spurred on by leftist blogs, the mainstream media is trying to keep this story going as long as possible.  The reason, of course, being that it’s bad for Bush.  Remember the template.

“The Template” of course is, if it makes Republicans look bad it gets run.  If it makes democrats look bad, it gets buried. Boortz demonstrates this clearly:

“And so now the latest is that Mr. Guckert had a previous life as a gay prostitute.  This was before he got into journalism.  But wait?  Didn’t we read something several years ago about some gay prostitute using Barney Frank’s home as a base of operations?  Why yes!  I think there was such a story!  And just why didn’t that story grow legs like the Gannon bit?  Well, you don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that Frank is a liberal Democrat, do you? “

I’ve been saying for a long time that these ‘famous person’ deaths occur in threes. The Denver Post has pointed up the third; Hunter S. Thompson, who apparently shot himself.

Update: I see his last column was of a conversation with Bill Murray.

Much is explained.

Son of an Update:

In reading some of the drooling going on over this death, I am reminded of my first impressions of the man via his writings: That being that the reader must needs be totally strung out on something or another to be able to claim with a straight face that they actually got anything at all out of reading him, other than eyestrain.

To at least some degree, that perception was reinforced in watching all the various sides of Blogdom (And yes, the MSM, too) lining up with bits on the man… each putting their own spin on it all, and thinking they had some inate understanding of whatever the hell HST was talking about. Amusuingly, a lot of what I’ve been reading is directly contradictory, in their estimations. The far left and the Libertarian extremists are both singing his praises, but contradicting each other in what Thompson stood for… It’s clear neither really understood…. not that for the most part I did…. indeed; I began in the 80’s to doubt even Thompson himself understood. He seemed to me to be making stuff up as he went along.

Look… it’s true… the guy could write.  I did admire him for that ability. And as such, those looking to sell dead trees with ink on them, linked up with him… and the impressionable, upon reading this output, hailed him as some sort of spiritual leader.. a somewhat more prolific Timothy Leary.  Then again, many others also have writing ability, as blogdom rather nicely illustrates. Perhaps being a good writer anymore isn’t the whole story.

A lot of people writing in these last 24 hours have attributed the ‘baby boomer rebellion’ to him… or at least, in light of his method of exit, it’s ending.

In both cases, my answer is the same: Bunk. If anything, he was a reflection of the weirder side of the times… and nowhere near the driver’s seat at ANY point in the journey.  Here’s someone who covered Hell’s Angels from the inside in what one can only term conspiritorial tomes, and at the same time, decided Nixon was the Anti-Christ, and thereby gained a folowing in the anti-war left.  He took the weird and the rebellion against everything that was tradition, and embraced it.

In the end, though, when the rebellion he’d unwittingly inspired faded, and become a bit of memory, like an Iron Butterfly tune… and the world returned to it’s program which was already in progress, Hunter S. Thompson found himself too far out of step for even his own liking. His being weird wasn’t attracting all that many, any more, because frankly, in light of the happenings to these days, he wasn’t all that weird, anymore… the bar had been raised.

And that, in the end, is what I consider drove him over the edge into his paranoia.

If one can take his writings as indication, he was angry right up to the end… Angry at America…. it”s military, it’s current President, it’s Republican majorities, (And perhaps of larger import, the degree of popular support they have…) Agngry perhaps as the leftists were that anger alone wan’t going to cut it, in the end. Angry he could not make a more complete hostile takeover of America… as America, after the 60’s, became America, again…. as Americans, rather than ditching American culture, re-embraced it, instead.

I’m sure we’ll all be hearing in future about how the man was a combination of James Dean and James Joyce or somebody. Doesn’t matter who. Not really. He’ll be held up as some kind of hero to the rebels without a freakin’ clue of all social and political stripes. He will become the next Che, or perhaps the next Chomsky, or on the other side, (Insert libertarian hero here) and someone somwhere is going to make a pile of money off of a poster of him to pass out at political rallies… particularly ones where impressionable school kids with more wet than brains between their ears congregate.

The fact is though, that in the end, Thompson was merely one of the last victims of the paranoic 60’s counter-culture he never found it within himself to grow out of. And in the end, the paranoia that was always there, not far under the surface, took over, and pulled the trigger.

GRandson of an update: OTB has more details. They more or less confirm my read of the matter.

Ya know, the more I see stuff like this post at INDC Journal, the more I am convinced thta there IS no ‘moonbat wing” of the Democratic party. Rather, the Democratic party is naught but moonbats.

“They’ve (The Bush ADministration) had a very very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media, and the way it’s handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced” –Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)

The whole of the Democratic party has been given over to nutcases like this. This is what passes for their heart and their soul today.

And the amazing part is, they still can’t understand why they’re in trouble with the voters.

BroadwayWorld.com is reporting

Stage and Screen legend John Raitt, who made his Broadway debut playing Billy Bigelow in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, passed away today at his home in California from complications due to pneumonia. Raitt had just celebrated his 88th birthday on January 29th.

Sadly, that’s two.

AP Wire is reporting:

“Sandra Dee, the blond beauty who attracted a huge teen audience with films such as “Gidget” and “Tammy and the Doctor” and had a headlined marriage to pop singer Bobby Darin, died Sunday morning of complications from kidney disease. Her family said she was 63.”

That’s one.

Captain’s Quarters makes the rather obvious observation that

“The rationale for the DNC’s selection of Howard Dean as party chair has been that he “energized their base,” driving many new voters into electoral politics and creating a juggernaut for his campaign.”

I’ve begun to wonder about this conclusion, however. Let’s consider this. Is it the grassroots of the Democratic party, or merely the far-wacko-leftists that they’ve energized, at the EXPENSE of the real rank and file Democrats? 

This is a question that those rank and file Democrats are going to be asking themselves; Do such people as the “Bush Equals Hitler” crowd, and the Shoe Thrower at the Debate in Portland the other night, really represent the interests of the Democrats? Do rank and file Democrats really want to be associated with a party that (wink wink, nudge nudge) supports the actions of such people?

I think in the end, the answer for most Democrats will be ‘no’. And that means Howard Dean will cost the Democrats votes.

The Spoons Experience is not one of my regular reads. But I’m starying to think thta an omission on my part, after reading JIMMY CARTER FOR DUMMIES.

The New York Post :

“The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an insider-trading probe of shock jock Howard Stern’s deal to join Sirius Satellite Radio. “

Yeah. Big shock.
I wonder if they can install a studio in a jailcell?

Donald Sensing of One Hand Clapping reminds us that today was Iwo Jima, back in 1945.

I’ve always been somewhat shaken after reading about this day’s history, and Don does a top notch job of recounting it. Shaken, I say, but not for the losses alone… but that America contains such men, even today.

Cathy goes off on Susan Estrich:

“Oh, for God’s sake. See, this is what I cannot stand about lefty feminists: Their preening notion that it’s a brave and scary and stomach-churning thing to voice what they imagine to be a dissenting opinion. It isn’t, not in this country. I’ve always found expressing my opinions easy as pie, sans benefit of Rolaids, even though my friends are often appalled. But so what?”

Well, I’ve not blogged on this “Estrich vs Kinsley in three falls” nonsense, but I love the idea that the Democrats have turned on each other.

Bill at INDC goes deep for the big play on this Hume Socialist Security argument the leftie blogs are carping about. In short:

Though the interpretation by lefty bloggers that Hume’s implication is misleading is reasonable, and the final piece of legislation was more similar to today’s Social Security than Bush’s proposed changes, Hume’s specific mention was, in fact, a 100% accurate recitation of FDR’s stated intent for Social Security.

Which should end the argument.

And by the way, Bill makes mention of something I noted:

….it is ironic that some of Bush’s current proposals are similar to FDR’s stated proposal.

Well, now… ironic? Perhaps. But consider this carefully;

Here we have a Republican President, whom the lefties like to label as the new incarnation of Adolph Hitler, making exactly the same noises as FDR… and it’s not far enough left for the leftists.

All this shows us… both the original FDR proposal being re-proposed by a Republican… and the leftists not being satisified with it… is how far to the left politics in this country have tilted…. and how far behind the Democrats have left their icon, FDR.

“WASHINGTON, Feb 17(Reuters) Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is expected to visit Afghanistan with the top U.S. aid official to spotlight America’s aid work there, officials said on Thursday.”

Meanwhile, The French (AFP) Are reporting:

“US senator Hillary Clinton, wife of former president Bill Clinton, is expected in Baghdad on Saturday, a source at the US embassy said on Friday.

The source said the five-member delegation would hold talks with Iraqi government officials and members of the national assembly, whose makeup was confirmed Thursday by the electoral commission.

Heading the US delegation is John McCain, the Republican senator for Arizona and one-time rival of US President George W. Bush. McCain has been critical of the US administration’s policies in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Are they going together?
And which will get more, and or better press?

This could get to be fun…..

I still have a dog looking for a new home. If you have a dog-sized space in your life…. this may be a good fit for you.

Update: Yes, not only did I inject a typo into the original post, Blogger decided to put up 4 copies of the post with the typo in it.

D’Oh!!!!!

Power Line reader John Arcari informs us of the Debate between Howard “Duck” Dean and Richard Perele. The highlight of the report is when some 52 year old Democrat threw a shoe at Richard Perle while screaming “mother f****** liar” numerous times as the police dragged him out of the debate hall. He missed Mr. Perle, who took the incident in light fashion.

Like I said, Gang, the Democrats know they’re in trouble and are coming unglued.

RTWT.

Does a blogosphere frenzy that helps bring down a CNN news exec for a comment he made mean free speech is in peril? Nope. It’s exploding, saysBusiness Week. Choice snips:

” It’s all too easy to imagine that the spread of technology is chilling America’s tradition of free speech.”……..

In truth, blogging represents an explosion of free speech. While blogs certainly empower lynch mobs, they can also lead to long and open conversations, virtual town meetings. These are the greatest antidote to censorship and secrecy. The Jordan case gave birth to loads of such discussions.

One quibble, and I think it a major one: It’s unclear to me how Bloggers evolved in these minds into a lynch mob.  After all, a lynch mob operates without any external input… and Blogs for whatever else they represent, are at the root, themselves, external input… and the amounts of input are expanding by the day.