- If they were any Really Big Democratic Names (as opposed to a few low-rent lobbyists), ABC would have announced it on the show they did with Palfrey. Instead, they held back, much to Palfrey's disgust. (The media pattern of pretending that Democrats are as much if not more peccable in these matters is so strong as to twist news coverage of this story into an incoherent pretzel, as Media Matters shows.)
- Palfrey has stated repeatedly that the bulk (if not all) of the Big Names are Bush Junta officials and their hangers-on. She also emphasized the vast difference between their pious public images and their kinky reality. Not many Democrats that we like fit that profile. (Jerks like Lieberman fit it to a T. And if he's taken down by this, I won't cry. Just as I won't cry if Rahm Emanuel's buddy Al "I love the Bankruptcy Bill and hate the estate tax" Wynn gets taken down -- it makes Donna Edwards' job that much easier. :-)
Remember, the whole reason Palfrey publicly released ALL the docs is because ABC pissed her off by holding back half a dozen big names that she knew to be on the records (and that ABC's Brian Ross stated were on the records) she had given them before the judge ordered the injunction. Right after that, she said that as soon as the judge lifted the injunction, she would make arrangements to get everything out in the open.
Here's how Brian Ross described the contents of the ABC copies in April (emphases mine):
"It's a long list, we've been going through the phone records for the last four years provided for us by Jean Palfrey," Ross reported on Monday morning. "There are some very prominent people, lobbyists, lawyers, members of the military, other people in the Bush administration."
Again, it was ABC's decision to withhold these names that enraged Palfrey, hence her going public with all of the documents.
Now, bear in mind that Palfrey's operation was shut down in October of last year -- BEFORE the 2006 elections that cost the GOP their congressional majority.
Bear also in mind that the time Palfrey's business was open covers the time the Republicans totally ruled the Capitol Hill roost, to the extent that they made sure (via the K Street Project set up by DeLay, Norquist and Abramoff) that Democrats were all but starved of lobbyist cash compared to Republicans. Very, very few lobbyists dared associate with Democrats for much of the 1990s, and even fewer during the 2000-2006 period. (Which may not be a bad thing, really -- especially to those of us who back http://www.publicampaign.org, the Clean Elections people dedicated to getting the money out of politics. Hell, I'll spot 'em a few lobbyists if it means we can take down a bunch of David Vitters.)
See why I'm not overly worried?
This is all too typical of how the mainstream corporate press covers for the GOP whenever possible.
Example 1: How many people know that Philip Giordano, the former mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut and Joe Lieberman's 2000 Republican opponent in the Senate race, is now in prison for raping eight- and ten-year-old girls? Not many. Yet this was happening at the same time in 2001 when the media decided 24/7 to insinuate and at times proclaim, without any evidence and despite what the law enforcement community was saying, that Gary Condit, an obscure California congressman, was a murderer. Yes, folks, they hounded Gary Condit out of politics for the signal crime of being a Democratic congressman who had been but one of the murdered Chandra Levy's many boyfriends -- but when it came to covering the ACTUAL crimes of a Republican mayor of a large city who was the GOP's endorsed candidate to become a United States Senator before he was caught, the media was silent as the tomb in comparison.
Example 2: At the same time they were hounding non-criminal Gary Condit and being quiet about actual criminal, they were also being comparatively silent about the death of former Congressman (and current MSNBC host) Joe Scarborough's employee Lori Klausutis. According to Michael Berkland, the coroner (a guy who was disbarred for mishandling autopsies in Missouri and Florida before Florida let him be licensed again) Klausutis died on a July day in 2001 of natural causes even though her head had two severe blunt-force head trauma injuries (PDFs with info on them here and here), including a hematoma the size of a fist and a transverse skull fracture seven inches long. (The coroner said she fainted and hit her head on a desk. Twice, apparently.)
Example 3: Remember when Democratic Governor James McGreevey and Republican Congressman David Dreier were both outed a few summers ago for having boyfriends on the payroll? The media trumpeted McGreevey's peccadilloes until he resigned, yet treated Dreier with kid gloves, and he's still in Congress to this day (though the temporary outing probably cost him his shot at replacing Tom DeLay, his mentor, as House Majority Leader).
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