It's funny. They say we aren't tough enough to lead.
I think they are right, but not in the sense you might think.
When they say it, the implication is that we'll be soft on Al Qaeda. That if we caught Osama bin Laden, we'd give him the best lawyers in the country, try him in Federal Court and let him go when it was discovered that the gov't didn't properly cross its I's and dot its T's.
That assertion is, of course, fucking ridiculous.
But...
When it comes to punching bad guys in the mouth during the course of an election, I cannot tell you how right the Republicans are about us.
And let me tell you who "us" us.
If you hit the rec button on the currently rec'd diary regarding Ron Fournier, and if you did nothing more than call the AP or write a fucking letter... well, you are part of the "weakness problem".
It is fucking ridiculous to beg right-wing operatives for understanding. The proper reaction to this is not to whine, it's to take the motherfucker down and make an example out of him.
more on the flip
When Michelle Malkin and the freepers got their panties in a bunch over the Dan Rather report, they didn't make phone calls and write letters. They crucified Rather and Mapes. Leaving aside the fact that the report was absolutely true, the right wing did exactly what we should be doing.
We know (or have reason to strongly suspect) from his email to Karl Rove that Ron Fournier is a right-wing Christain evangelical. What else do we know about him?
Precious little.
When the Rather story broke, Freepers got busy. For weeks they obsessed over fonts and sources and typesets... they launched a distributed research effort.
What if we were to do that with Fournier? What if we were to find out what church he attends (and record a sermon or two, ala Jeremiah Wright?) What if someone discovered that his wife volunteers for the John McCain campaign or made several thousand dollars in contributions to Republicans? What if we learned that Fournier took his daughter to a purity ball?
The fact is that Fournier has succeeded in making himself a public figure. He is no longer a private reporter; he's the story. He wrote the right the right-wing talking points and called it "Analysis". He interviewed with the McCain campaign and has shilled for them ever since.
Yeah, it's distasteful to investigate someone's personal life. Yeah, you wouldn't want someone going through your personal life with a fine-toothed comb. But you aren't writing political hit pieces for the premiere press wire in an effort to influence an election, are you? And when you do write, you don't call it "News", do you?
Fournier put himself in this position. He's climbed out to the edge of his own petard. It's time we suspend him from it.
So yeah... If anyone has the time, I suggest a serious distributed reporting effort ala E Pluribus Media. I'll be contacting friends at other news services and blogs; this is a story that deserves development.
finally... if you or anyone you know are in possession of any information that may help to expose Fournier as a partisan hack with an axe to grind, please email me at stark. m at gmail. com. All submissions will be kept confidential unless credit is asked for.
Update [2008-8-23 23:19:23 by Mike Stark]: It was pointed out to me that the letter-writing campaign at FireDogLake is not directed at Fournier or the AP. Instead it is directed at the local newspapers that run Washington Bureau AP reports. I jumped to a conclusion to quickly - I actually think this is a good idea... That aside, I also think it's a good idea to do everything we can to make an example out of Fournier. And that includes digging into his personal life to see if there is anything there that should disqualify him from working as the AP's Washington Bureau Chief.