So it's been a rather luvly week. Our man weathered a Wrighteous storm and came out stronger than ever. The latest Gallup poll has him up a remarkable 10 points. I'd say a good deal of that, 4 points or so, was due to the fabulousness of his speech of race, but I do believe we owe a good deal of that gap to Bosnia, and we need to thank people like Jed and the Kossacks who worked to make that thing viral. The story got a lot of attention this week -- it unfortunately seems to be winding down now, and I thought I'd reflect on it somewhat.
There have been many speculations about why Hillary told such an outrageous misstatement. No shortage of outlets have offered their thoughts.
Psychology Today doesn't believe she lied... they think she believed what she was saying and was having "false memories". I wasn't encouraged by this explanation.
The folks on MSNBC (Buchanan and guest Shrum) believed she might have felt for some reason that her first lady experience was not enough and needed to toughen it up. Their tone was "poor Hillary doesn't have to do this to sound tough; she was a valuable advisor to her husband." Watching that made me wonder if they were implying that she had self-esteem issues, and so felt the need to fabulize, which I also didn't find encouraging.
Hillary's own excuse for telling the tale at least three times and vigorously denying it was false until there was undeniable video evidence... is fatigue.
Oh please.
So what was it? Was she tired? Delusional? Suffering from low self-esteem in regards to her achievements? Or just plain shamelessly evil? None, methinks. Hillary lied because the media let her. To me that was the immediate and most plausible explanation as I listened to all the other stuff.
Hillary lied because she could. There had already been stories of Northern Ireland, SCHIP, the family health act, and even a couple of stories on the Bosnia tale itself, but Hillary went unharmed. The Bosnia story wasn't supposed to blow up like this. So she kept telling the story. She had the audacity to tell it because she wouldn't be touched. Told it at least three times on the campaign trail, making it more outrageous each time, until it was so outrageous that you couldn't ignore it anymore -- or, until at least, the netroots got so frustrated that by God, they were not going to let anyone ignore it.
If you look back to the days when the Kossacks were actively trying to make the Bosnia story, a good deal of us, and a good deal of the field hands over at Al Giordino's blog, just didn't believe that the media would pick this story up.
Said one field hand named Patrick,
Al,
I’d love to be wrong, but I see nothing coming of this. People will harp on it continually, and the MSM will ignore it, just as they’ve ignored issues of Hillary’s secrecy.
I’m not sure what inspires them to ignore stuff like this on Hillary’s end, but endlessly talk about Powers’ use of the word ‘monster.’
The whole ‘free pass’ meme is boring; I suspect it has more to do with everyone expecting this kind of secrecy and dishonesty from Hillary, so it isn’t ‘news’ in the entertainment sense of the word.
So many of us really believed that no one would report on this monster of a story. Northern Ireland had gotten two posts on CNN's political ticker and about 25 seconds on NBC nightly news, both "balanced" out by accusations that it "claims" from the "Obama camp" (CNN) or by reports of Barack's own foreign policy misdeeds (Andrea Mitchell: "but he voted for war funding!"). I begrudgingly expected that it would be covered by only our Keith, the most honest man in the news, but the rest of 'em would just ignore it as usual. And it made me mad, because when I told stories to some of my collagues about Bosnia and Northern Ireland, one man said to me, "Those are just scurrilous rumors like the Obama muslim smear. Why haven't we heard about it on CNN then?"
The fact that it ended up on the evening news, and on the morning news after that, left many of us both giddy and downright stunned. Finally. Finally. I don't think I'm the only one who viewed the Clintons as funadmentally dishonest, and was going mad that the media just ignored it, who couldn't convince their parents that Hillary was a very untruthful person.
I think this Kossack named Firecrow said it best:
it's about damn time (34+ / 0-)
I feel like there's been this big mean drunk ass sasquatch stomping around my house wrecking stuff for weeks and nobody would believe me. Finally the media looked in and said "I'll be damned there is a big drunk ass sasquatch in Firecrows house". Hey, lets report on it!
Jed Report and the Kos Nation really do have themselves to thank for relentlessly pushing for viral status. The originality with which this was pursued was fabulous. Jed's trailer was spectacular. It was shown on ABC News and on Dan Abram's show. This is what Obama meant when he said it was our election. I know that for me, Obama inspired me to make my first youtube video ever, one that contrasted Obama and Clinton denouncing/voting for the war. It only got 1,000 views, and I gave up promoting it because Obama finally released his own clip showing Hillary voting for the war and easily made 30,000 views, but it felt so good to be motivated to do something. This is what Obama means. This is what he inspires.
I truly believe that the genius of Jed's trailer, and the 100,000+ views it got before the story finally broke big time, had a big role to play. It is fully conceivable that the media would have continued to ignore it. The New York Times buried both Bosniagate stories on page 18 and 19. The clips they used on their caucus blog were weak as hell.
In conclusion, shame on the media's refusal to do their jobs for letting the lies get this far, and way to go Kossacks for demanding that the truth be told, even if you had to tell it yourselves. Viva la revolucion.