Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 3/24/06

NOTE: While writing this post I found out that little Ben Domenech resigned. Somehow I believe the piece is still relevant though...

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

Well some weeks the moral bankruptcy and weakness of the conservative establishment media in Washington D.C. is such that this column really just writes itself. And these days if The Washington Post is involved, it’s like leaving a top Bush aide alone in Target with unpurchased major appliances or Governor Arnie within fondling distance of J-Lo’s ass. You just know funny things are going to happen.

So maybe in a healthy media atmosphere it would be shocking that this past week The Washington Post (oh sorry, I forgot the dot com which changes everything) hired a chickenhawk, home-schooled, race-baiting, plagiarizing bed-wetter named Ben Domenech to be its new blogger. I mean I know he’s a journalist in the sense that Ron Silver’s an actor or Joe Lieberman’s a Democrat, but new boss James Brady understood that conservatives just needed a voice they currently lacked at The Post.

What with the pro-Bush editorial page's Fred Hiatt, liberal-hating ombudsman and columnists George Will, Bob Novak, Robert Kagan and Charles Krauthammer along with “liberal hawk” Iraq War supporters Richard Cohen, David Ignatius and Peter Beinhart, how ever did conservatives get by before they added the next Jonah Goldberg to the fold (no talent and right-wing hack parents with contacts, where have I seen that before)? I wonder if there is any space left for a column by Vladimir Zhirinovsky or a blog for Eric Rudolph?

But let’s get back to the gist of this story. Two points need to be made. First, the once great Washington Post, an institution in this town and really the entire country, has found a way to suck so quickly Paris Hilton’s jealous. Bob Woodward once broke Watergate, now he breaks wind on a good day. On a bad one he lies about his involvement in an investigation into the traitorous outing of a CIA covert operative by Bush Administration officials. And if it were just The Post, it would be bad enough. But CNN and Bob Bennett, The New York Times and Judy Miller, MSNBC and… well everyone but Keith Olbermann (who I must admit is just about the best journalist on television). Does Fox News even need mention here?

Again, the pro-corporate conservative establishment media is real and it is dangerous. Because it is nowhere close to representing the opinions of most Americans on a variety of issues, and can drum up invasions based on lies when so inclined. It can even try and make you forget that with enormous budget shortfalls and numerous social ills Iraq has probably become the most expensive operation since Greta Van Susterin’s face.

But Ben Domenech is the really fun part of this story. Ben is a hack through and through. A Bush speechwriter, Regnery Editor — you know the publishing company that puts out a year’s worth of Michelle Malkin’s bipolarity under such clever little titles — and blogger at RedState, which shares IQ points with Jessica Simpson and views on race with Randy Weaver. Well now Ben has been fired because he is a serial plagiarist, not because he called Coretta Scott King a “communist” on the day of her funeral or claimed the “judiciary is worse than the KKK” (Not to mention his longing to live up to his hero: Jefferson Davis). But it’s ok Ben, don’t fret. Dick Cheney will probably still order that all computers have RedState as their homepage in any hotel room he chooses to stow his heart in for the night.

You’ll recover. Just remember that as I have written many times, “the only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”