Caveat lector

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2002

TONY BLANKLEY’S BAD CHARACTER PROBLEM: We’re sorry to report what is now crystal clear: Tony Blankley doesn’t know who he is. Most days he shows up as Intelligent Tony—and when he does, he’s one of Washington’s brightest. But sometimes, Potty-Mouth Tony shows up instead—or sometimes, he’s Invented Facts Tony. On these days, he smuttily tosses the feed to The Cattle. Here he is, disgracing his craft and destroying our discourse, holding forth in today’s corrupt Times:

BLANKLEY: According to the ABC-TV Sacramento affiliate Channel 10, Mr. Gore—the man of 1,000 personalities—has indicated that he will be delivering his stock speech, “Technology and the Future of America,” to 1,000 federal, state and local government officials...

Admittedly, Mr. Gore is the man who invented the Internet. And he does have an intimate knowledge of the technology of tobacco raising and processing. It also must be conceded that the former vice president did reinvent government. And, he is one of the few people not currently under the stewardship of the Master in Lunacy who understands why the internal combustion engine must be banned from our civilization.

Invented the Internet surely isn’t worth comment. (Cattle, do you ever tire of letting the Blankleys talk down to you in so contemptuous a way?) But Blankley’s remarks about banning internal combustion surely defy comprehension. As Dissembling Tony of course well knows, Gore never proposed a ban on internal combustion. In his 1992 book, Earth and the Balance, he said that “it ought to be possible...to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five year period.” He discussed the car industry’s efforts to replace IC with cleaner technology. And as Blankley well knows—and assumes you do not—the world car biz has long since signed on to Gore’s outlook. Here, for example, was Rebecca Blumenstein, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. When did this report appear? On January 5, 1998!

BLUMENSTEIN (1/5/98): [A]uto makers from Tokyo to Stuttgart to Detroit have reached a surprising consensus on an idea deemed heretical not long ago. A fundamental shift in engine technology is needed. “We need to press very hard to increase fuel economy and lower emissions” of carbon dioxide, says John F. Smith Jr., chairman of General Motors Corp. He predicts a “slow phase-off” of the internal-combustion engine in 20 to 30 years and adds, “It is prudent for us to be working very hard on alternative technology.”

Let’s note—that quote is from environmental wacko John Smith, then CEO of GM. The ideas Gore stated in Earth in the Balance have long since become conventional wisdom. Indeed, how conventional has the wisdom become? Perhaps you recall the front page of the New York Times this past January 9, Neela Banerjee doing the honors:

BANERJEE (1/9/02): The Bush administration is walking away from a $1.5 billion eight-year government-subsidized project to develop high-mileage gasoline-fueled vehicles. Instead it is throwing its support behind a plan that the Energy Department and the auto industry have devised to develop hydrogen-based fuel cells to power the cars of the future, administration and industry officials said yesterday.

The new effort, to be announced in Detroit today by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, aims at the eventual replacement of the internal combustion engine.

Duh! Everyone knows that Gore was right when he forecast the end of internal combustion. But Tony Blankley doesn’t know who he is, and he seems to have a bad character problem. He simply prefers to keep peddling the poop. And trust us: “good guys” reporters will let him.

Why did this nonsense get spread for two years, all during the coverage of Campaign 2000? Because cowardly “good guy” pundits failed to speak. You didn’t hear a peep from Al Hunt. You didn’t hear from E. J. Dionne. You didn’t hear from Michael Kinsley, or from the gang at TNR. And you’re very unlikely to hear from them now. Trembling lapdogs—overpaid, overpraised—they have walked away from their professional obligations. The Tony Blankleys are thereby permitted to rule—and their character problems are just getting worse.

SMUTTY TONY: Thigh-Rubbing Tony turns up today too, trashing Gore’s wife in his usual fashion. Just how smutty can this little man be? After the first Gore-Bradley debate, smutting it up was in sudden high fashion. Viagra jokes about Gore were in favor, even on the august NewsHour, where Jim Lehrer asked David Brooks to repeat one. What did Blankley think of Gore’s debate outing? Troubled Tony began rubbing his thigh. “Gore looked like he was—you know, like the kind of person who was doing sex after having read a book about how to do it,” he told Chris Matthews on the October 28 Hardball. “I mean, it was just—I mean, this business where he was personally asking questions of the—‘How old is your son?’ He would ask that question and then he’d go back to his policy drone.” Oops! Talking-Points Tony got his brief confused; in fact, Gore had asked the age of a woman’s sick daughter. But trashing Gore for asking about a sick child was one of the Pundit Corps’ spin-points that week (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/12/02)—and to Trashy Tony, asking the age of a mother’s sick child made Gore seem like the kind of person who was doing sex after having read a book about how to do it. Why did such rubbish go on for two years? Because cowardly “good guy” pundits allowed it—just as they allowed the endless gong-show dissembling about internal combustion (and the Bradley health plan; and abortion; and tax plans).

Your American discourse has been made a huge joke, as Troubled Tony makes quite clear this morning. Many pundits have allowed that to happen. They no longer seem to know who they are, either. That’s why we have included some names. Maybe a miracle will one day occur, and they’ll recall their professional obligations—and their duties as decent humans, and as citizens.

HOW INANE WAS IT? How inane was your discourse back in the day, as “good guy” pundits sat around and said nothing? On that October 28 Hardball, the discussion about Gore’s debate outing continued. Then, Norah O’Donnell did the unthinkable. To her eternal credit, she tried talking back to the script-reading mob:

MATTHEWS: Do you remember that Mr.—well, remember “Mr. Wizard” that was on television in the 50s?
BLANKLEY: I do.
MATTHEWS: It was Don Herbert and he said, “Today, boys and girls”—[Gore] was almost like, almost like Sherman in a Wayback Machine, too. It was so avuncular. And, and the questions—you’re right. What does it matter whether the kid’s in the sixth or the eighth grade? The point was pretty general.
O’DONNELL: I think it—I think, Chris, it matters to the parent that was asking the question.
MATTHEWS: You do?
BLANKLEY: The audience is, is—
O’DONNELL: Sure.
MATTHEWS: Yeah. So you like, so you like that interrogative, Norah?
O’DONNELL: Well, I think any—I think criticizing presidential candidates for trying to connect with voters perhaps—
MATTHEWS: But was it an authentic connection or was it something that his consultant told him to try?
BLANKLEY: Yeah. I mean—
O'DONNELL: I think that’s, well, whether or not—I mean, whether or not it’s authentic enough, he was doing it, and appeared genuinely interested and he got a couple of interesting responses, in particular from the man who happened to be the president of the local union there at Dartmouth College. So it, it worked for him and it—
MATTHEWS: Well, you know in school when you get—Hey, Norah, you know when you get a C in a class—you may not have ever gotten one, but sometimes when you get a C or worse, you go to the teacher and you ask if you can do something extra credit. It was like, at the end of that debate, when it was clearly over for both of them and the, and the cameras were being struck, for Al Gore, the vice president of the United States, to publicly say, “I’ll be glad to take any other questions after the cameras are gone,” hint, hint. Do you think that was a serious grown-up, mature offer or was that just a cheap little deal for him to make himself look more concerned?

It was rare that a pundit spoke up. The press corps’ script had been written in stone; Phony Gore is inauthentic. Everything he does is prescribed by consultants. Script-Reading Tony knew his lines very well, and America’s inane public discourse soldiered on. Today, the nonsense continues apace, with Blankley’s smutty references to Gore and his wife—and with his pathological car talk. “Good guy” pundits have stood by at each step, and allowed the American public interest to be mocked. Many people will read Blankley’s column and not understood that he’s lying in their faces. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Hunt or Dionne to take a stand for America’s need to know.

VISIT OUR INCOMPARABLE ARCHIVES: The pundit corps is well aware of the facts on internal combustion. We have discussed the topic here endlessly. Click on the wolf, enter “internal combustion”—our past efforts are there to peruse. The pundit corps knows all these things. They’re simply too lazy, too frightened and unconcerned to correct the mob when it lies in our faces. The outcome? They get to keep cashing their big unearned checks. The public interest is flushed down the toilet.