One guy who won’t be buying McClellan’s book

By Jennifer J. Foster

There’s at least one Washington bigwig who won’t be buying Scott McClellan’s new book.

Bob Dole, former Senate Majority Leader and Republican candidate for president in 1996, reportedly sent McClellan the following e-mail this week:

Scott,

There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.

In my nearly 36 years of public service I’ve known of a few like you. No doubt you will “clean up” as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, “Biting The Hand That Fed Me.“ Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years.

I have no intention of reading your “exposé“ because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job. That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?

BOB DOLE

Let’s see ... Dole says McClellan is a weasly, gutless, greedy, opportunististic “miserable creature,“ a “total ingrate” devoid of integrity, courage and credibility.

Wow. YOW-za. Or, as they say, “Wha-POW!“

Final note on the DNC RBC meeting

By Jennifer J. Foster

In the wake of today’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, DNC officials would be well served to reassess its media and open meetings policy.

Hold on, hold on: I’m not suggesting by any means that DNC officials should close any meeting to the public (although the RBC members did meet behind closed doors for about two hours between sessions today, and presumably, that’s where the deals were worked out).

I am just suggesting that the DNC could better manage its availability issues.

If I was in charge of PR for the party, I would suggest that in the future, if party officials are ever faced with such a contentious meeting (say, theoretically, when the Credentials Committee gets together at the national convention in August), they:

Retain the split agenda that separates the presentation portion from the portion that involves deliberations and decisions. Compartmentalizing the to-do lists ensures that other items to be covered won’t become ensnared by anyone disaffected by decisions being made along the way.

Provide open seating at the presentation portion only, but do not allow cameras (including cell phone video cameras) inside. Party regulars will be able to hear, first hand, the arguments being made by and for each side, and party officials won’t have to explain away inconvenient, uncomfortable and unflattering video. One look at that jeering, combative crowd today exposes the lie that is the insistence that the party is SO UNIFIED.

Allow a single video camera to document and relay what’s going on as members deliberate and decide the issues at hand, but do not allow anyone beyond committee members and staff inside. Live television coverage assures that the meeting is still open, but the decorum of the meeting will be preserved.

Taking these steps will allow the DNC to maintain tighter control of its message without sacrificing the openness of its committee meetings.

It’s something Howard Dean should really think about—especially in light of Harold Ickes’ comments that HILLARY CLINTON RESERVES HER RIGHT TO CHALLENGE TODAY’S RESULTS IN THE CREDENTIALS COMMITTEE!!!

Someone call a doctor ...

By Jennifer J. Foster

Harold Ickes needs his meds.

Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign adviser is officially off his rocker.

He’s on a diatribe about FAIR REFLECTION!!! and “THE GALL!! THE CHUTZPAH!!!“ the Rules and Bylaws Committee must have to “substitute its judgment for 600,000 Michigan voters.“

The committee is “hijacking” four of Clinton’s delegates from Michigan, Ickes says.

“I am simply stunned,“ he whines.

And if you weren’t certain of his malcontent with the motion to apportion Michigan’s delegates between Clinton and Barack Obama, he threw in a few non-G-rated words for good measure.

I’ll remind you that my six- and three-year-old daughters watch elections coverage with me, so they were well within earshot when Ickes delivered his intellectual response.

P.S., Ickes says with a snarl, Hillary Clinton “has instructed me” to “reserve her rights to take this to the Credentials Committee.“

Looks like Harry and Nancy have their work cut out for them ... Clinton’s giving every indication that she intends to take the nomination fight all the way to Denver.

Harold Ickes. What a sad, grumpy, angry man. What a terrible ambassador for Hillary Clinton.

Someone get him some meds.

Falsehood in OA News reader letter

By Jennifer J. Foster

Opelika-Auburn News reader Jim Kimbrough has a letter to the editor in the newspaper this morning wherein he suggests that Barack Obama should have been removed from the U.S. Senate for not following protocol as it applies to decorum during the playing of the National Anthem.

Kimbrough then merged one tired, discredited Internet rumor about Obama—that his sometimes-failure to place his hand over his heart while the National Anthem is played indicates a disrespect for the Anthem—with a second, less-publicized (but still just as false) Internet rumor about Obama—that he thinks the Anthem “conveys a war-like message” and is “parochial” and “bellicose.“

Kimbrough goes on to quote Obama: “I like the song ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.‘ If that were our anthem, then I might salute it.“

Um, one tiny little problem, Jim: Obama never said any of these things about the Anthem.

As a mere 10 seconds of Googling proves, the quote was invented by conservative writer John Semmens, who used it in the Oct. 27, 2007, edition of his political satire column, “Semi-News.“ No fewer than 300 different web pages—including giants like FactCheck.org, Snopes.com and About.com’s Urban Legends section—have entries to that point, discrediting the erroneous attribution of the quote to Obama.

I don’t know why it is, but Obama has been the target of many more Internet rumors of this nature than Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I receive several e-mails a week with various versions of the rumor du jour. In fact, Obama’s campaign has had to devote an entire portion of its web site to the singular purpose of addressing such rumors, debunking them and replacing them with facts.

I also can’t understand why people who oppose Obama’s candidacy believe that the promulgation of false information helps their cause. The more erroneous information I receive from a source, the less likely I am to consider that person to be a credible source of political information—and that undermines any argument that person makes for his own candidate, whomever it may be.

On a personal note, there is little that is more aggravating to me than to have my e-mail box clogged with information that could be verified or discredited with just 30 seconds of Internet research. It is incomprehensible to me that the same people who happily hop on to the Internet to check their e-mail aren’t willing to use that same Internet to check the validity of the information they’re receiving in that e-mail.

And finally, when someone writes a letter to the editor for publication in a newspaper, that writer has—at the bare minimum—a responsibility to ensure the validity of the information he is providing in that letter. An author’s failure to meet that responsibility indicates a disturbing lack of concern over the possibility that he, intentionally or unintentionally, may be providing false information through the newspaper. Did Kimbrough know that the information he provided had been widely discredited? We can only hope not.

You’ve no doubt heard Mark Twain’s famous quote, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.“

It seems Mark Twain may have understood that people don’t mind spreading lies.