The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Slimy Dishonest Scumbag Todd Purdum Compares ObamaCare to Brown v. Board

Posted on | November 2, 2013 | 51 Comments

Ace of Spades dismantles the preposterous nonsense whereby Todd S. Purdum tries to blame Republicans for the failure of ObamaCare.

It’s kook stuff: “calculated sabotage by Republicans,” a phrase redolent of Stalin-era Soviet propaganda blaming problems on “saboteurs,” and then totally throwing down the rhetorical gauntlet:

The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

Whoa! Hold on there, Sparky! The Department of Bad Analogies just issued a recall on that sentence, which is part of an emerging pattern of Wrong History as Political Journalism. First it was James Fallows invoking John C. Calhoun, then it was Colbert King invoking Jefferson Davis, and now Purdum goes all Brown v. Board on us?

Instead of trying to gin up invidious racially charged comparisons like this, maybe liberals could actually enlighten their readers by making the apt comparison to FDR’s National Recovery Administration, an unworkable anti-competitive price-fixing scheme that was eventually struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

But Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States isn’t taught in schools the way Brown v. Board is taught, and our nation’s press corps is full of clever half-educated liberal fools like Todd Purdum who can’t distinguish between their partisan prejudices and objective fact.

By the way, you may be wondering, who is this Todd Purdum guy?

The name rang a bell, and he only joined Politico three months ago, but he had a long, rich history of liberal bias before then. Of course, he’s an Ivy Leaguer (Princeton, ’82) and worked for the New York Times, becoming White House correspondent in the 1990s before marrying Bill Clinton’s first press secretary, Dee Dee Myers. Purdum left the Times in 2005 and joined Vanity Fair as national editor, where he established a reputation for blatant unfairness. His savage attack on Hillary in 2008 inspired Bill Clinton to denounce Purdum:

“He’s a really dishonest reporter,” Clinton said during the tirade that followed, according to Fowler’s report. “And I haven’t read (the article). There’s just five or six blatant lies in there. But he’s a real slimy guy.”
Reminded that Purdum is married to his former press secretary Dee Dee Myers, Clinton responded in part: “That’s all right — he’s still a scumbag.” The former president added: “He’s just a dishonest guy — can’t help it.”
Clinton went on to observe: “It’s all politics. It’s all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don’t think anything about it. But I’m telling ya, all it’s doing is driving her supporters further and further away — because they know exactly what it is — this has been the most rigged coverage in modern history — and the guy ought to be ashamed of himself. But he has no shame. It isn’t the first dishonest piece he’s written about me or her.”

The Slimy Dishonest Scumbag Todd Purdum — hey, just quoting a Democrat because I’m all about bipartisanship, see? — went on to publish one of the most hateful Palin Derangement Syndrome outbursts ever to make print, notorious for this paragraph:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy” — and thought it fit her perfectly.

Whatever you think of Sarah Palin, she’s a paragon of humility compared to our thin-skinned self-regarding Narcissist-in-Chief.

As I’ve previously noted, however, in career fields where liberalism enjoys hegemonic dominance — including academia, the entertainment industry and especially journalism — being a liberal is an acceptable substitute for any virtue. In such environments, if a coward wishes to be praised for “courage” or a liar wants to be lauded for his “honesty,” he need merely be a dutiful outspoken liberal, and he will be showered with encomiums. Just as the wretched drunken womanizer Ted Kennedy was awarded laurels as a heroic champion of women’s rights — Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment — so it was that Politico‘s hiring of the utterly despicable Todd Purdum was celebrated in July by editor-in-chief John Harris:

Todd S. Purdum, who over 30 years in journalism has fashioned a deserved reputation as one of the most perceptive reporters and elegant stylists of his generation, is coming to POLITICO in September.  . . .
Todd will maintain a strong affiliation with Vanity Fair. As a contributing editor, he will continue to write longer profiles and historical essays on its pages. POLITICO will be his home for the wealth of more in-the-moment reporting and observations that are in Todd’s head and his notebook at any time. Todd, Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair, and I all believe this will be a winning arrangement from every perspective.

It’s magic: Any mendacious scumbag can be transformed into a “perceptive reporter” and an “elegant stylist,” merely by being liberal.

 

 


Category: Ace of Spades, Health Care, Media Bias

Comments

51 Responses to “Slimy Dishonest Scumbag Todd Purdum Compares ObamaCare to Brown v. Board”

  1. FMJRA 2.0: Master Of Puppets : The Other McCain
    November 9th, 2013 @ 4:29 pm

    […] Slimy Dishonest Scumbag Todd Purdum Compares ObamaCare to Brown v. Board […]