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September 28, 2005
Mapes And Earle: Two Of A Kind?
After reading Rand Simberg's precise filleting of the unbelievable pronouncements Mary Mapes has made in support of her new book, and after perusing Michelle Malkin's roundup of the reaction to the indictment of Tom Delay, I have an observation:
It's entirely likely that Mapes and Travis county DA Ronnie Earle are twins, separated at birth.
The juicy bits--first from Simberg:
[Mapes:]Our work was being compared to that of Jayson Blair, the discredited New York Times reporter who had fabricated and plagiarized stories.
Hey, this isn't fair. At least Jayson Blair didn't fabricate actual evidence. And of course, given that they're "hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservatives," there's no need to pay any attention to what they say, right, even if they are smart lawyers, and that in the case of Charles Johnson, proprieter of Little Green Footballs and web site designer, he has forgotten more about typography than Mary is ever likely to learn or (on the available evidence) be able to comprehend?
All these Web sites had extensive write-ups on the documents: on typeface, font style, and peripheral spacing.
"Peripheral spacing"? I think that she means proportional spacing. This demonstrates again, just how little she has learned from this experience, when she doesn't even seem to possess the reasoning skills to understand the arguments against her.
And from Malkin--here's former DOJ official Barbara Comstock:
Ronnie Earle argues that Tom DeLay conspired to make a contribution to a political party in violation of the Texas Election Code. There was no contribution to a political party in violation of the Texas Election Code. There was no conspiracy. Ronnie Earle is wrong on the facts. Ronnie Earle is wrong on the law. [...]
There was no violation of the Texas Election Code. There was no conspiracy. The underlying transaction was legal. Had corporations sent money directly to the RNC or RNSEC, the transaction would be legal. How could anyone conspire to do indirectly what could legally have been done directly?
So here we have two cases in which the main characters have attempted to foist off upon the public baseless (in Earle's case) or downright fraudulent (in Mapes') attacks upon prominent public (conservative) figures. Mapes drew a check from CBS for quite a few years and saw her projects get national airtime. In yet another example of the dangers of an ideologically monopolized media, these career notches in her belt allowed her to assume a moral authority that was revealed as illusory by the smart guys at LGF and Powerline.
Earle is a little more familiar a figure: of course all branches of government, from local to national, have a long history of corrupt but legitimately elected members. Check out Mark Coffey's hometown analysis of this sterling example of an elected official.
Earle's little imbroglio targeting Kay Bailey Hutchinson took place in the early '90s, before the advent of the blogosphere. I do sorely hope that the blogs can serve him out as thoroughly, and deservedly, as Mary Mapes.
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Comments
How fitting it will be if this creates a groundswell of support for Delay among conservatives who didn't particularly like him before.
Posted by: AcademicElephant at September 29, 2005 07:22 AM
