Telling for what was Not Said: Per TPM, The Washington Post reported
...it's hard to imagine who was thinking what when House aides leaked to the Washington Post this eye-popping anecdote about a House GOP caucus meeting today in which leadership got their troops pumped up to support the Boehner debt bill with a scene from a gangster film where loyalty trumps morality and justifies brutal assault.The problem with this is (as TPM's Brian Beutler points out), the full comment made by Ben Affleck is, I need your help. I can't tell you what it is; you can never ask me about it later; and we're gonna hurt some people.
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the party's vote counter, began his talk by showing a clip from the movie, "The Town", trying to forge a sense of unity among the independent-minded caucus.
One character asks his friend: "I need your help. I can't tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later."
"Whose car are we gonna take," the character says.
After showing the clip, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the most outspoken critics of leadership among the 87 freshmen, stood up to speak, according to GOP aides.
"I'm ready to drive the car," West replied, surprising many Republicans by giving his full-throated support for the plan.
The other problem is that the man standing up to say, "I'll drive the car" is Representative Allen West of Florida. That would be the same Allen West who, in Iraq in August of 2003 as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, brutalized a detainee in an interrogation and was forced out of his 22-year service career as a result.
But the Tell was -- the Post dropped the last part of Affleck's line (and we're gonna hurt some people) from their reporting of the story.
Why would they do that? The inference is obvious -- a bunch of Republican Congressmen, bonding around a film clip that equates loyalty with brutality; why didn't the Post report that?
The Post was once one of the three best journalistic organizations in the world, together with the New York Times and the UK's Times of London. However, Little Rupert bought the London Times in the mid 1980's; always conservative, its current journalistic standards aren't far above the now-defunct News Of The World; the Crafty Ol' Digger believes all the Public should be interested in are the Tits 'n Tattle his media provides.
The New York Times is still "the paper of record". It it still hasn't made up for Little Judy Miller, and often provides a little cheerleading for The Powers That Be; or contorts itself to report oh-so-neutrally when it should go for the jugular (and they don't print my online comments to articles, either; the bastards). However, the NYT is, along with the McClatchy papers, the last serious major media outlet left in America that generally practices a trustworthy reporting of facts once called "journalism".
Not so the Post. In the face of the dumbed-down, Beck and O'Reilly-smeared, Drudge-culture of our era, the newspaper which made "investigative journalism" a household phrase has stumbled on from printing lies to mislead Congress and the nation to support Lil' Boots' invasion of Iraq, to become just another right-leaning media outlet, trying to compete with Little Rupert's business model.
You won't hear Fox Faux News reporting that a bunch of Republicans geared up to support NEW AUSTERITY NOW! by listening to a film clip that equates the President Boner deficit plan with committing violence for revenge, supported by a former military officer cashiered because of his violent actions.
And why didn't the Post report it? Because that's exactly what the Rethugs want to do to the People of the United States of America: Hurt us.
I suppose that's no longer news. But it's time we all woke up to that fact.
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