Politicians "with something to hide – say wild promiscuity, stupidity, Chappaquiddick, or a former membership in the Klu Klux Klan – had best be liberals," Ann Coulter writes in her third chapter, "How to Go From Being a ‘Jut-Jawed Maverick’ to a ‘Clueless Neanderthal’ in One Easy Step."
She insists that "generalized hatred in America, for example," may be one cause for someone becoming a liberal but another reason is that you need Big Media's protection, which is inevitably available to leftists.
"Only politicians with nothing to hide," she says, "dare risk displeasing the New York Times editorial page."
The chapter’s title refers to the case of former U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood, once the darling of the feminists and the mainstream media. Coulter writes that when the left needed him as a dedicated abortion supporter, the media lavished praise on him.
But once the pro-abortion Bill Clinton was in the White House, Packwood became disposable. Who needs a senator when you have the White House in your pocket? Especially when the senator routinely engages in behavior nobody but Bill Clinton can participate in without bringing down upon themselves the wrath of the harpies in NOW, National Abortion Rights Action League and other such feminazi covens.
Packwood's disposability became evident when ex-staffers began telling the media that the sainted pro-abortion, pro-feminist senator was also a skirt chaser who couldn’t keep his hands off any women who came within sexual-harassing distance.
Packwood had been "madly chasing, groping and slobber-kissing female staff and lobbyists since at least 1969," Ann wrote, and getting a free pass from the media as an exempt sexual harasser without peer.
Once he lost his immunity from media censure, however, his friends in the feminist movement and the media turned on him with a vengeance.
Coulter lays out the scenario that ensued, showing us in graphic detail what the media said when the left needed him, and what they said after when he became dispensible. It is a lesson in how easily "liberals" can adapt themselves to changing circumstances.
No longer needed: He had become the "nerdy son of a timber lobbyist in the state legislature."
When needed: His "partner had been his wife Georgie, 51, who met Packwood while working on his first campaign" (where evidently he meets all his girlfriends, Coulter adds). Once he was disposable, he had become a pathetic divorcé "estranged" from his children, "nearly broke," with a trailer as his "residence" in Oregon.
There’s a lot more, of course. Once Coulter gets some liberal worthy in her sights she simply never lets up. The "human Uzi" riddles her targets until there’s nothing left.
She sums up the Packwood saga by asking: "Was Packwood all that canny, shrewd and courageous, really? There is no intellectual honesty whatsoever in media descriptions of politicians. Journalism is war by other means."
The shoe is on the other foot when it comes to liberals the media cherish. Take the case of Vermont’s turncoat Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords, who now votes with the Democrats (no real change there, he usually did before he pulled his Benedict Arnold act) and runs around the country shilling for them – after all, if the GOP takes back the Senate in November he’s dead meat.
When he announced his defection, which Coulter described as an event about "as newsworthy as Elton John coming out of the closet," the media treated it "as if it were the greatest patriotic act since the Army Rangers scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc."
She quotes this sickeningly obeisant line from the liberal Los Angeles Times as an example as how far the media can go in deifying a new hero of the left: "Sen. Jim Jeffords now walks in the footsteps of Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln."
The New York Times called him a "maverick" with degrees from Yale and Harvard. Jeffords, they declared him to be is "more down-home casual than East Coast polished."
Keeping in mind Coulter’s example of what happens to fallen liberal idols cited in Packwood’s case, Jeffords should be a tad anxious at the prospect of the GOP winning back the Senate by more than its previous thin plurality.
Should that blessed event transpire, chances are Jeffords will no longer be needed by his Democrat friends, in which case he had better keep his hands squeaky clean. Otherwise today’s "maverick" could easily become tomorrow’s trailer park trash in the jaded eyes of the liberal media.
Ann Coulter draws the object lesson from all of this.
"If God himself told Teddy Kennedy to oppose abortion, he couldn’t do it – at least not if he wanted to keep his job, which is dependent on the media forgetting about Chappaquiddick. Anyone with a skeleton in his closet has got to jump when the media says jump, or get out of politics," she warns.
She cites "former Klanner" Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who voted against convicting the impeached Bill Clinton even though he openly said he believed him to be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, as a good example of how senators can be kept in check when they have little things such as Klan membership in their backgrounds.
"If the media’s puppets ever diverge from the party line or otherwise become dispensable, people will start to notice little things like Byrd’s former membership in the Klan, Jim Jeffords’ failure to put one coherent sentence together, and Christie Todd Whitman’s not knowing what her own state supreme court does. They might even remember Chappaquiddick.
"The media will tolerate any disreputable behavior in order to win. Principle is nothing to liberals. Winning is everything."
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