[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] No more Moore: The DLC's witchhunt (Matt Taibbi, NY Press)

Fri Dec 3 23:37:12 PST 2004

>
>No More Moore: The DLC Joins the Witch-Hunt 
>by Matt Taibbi
>
>The New York Press, December 3, 2004
>http://nypress.com/17/48/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
>http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1203-15.htm
>
>
>We've got to repudiate, you know, the most
>strident and insulting anti-American voices out
>there sometimes on our party's left... We can't
>have our party identified by Michael Moore and
>Hollywood as our cultural values.
>ó Al From, CEO, Democratic Leadership Council
>
>You know, let's let Hollywood and the Cannes Film
>Festival fawn all over Michael Moore. We ought to
>make it pretty clear that he sure doesn't speak
>for us when it comes to standing up for our
>country.
>ó Will Marshall, President of the Progressive
>Policy Institute, the think-tank of the DLC
>
>
>THE FIRST THING I thought when reading these
>passagesóboth taken from a "soul-searching"
>roundtable held by the Democratic Leadership
>Councilówas this: Who the hell is Will Marshall?
>
>I couldn't remember seeing his name at the top of
>anybody's ballot. I didn't remember which, if
>any, elections he had ever won. I was a little
>mystified, in fact, by the nature of his popular
>supportówho he meant, exactly, when he used the
>word "we" to talk about whom Michael Moore does
>and does not speak for.
>
>According to the last data I could find, Moore
>recently made a movie that was seen by tens of
>millions of people around the world and has
>grossed nearly $120 million in the U.S. alone.
>Furthermore, it was, according to exit polls, a
>much better demographic success than the actual
>Democratic party. A Harris poll conducted in July
>found that 89 percent of Democrats agreed with
>Fahrenheit 9/11, along with 70 percent of
>independents. That means Moore outperformed John
>Kerry among independents by about 19 points, if
>we are to go just by the data presented by
>bum-licking power-worshipper Ron Brownstein of
>the Los Angeles Times at the DLC roundtable.
>
>Moore's revenues come from millions of ordinary
>people paying 10 bucks a pop to see his film. In
>contrast, only about 200 people a year visit the
>DLC at the box officeóonly they pay thousands of
>dollars per ticket, and they all have names you'd
>recognize: Eli Lilly, Coca-Cola, Union Carbide,
>Occidental Petroleum, BP and so on.
>
>Like Moore, Marshall is a media figure. He is one
>of the chief contributors to Blueprint magazine,
>the flagship publication of the DLC. Despite the
>fact that subscriptions to this magazine are
>included free with membership in the DLC, its
>annual circulation still lags slightly behind the
>gate for Fahrenheit 9/11, with about 20,000
>readers per year.
>
>An unfair dig, you say: Blueprint is a trade
>magazine. Seen in that light, it indeed appears a
>much better market performer, with only about six
>times fewer readers than the industry bible for
>horror makeup artists, Fangoria.
>
>While it is not exactly clear who else Marshall
>is talking about in this quote, it is fairly
>clear that he means that Michael Moore does not
>speak for him personally. Which makes sense, of
>course.
>
>In addition to his duties as the president of the
>PPI, Marshall kept himself busy in the last few
>years. Among other things, he served on the board
>of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an
>organization co-chaired by Joe Lieberman and John
>McCain whose aim was to build bipartisan support
>for the invasion of Iraq.
>
>Marshall also signed, at the outset of the war, a
>letter issued by the Project for the New American
>Century (PNAC) expressing support for the
>invasion. Marshall signed a similar letter sent
>to President Bush put out by the conservative
>Social Democrats/USA group on Feb. 25, 2003, just
>before the invasion. The SD/USA letter urged Bush
>to commit to "maintaining substantial U.S.
>military forces in Iraq for as long as may be
>required to ensure a stable, representative
>regime is in place and functioning."
>
>One of just a handful of Marshall's
>co-signatories on that letter was Bruce Jackson,
>who also happens to be the head of the PNAC
>(whose letter Marshall also signed) and the
>founder of the aforementioned Committee for the
>Liberation of Iraq. Jackson is not only a neo-con
>of high rank and one of the chief pom-pom wavers
>for the war effort. He was also a vice president
>in the weapons division of Lockheed-Martin
>between 1993 and 2002ómeaning that he was one of
>the implied targets of Bowling for Columbine,
>which came out in Jackson's last year with the
>company.
>
>Clearly, Marshall was thinking about the good of
>the Democratic Party, and not the integrity of
>his grimy little network of missile-humping
>cronies, when he and Al From made the curiousóand
>curiously conspicuousódecision to denounce Moore,
>Hollywood and France at the DLC meeting in early
>November.
>
>There were a number of things that were strange
>about the release of this obviously coordinated
>series of sound bites from the DLC heavies.
>
>For one thing, people like Al From, Donna Brazile
>and DLC president Bruce Reedóevent speakers who
>are all high-level political heavyweights whose
>instinct for spontaneity died with their souls
>100 years ago, and would never say anything
>without first calculating its potential
>impactówould seem to gain very little by
>mentioning Moore's name at all in the conference.
>
>
>To say openly in front of a roomful of reporters
>that the party has to disavow Michael Moore is to
>remind a roomful of reporters that the Democratic
>party is still currently linked to Michael Moore.
>This would be like George Bush Sr. using the word
>"wimp" in public, or John Kerry using the word
>"effete" or "snob." No alert political operative
>would recommend it, under normal circumstances.
>
>Furthermore, as both Marshall and From surely
>know, there was no effort whatsoever even this
>time around by the Democratic Party to associate
>itself with Michael Moore. Excepting the brief
>and mostly unrequited love affair between Moore
>and Wes Clark, most of the party candidates
>recoiled from the fat director as from a diseased
>thing throughout the entire campaign season.
>They've already kept him at arm's lengthówhy talk
>about the need to do it again? Why bring him up
>at all?
>
>Well, that's easy. It's one thing to avoid public
>appearances with a Michael Moore, and to accept
>his support only tacitly. But it's another thing
>entirely to openly denounce him as anti-American,
>which is what Al From did last week.
>
>What From, Marshall and the other DLC speakers
>were doing last week was not just ruminating out
>loud about the need to shy away from certain
>demonized liberal icons. They were, instead,
>announcing their willingness to embrace the other
>side's tacticóI hate to lean on this overused
>word, but it is a McCarthyite tacticóof branding
>certain individuals as traitors and
>anti-Americans. What they were doing was sending
>up a trial balloon, to see if anyone noticed this
>chilling affirmative shift in strategy and
>tactics.
>
>Well, I noticed. I also noticed that unless
>something is done about it, this unelected bund
>of corporate pawns is once again going to end up
>writing the party platform and arranging things
>to make sure that no antiwar candidate is allowed
>to compete for votes in the primaries. It will
>push one of its ownóprobably Harold Ickes, or
>Brazileóin next year's election for the chairman
>of the Democratic Party. And when that person
>wins, the tens of millions of Democrats who
>opposed the war will have to get used to people
>like Will Marshall referring to them as "we" in
>front of roomfuls of reportersóMarshall, who this
>year wrote, in Blueprint, an article entitled
>"Stay and Win in Iraq" that offered the following
>view of the progress of the war:
>
>"Coalition forces still face daily attacks but
>the body count tilts massively in their favor."
>
>Uh-huh. And Michael Moore and Hollywood are the
>problem with the Democratic Party.
>
>
>© 2004 New York Press
>
>###
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand