The Secret Life of Waffler Mitty

could be AP, could be Reuters

Welcome to Mitt’s world. It’s a rich fantasy life, kind of like Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” but our Mitty’s world is peopled with the grotesques* of politics. [* Just imagine animated gargoyles, like that crappy cartoon of several years back.]

Mitt claimed, in his infamous “religion” speech of a couple weeks ago, of George Romney — his father, and a candidate in the 1968 Republican presidential primaries — “I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.”

Er, whoops!

The Detroit Free Press (emphasis added):

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he watched his father, the late Michigan Gov. George Romney, in a 1960s civil rights march in Michigan with Martin Luther King Jr.

On Wednesday, Romney’s campaign said his recollections of watching his father, an ardent civil rights supporter, march with King were meant to be figurative.

“He was speaking figuratively, not literally,” Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Romney campaign, said of the candidate.

The campaign was responding to questions raised by the Free Press and other media after a Boston publication challenged the accuracy of Mitt Romney’s account.

In a major speech on faith and politics earlier this month in Texas, Mitt Romney said: “I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.”

He made a similar statement Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said, “You can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights.”

Romney’s campaign cited various historical articles, as well as a 1967 book written by Stephen Hess and Washington Post political columnist David Broder, as confirmation that George Romney marched with King in Grosse Pointe in 1963.

“He has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb,” Hess and Broder wrote in The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the GOP.

Free Press archives, however, showed no record of King marching in Grosse Pointe in 1963 or of then-Gov. Romney taking part in King’s historic march down Woodward Avenue in June of that year.

George Romney told the Free Press at the time that he didn’t take part because it was on a Sunday and he avoided public appearances on the Sabbath because of his religion….

If David Broder got it wrong, well, who cares? Broder gets a lot of stuff wrong. But NOT ABOUT HIS OWN FRIGGIN’ FATHER!

Now, I’ve been saying that Mitt and the truth tend to be strangers for a few months now. The past week seems to have confirmed that to all but the psychotically delusional.

Or, in more garden variety parlance: Mitt’s ‘credibility gap’ is rapidly turning into a ‘credibility chasm.’

But someone at the National Review Online — The Mendacifier of the Reich™ — must have a bet riding on ol’ Mitty, because they’ve assembled a BLIZZARD OF BULLSHIT to muddy the waters with how committed to civil rights ol’ George Romney was. (He once marched in a march SIX DAYS after King had been there. Well, hell, I was in Memphis, Tennessee a mere five years after King was assassinated there. Does that count, too?)

No rationalization is too byzantine for the clever snots at NRO, of course. And, think of what a relief it must be for them to take a break from ginning up “victories” for their fearless leader, Incurious George. Still, anyone who stretches so far to cover up a straight up lie has got to have earned a case of lineament. Or, perhaps, if Larry Craig isn’t around, a year’s supply of BenGay™.

The Boston Phoenix has a feature on it, “Was It All A Dream?” updated today with Mitty’s deep and rich fantasy life as regards “facts”:

UPDATE: ROMNEY CAMPAIGN SAYS “TOGETHER” MAY MEAN DIFFERENT CITIES, DIFFERENT DAYS

A spokesperson for Mitt Romney now tells the Phoenix that George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched together in June, 1963 — although possibly not on the same day or in the same city.

Andrew Sullivan cuts to the quick, elegantly.

“I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.” Not.

Will anyone notice? Will the laughably absurd spin be reported with a straight face by the comatose enablers of the shredding of the Constitution* (* May not apply in all states) ? Or will the Kewpie Dolls of Mass Media mindlessly read whatever the teleprompter runs past their immaculately coiffed and empty crania?

Or, if Waffler Mitty lies like a rug in a forest of microphones and the media remain deaf, does he make a sound?

Heavy philosophical question.

Stay tuned.

Courage.

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UPDATE: Good post at The Carpetbagger Report, “Romney’s MLK trump card starts to look shaky.” Lots of typically shallow, lame posts, elsewhere. I guess anybody can start a blog, and often do.

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