Why We Should Thank Larry Johnson

He’s creepy, he’s an angry do-anything-say-anything-to-win “Hillary supporter,” (or so he claims) and for the past week, he’s been the basking basilisk in the spotlight. He’s getting a million dollars worth of free publicity, and who knows? He might even be right.

I’m sure that if you’re wired in at all, you know about the so-called “Whitey” tape. Lord knows it’s been shoved to the forefront of the rumor mill by an alleged “Democrat” and the Usual Rightie Suspects. But ground zero is a blog called “No Quarter” — which I presume is what it’s worth were it printed up as a newspaper.

From today’s No Quarter creepiness:

… The recording that shows Michelle Obama saying disparaging things about white folks is for real. It is not part of some elaborate dirty trick. The people who have seen her comments describe it as “stunning” or “devastating.” I have not spoken directly with the people who have seen the tape, but I have spoken to two of my friends who are friends with those who watched the tape/dvd.

Are they playing me? No, but it is a valid question to ask. Two of my sources, who have recounted the reactions of their friends who have seen the Michelle “performance,” live on opposite sides of the United States geographically and politically. They do not know each other and had no way of knowing that each of them was talking to me. This is one reason I believe the report of the “tape” is true.

I also have learned that Obama campaign knew about this “tape” at least two weeks prior to my first blog item on the matter. And they are not laughing it off as a joke. (Note to Barack: There are leaks in your campaign.) Ben Smith’s report on the matter only tells part of the story. The woman from McClatchy who dared ask the question was verbally assaulted by Obama aides. She was treated as if she had made a death threat.

Listen to that: “I have not spoken directly with the people who have seen the tape, but I have spoken to two of my friends who are friends with those who watched the tape/dvd.“

Hearsay of hearsay is generally neither admissable in tabloid court or the court of public opinion. But he did this before. It’s merely a rehash. No credible “reporting” comes from “I talked to somebody who talked to somebody who had seen it.” (He doesn’t even know if it’s a tape or DVD.) Remember, “Myth” comes from “mythos” which means “word of mouth.”

And: “Note to Barack: There are leaks in your campaign“??

Do YOU get it?

Larry Sinclair … er, I mean Larry Johnson [‡see end] sure doesn’t. He seriously implies that the Barack Obama campaign — and leaving aside for the moment the oily faux-familiarity and ill manners of addressing Senator Obama as “Barack” like Larry was a BUDDY — Larry seriously thinks that the Obama campaign ought to be MORE secretive and manipulative.

I gots news for yas, Boob: You’re thinking about the wrong campaign and the wrong party. (Seriously, Johnson is [Joe] Liebermannishly conflicted here: he’s got that old spookocracy fetish for secrets — keeping secrets and outing secrets). He telegraphs his whole game with that little aside.

And that’s why we OUGHT to thank Larry Sinclair. Er, Johnson.

The issue here isn’t whether Michelle Obama once said bad things. (We’re not voting for Michelle Obama in any official sense, sorry). The issue here is whether it deserves any place AS an issue.

That is the challenge. It is the “Reverend Wright” story. It is the desperation of running a Dukakis-style “demonize the dummycrat” campaign — “A card-carrying member of the ACLU” remember? I thought at the time If you’re AGAINST Civil Liberties, then what does that say about your party, Mr. Bush the Elder?

Well, we’ve SEEN what that meant. And clearly they’re against civility as well.

Like Larry Sinclair Johnson.*

(* I’ve dealt with his allegations at length elsewhere. No need to rehash: “Out-Foxing Fox, Out-Goebbelsing Goebbels” suffices in all arenas save one.)

No: we ought to thank Larry Johnson Sinclair for showing us that Obama’s attackers have created a new kind of fallacy: not ‘Guilt by Association’ but ‘Guilt by Free Association.’

And we ought to thank him for reminding us what this is all about. It’s about 28 years of Republican misrule by bullying, mud-slinging, septic-tank diving, lying us into wars as a MARKETING tool for wholesale theft, etcetera, ad nauseum.

We ought to remember that no matter WHAT Michelle Obama ever said, this is about a party so toxic that even old “maverick” John McCain has been forced to repudiate each and every position that he ever held as a “maverick” and kiss the ring if hewants to have ANY chance of winning. A party so toxic that torture victim John McCain has been prevailed upon to repudiate his REPUDIATION of torture, a fact as grimly evil as watching a man who’s been shot in the FACE by a probably drunken Vice President APOLOGIZING for putting his face in the way of Cheney’s shotgun.

You can’t counterbalance that. You could have a sex tape show up with Barack and Michelle dressed in SS Uniforms flagellating naked Jews and it wouldn’t begin to counterbalance that much horror, depravity, larceny and murderous greed.

Sorry.

Larry’s Johnson has been playing in the Republican septic tank making “mud” pies for too long.

This is OUR debate about OUR country. Not the sick fantasies of a criminal conspiracy called the Greedy Oil Party.

Because, at the end, humans under stress revert to the most primal, animal behaviors. Because the mind has completely failed them. Gone is Jesus. Gone is “freedom.” Gone is “deregulation” and “free markets” and “government is evil.” Gone are the astroturf groups, like Move America Forward and Newsbusters. Gone are the wedge issues. (“Illegal Immigrants” failed to catch on the way that “stop the homos” did in 2004.)

All that’s left is throwing shit. Or, rather, all the Right’s throwing shit.

As every monkey knows.

Have a banana Larry. And while you’re at it, give all the shit throwers on your side (because your rumor mongering, your “I’m telling you so you’ll be prepared” and your fetish with secrecy are REPUBLICAN issues, not Democratic ones) give them all bananas, too.

After awhile their arms get tired from all that slinging.

If we let THEM dictate the debate, we lose. In chess, it’s known as having the “initiative,” in basketball, we call it “momentum.”

John McCain has been in the shadows through March and April and May. He had no organization, so he has taken over (inherited) the RNC, which is Bush’s machine, pure and simple. So, it can ONLY be a Rovian slime campaign based on seizing the initiative. No: WE control the debate. We focus on REPUBLICANS and stop this intra-party bickering. We grit our teeth for FOUR months. And then we go back to being our petty, backbiting, nitpicky selves. But for four months, we pretend that other people exist, and matter, and that we can work and play well with others.

Hillary Clinton set a fine example today.

Let’s thank Larry Sinclair Johnson, and take a different approach: Proper Indignation that the Presidency of a country on the verge of another Great Depression is supposed to be decided based on Jerry Springer Show criteria. Laugh at the bastards. Rightly and righteously lampoon, mock, humiliate and force their hypocrisy down their throats. (How dare they pretend to believe in Christianity! WWJD? Well sure as hell not this.)

But do NOT fight them on their turf. Force them to LEAVE the septic tank and talk about what America can become and what we need to do to face the gathering storm.

Because that’s fundamentally what the Obama campaign has been, is, and ought to be about. NO MORE HATESPEAK masquerading as patriotism. A renewed committment to civil discourse and civility. But no tolerance of intolerance, and no civility to barbarism. If we have to live in the Universe of the Bearded Spock, then let’s show the bastards what barbarism is all about. If they wanna play nice, so be it. But WE have to set the agenda. There are more of us, and the ONLY way that they can win is with divide and conquer tactics like Larry Johnson’s endless flogging of the “Whitey tape” rumor — whether true or not. At this point, the rumor is the only reality and his glee in pushing it reveals his agenda.

John Cole has the right idea.

And, in late breaking news, Al Franken has won the Democratic-Farm-Labor endorsement for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, DESPITE a swiftboat campaign* launched over a 2000 article in Playboy that got Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and Minnesota’s chapter of NOW to fluster and flummer.

[* See "Putting the ‘Petty’ in Petit Bourgeois, part I" June 1 and part II, June 3]

So, We, the People 1, Swift Boaters 0. Details coming up on SportsCenter. Stay Tuned.

Courage.

[‡ A good rule of thumb for keeping the two Larrys separate is that Larry SINCLAIR is all about the johnson, but Larry Johnson is just a dick.]

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