Media Picking Up the "Patwa"

I'm loking at CNN right now, and they've been hammering this Pat Robertson story all day. They carried the Venezuelan ambassador's remarks live. They allowed that Robertson is a former GOP Presidential candidate, and (as the ambassador noted) credited Robertson with helping Bush to victory in South Carolina in 2000. They accepted, tacitly, how these facts blast apart the whole "he's a private citizen" line of BS that the Defense Department and others on the right have been bloviating. This is someone extremely close to the Administration calling for political assassination. That's the frame.

This is also the top story on Google News.

I'm kind of shocked. Usually this kind of thing is just swept under the rug, taken up as a cause celebre by the left blogosphere but unable to penetrate the mass media. Why is this getting attention over, say, the time Robertson and Falwell blamed 9/11 on the ACLU and feminists?

I think Americans, thanks to the blinding light of history, are a little sharper about what has been done in our name. From Iran to Chile to Guatemala to countless other spots around the globe, Americans know that we've "taken out" the leaders of sovereign nations time and time again. The government has just never been so direct as to say it out loud. And when someone does, it hits a nerve.

It forces people to confront the disconnect between our rhetoric and our actions. Really Robertson's statement shouldn't be shocking; it's been official US policy to undermine our enemies as long as any of us can remember. Anyone recall Operation Mongoose? But the out-of-sight, out-of-mind principle too easily explains away our moral shortcomings by keeping them hidden.

Of course, this hasn't stopped Wolf Blitzer from saying breathlessly "isn't there a little wiggle room in the federal assassination law?" Bob Dole, no fan of Robertson (a foe in the '88 primaries), smacked that down sharply, basically saying Robertson's an idiot, and it'd take a hell of a person to make Chavez look sympathetic, but that's exactly what he did.

It's great that the media is paying attention to the words of the American Taliban. However, I think Democrats are dropping the ball here. They simply refuse to go for the jugular and use these words to drive a wedge right through the heart of the evangelical community. It would be so easily to return to a time when these guys are not respected but consigned to the lunatic fringe. They make it so very easy through their words and deeds every day. But we have to shine the light on it for the transformation to take place.

I want to see a prominent Democrat risk the yelling and screaming from the Christian right that would result by saying just what Bob Dole said today. I wish a Democrat would say how this ally of the President just damaged our national security with these remarks. I'm less hopeful than I should be about that, but certainly they're going to have the opportunity, given that the media is picking up this story and running with it. We'll have to see who's got the cajones.