Mike's Blog

When Gay Baiting just doesn't cut it

Last week, Jeff Kofman of ABC news ran a story on flagging morale among US troops in Iraq. The piece hit the administration pretty hard, particularly Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the Chimp himself.

F A L L U J A H, Iraq, July 16— The sergeant at the 2nd Battle Combat Team Headquarters pulled me aside in the corridor. "I've got my own 'Most Wanted' list," he told me.

He was referring to the deck of cards the U.S. government published, featuring Saddam Hussein, his sons and other wanted members of the former Iraqi regime.

"The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz," he said.

Nice. Another soldier when asked what he would say to Don Rumsfeld should the secretary happen to wander into camp replied, "I would ask him for his resignation."

You didn't really expect the notoriously thin-skinned White House with its thick-headed president at the helm to just let this one pass, did you? So following the high-minded and magnanimous approach that this administration is known for, a source from the White House this week decided to give Matt Drudge a call and let the gossipmonger know that not only is the ABC journalist Kofman gay, he's also Canadian of all things! I know, I was just as scandalized as you when I learned that ABC employs queer foreigners at its news organization!

Some folks in the White House were apparently hopping mad when ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman did a story on Tuesday's "World News Tonight" about the plummeting morale of U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq.

So angry, in fact, that the next day, a White House operative alerted cyber-gossip Matt Drudge to the fact that Kofman is not only openly gay, he's Canadian.

Yesterday Drudge told us he was unaware of the ABC story until "someone from the White House communications shop tipped me to it" along with a profile of Kofman in the gay-oriented magazine the Advocate. On Wednesday, for 6 hours 38 minutes, the Drudge Report bannered Kofman's widely quoted ABC story -- in which enlisted people questioned the Army's credibility and one irked soldier went on camera to call on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign -- and linked to the Advocate piece with the understated headline "ABC NEWS REPORTER WHO FILED TROOP COMPLAINT STORY IS CANADIAN."

Then there's this gem:

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan "is having a rough first week," Drudge said. "The White House press office is under new management and has become slightly more aggressive about contacting reporters. This story has certainly become talk radio fodder about the cultural wars-slash-liberal bias in the media."

A network insider was less sanguine about the White House tactic: "Playing hardball is one thing. But appealing to homophobia and jingoism is simply ugly."

The second part is right-on, albeit "ugly" is too nice a word for this kind of thing. The first part makes me want to unplug my computer and begin to un-learn how to read. Some days I think illiteracy would indeed be bliss. "Fodder about the culture wars-slash-liberal bias?" Pathetic. To Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, US soldiers really aren't complaining, it's the liberal media. These liars bitch and moan about any story they don't agree with and refuse to acknowledge the facts of the piece. And of course, we all know you can't be gay and/or Canadian and write an honest story. Nor can you love America. And by damn, that's what matters most in journalism! Unflinching, unquestioning fidelity to the official point of view....

Jesus wept.

ABC story

White House leaks irrelevant info

Posted by mike at July 19, 2003 02:15 PM