Return Of The Revenge Of The Bride Of The Son Of Benghazi The Sequel Part Eleventy

Chipmunk-cheeked dimwit Lara Logan and her colleagues at 60 Minutes sure seem to have screwed the pooch in their explosive – in the same sense that diarrhea is sometimes explosive – report on BENGHAAAZI!!1! a couple of weeks back. Logan and her bosses have been doing a Nobama Apology Tour for a few days, culminating in last night's Sorry Not Sorry "mistakes were made" correction, for featuring the story of security contractor Dylan Davies and his heroics during the consulate attacks. Except oopsie! It seems Davies was less than truthful about where he was and what he was doing while the consulate was being overrun.

How did a seasoned war correspondent like Logan and her team of experienced news folk at the venerable 60 Minutes get suckered as if they were the local affiliate in Bumfuck, Oregon, buying footage of what they think is Bigfoot but turns out to be a guy in a gorilla suit? It wasn't tough! Let’s sexplore.

First, the president of CBS News is one David Rhodes, who spent twelve years at Fox News before coming over to the Eye network in 2008. As Greg Mitchell at The Nation   points out, Rhodes was working his way up through Roger Ailes’ evil empire during the years when it was calling the 2000 election for George W. Bush, cheerleading for the Iraq War, and just ramping up its full-on panic over Barack Obama’s plans to get elected president and turn the country into a communist paradise. Sounds like a fun guy!

Second, Digby over at Hullabaloo reminds us that Logan has been filling the Judith Miller role at CBS quite nicely for some time. Last year just after the Benghazi attack, old Chipmunk Cheeks gave a speech to something called the Better Government Association, during which she made such charming observations as

The last time we were attacked like this was the USS Cole which was a prelude to 9/11. And you're sending in the FBI to investigate? I hope to God that you are sending in your best clandestine warriors to exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil, its ambassadors will not be murdered and the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.

Then she pounded her chest, hooted, and chewed out the still-beating heart of a Guantanamo prisoner flown to the event for the express purpose of serving as a human sacrifice. Hey Lara, next time take the neocon roadshow home to South Africa. America has enough assholes.

Third, somehow during her on-air interview with Dylan Davies, Logan and her producers never got around to mentioning that a book he’d written about his experience in Benghazi, which dropped two days after the program aired, was being published by Simon & Schuster (which, as Dok Zoom previously mentioned, is owned by CBS). What Dok didn’t mention is that the book went out under a Simon & Schuster imprint called Threshold Editions, which publishes conservative nonfiction (or perhaps we should say “nonfiction”). Among the authors whose books Threshold has published: Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, S.E. Cupp, Herman Cain, Karl Rove, three of the four Cheneys, and our personal favorite, Jerome Corsi. Oh, and wingnut she-demon Mary Matalin is an editor-at-large at Threshold.

In other words, CBS is running its own little wingnut grift mill to separate the rubes from their money. Unfortunately the company seems to have forgotten that people still turn to its flagship news program for actual news. This is what happens when you put a bunch of Faux News idiots in charge and they get outside the right-wing media bubble into what the rest of us refer to as “reality.”

At least Threshold announced on Friday it would pull the book off the shelves, which immediately led to mutterings from wingnuts about censorship and cover-ups and dark forces conspiring to destroy America and install Hillary Clinton as Empress for Life in 2016 (once again we’re telling you people: Sad Lee Stranahan is a goddamn national treasure).

Still no word on when CBS will apologize for continuing to air anything Chuck Lorre poops out after gobbling his morning six-pack of bran muffins.

[ The Nation / Hullabaloo / Pressthink ]