Swiftboating It
Well, seemingly I’m part of a group of bloggers that’s considered important enough to send e-mails to about upcoming controversies: Joe Gandelman, James Joyner and Pamela Leavey all report that they received two e-mails in the last week or so, announcing that next Monday, one of the candidates for President will be “swiftboated” (or, better: that information about this candidate will be made public, which will hurt him tremendously).
When I received the e-mail, I thought it would be wise for me to do some research on the people behind the charges / e-mail: “Revelation Press” and one Daryl Toor. There’s virtually no information out there on Revelation Press, so one gets the impression that it’s quite a secretive campaign. Toor is, as far as I could find, “a former investigative journalist with CBS” and a PR expert (this info was later confirmed by Tommy Oliver).
Toor, who sent the e-mail, also included this link. Obviously I don’t live in America so I can’t attend this press conference, but I could ask one of my co-bloggers to go, but I instantly decided not to do that because:
1. This smells fishy
2. If this isn’t dirty politics, I don’t know what is
Now, it’s clear that at least one of the candidates will face a very aggressive attack, but I’m not quite down with stuff like this. I sent an e-mail back, basically asking for more information and telling them that if I don’t know more, I’m not going to spend any time on it, but haven’t heard back from Toor.
As said, I didn’t want to write about it, but since Joe posted it and since others like Pamela, James and Rick have picked it up – making headlines on Memeorandum – I feel the need somewhat to inform you all about it as well (for those of you who hadn’t heard about it via other blogs), but I greatly regret that this is getting any time and attention. We’ll just have to wait until Monday to see what it’s all about.
And no, I’m not going to speculate about who the victim may be. We all, I’m sure, have a list in our head of people who may be targeted, no need for me to go on the record about it.
UPDATE: Joe Carter: “I won’t be surprised if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucus. I will be surprised, however, if he’s still in the race when the South Carolina primary comes around. Even if the impending scandal that has been rumored for weeks doesn’t derail his campaign (I can’t say what it is but you should hear about it before Jan. 8), his inherent dishonesty will eventually do him in.”
UPDATE II
He answered my e-mail: what he wrote has nothing to do with what’s supposed to happen Monday. As I said, I consider this e-mail offensive to be strange. It smells like dirty politics to me. In fact, I don’t feel like touching this issue at all. If something happens Monday with regards to a book being published, we’ll see. I’d probably not write about it / take it even remotely serious though. It has to be a very good story for me to pick it up indeed.
What I find incredibly sad is that it comes down to people trying to destroy the careers and lives of other people. This isn’t war people, it’s politics. It should be about what policies are best for, in this case, the US, not about whether Humpty is Holy or not.
I think we should fight back on the denigration of the term Swiftboating – to me it means getting hundred’s of honorable men together to shed light on lies, misrepresentations and the dishonorable forgotten public record of a pompous politician.
Somehow, it has been twisted to mean slandering with lies – but if you go back to the whole controversy there were only two things they discussed which are "up for argument" – which could be charged to different memories of the incidents or direct bias on either’s behalf. But there was nothing proven as incorrect, and of course there was a lot of valid criticisms that were proven to be correct.
and the timing is suspicious as well, right before the NH primaries, when the smeared will have no time to defend him/her-self.
Yes I agree Sashal. By the way, the post has been updated. My fears have been justified I’m afraid (about which candidate).
Man I hate this stuff. It’s not about policies, but about people. That’s infuriating.
I’m will you, Bill W. The term is being used in exactly the opposite fashion as the Swift Boaters acted. It slanders their very good names and lets off the hook a guy who still hasn’t refuted the majority of the story they told.
Ah, the traditional last-minute smears appear…plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!
Echo Bill W and Jimmie on the framing of the term "Swift Boating." Someone’s just slapping their new and debased framing on a very old tactic that bears very little relation to the original label.
No matter what appears, it would be wise to NOT assume that the obvious origins are the real ones. It’s common political judo to make such things look as though they’re coming from yet another candidate’s camp so as to get double duty out of the smear.
EXAMPLE: The pseudo-religious phrasing in this missive subliminally implies it comes from a Xian right source. "Chapter & verse…Revelation Press."
My own policy is to completely discount and ignore ANYTHING that comes out right before a vote as being at best a misrepresentation.
This utterly reeks of smear campaign. If the supposed allegations had any credibility whatsoever, they would have been revealed before, in time to give reporters a chance to fact check, and the campaign to give a proper rebuttal. As it stands, I plan on discounting WHATEVER the acusations are out of hand, unless they can provide irrefutable and obvious photographic evidence.
Obviously whoever wrote the book is trying to smear a candidate, but mostly this sounds like a whorish PR campaign to sell a book. My bet is that the book is utterly insignificant and they hired this PR firm to build up press about it being the next "swiftboat" scandal.
Lynx and Christine, note that both can be true. Multi-tasking last-minute smears for cash….
If it were a serious work it probably wouldn’t be coming out of a previously unknown publisher. That alone is a hallmark of tin-foil-beanieland.
Yep, those are my thoughts exactly, Tully. I’ll bet this is barely even going to be a blip on the radar screen, despite the attempts to hype it prior to the release.
I agree. I wanted to ignore it actually, but then people started writing about it and I concluded that I had to write something as well. I think I kept it pretty objective in the sense that I’m not running to this people saying "o my god! who are you attacking IF you’re attacking someone???"
The other one, I mention in the other posts about Romney seems to be more serious. In fact I’m doing research about it, to find out what it is. I’ve sent out quite some e-mails, and I think I know what it’s all about (not this one, the controversy about Romney). The question is, when can you post about it?
Anyway, I’ll continue to do research today.
Of course, smearing and making money are hardly mutually exclusive goals, in fact it fits well with the bottom feeders that put out this sort of trash that they would find a way to make a pretty penny with it as well.
I’m hoping it won’t work because it’s so patently and obviously a smear and/or profit tactic, but there’s always the chance the cable news networks, always hungry for something to fill their 24 hour networks, will decide to make this the "scandal of the day" because ethics is so last century.
C Stanley, this is slightly off-topic, but I want you to know that I finally did manage to reply to your comment of yesterday morning.
Thanks, Robert E- I’ll check it out now.
Well, it’s out, and yes, it’s about Mitt Romney.
Does seem to be a rather lame attack on his Mormonism, from a former fraternity brother.
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS173077+07-Jan-2008+PRN20080107
This exciting new book — Mitt, Set Our People Free! — published by Revelation Press, reveals just how Mitt Romney’s sacred oath to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known as the Mormons or the LDS –
including a vow of obedience to the “Living Prophet,” the President of the LDS Church — will impact his ability to govern as President of the United
States.