Scott McClellan: Awakening From A Mickey Finn?

Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan has penned a book called What Happened (due April 08).

The book’s highly-regarded publisher, Public Affairs, released a brief excerpt today, one that may pour substantial salt into old wounds…

Scott McClellan writes,

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

“There was one problem. It was not true.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”

McClellan Quit Speaking for Others; Why He May Finally Be Speaking For Himself Now

Though the title of the book could be misconstrued to be asking, “What happened?” as a person suffering from being slipped a Mickey might ask when suddenly awakening again, the title is meant as “Here’s exactly what occurred.”

And, this excerpt sheds some light on McClellan’s seeming hasty bowing-out from his position at the White House. It may also resurrect the spooky Bermuda Triangle of missing vessels once sailed by Rove, Rumsfeld, Bush, Andrew Card/ Cheney/ Libby/ Novak/ Miller, et al.

To many at the time, Mr. McClellan’s was a puzzling leave-taking. I thought he seemed suddenly and unduly tired. He spoke in arid, terse tones usually associated with carrying a hidden broken heart, or having been personally disrespected in a substantial way, and wanting to keep it private.

His book is many months away from bookstore lay-down. It would be promo-suicide to begin to tout a book this far out without risking the book losing all momentum … yet the release of the excerpt might be a teaser, but it could also at the same time represent an altruistic turn in timing, a desire by Mr. McClellan himself to stand a certain way in written history

What McClellan’s Excerpt and Book May Really Set Afire; A New Blaze Altogether

Regardless, Mr. McClellan’s excerpt may touch new flame on a straw– to the dry tinder of another issue entirely

– certainly, the credibility of data being passed from/by the White House to the public…

– but more so, the credibility, or if I might put it more pointedly, the seeming lack of incredulity…. of some in the White House Press Corps in gathering and weighing and delving for the “news underneath the news” …in order to pass facts and situations in-depth to us, the public, the clear ‘supposed to be’ inheritors of the work of ‘the fourth estate.’

Journalists who make errors, and more pointedly, omissions, regarding mining for content and veracity of the White House briefings, take the huge risk of enabling such half-news or ‘non-news posing as truth’ to flow into the larger print papers of record. The fake-notations are taken up by the regionals, and flow thence into the local papers and other mediums.

In media, as in family life, as in ecology, as in religiousity, if the oceanic poisons the rivers, then the streams and creeks are poisoned too. You couldn’t create a better venous system for delivering mind-poison —or anesthesia.

Without deep news, truthful news, the highly valued “public’s right to know” then turns into the “public’s plight from being snowed” — the readers and listeners become the biggest dumbed-down electorate that ever lived. All the while fighting with one another over whose half- or non-truths are most valid.

How to keep an entire electorate functionally illiterate? Feed them half-validities and false faces with lots of lipstick on them to disguise their lack of substance… so citizens can never weigh the actual facts…therefore the citizenry can never create nor vote an initiative with gravitas and wisdom—and peace.

How some in media ever became such colluders in endarkenment of the public, is the media travesty of our times.

When The Egotistic Wins Over the Hard Work of In-Depth Investigation and Reporting

For years now, many have asked, Aren’t some of the White House news correspondents being too chummy with White House Admin, including partying with chiefs of staff, executive officers, spokespersons both in private “bizship” gatherings, and in public social events? This question, thus far, no matter who answers, remains definitively unanswered.

I’ve belonged to the National Writer’s Union and The Hispanic Journalists’ Association for many years now. It is true, some journalists put priming and dredging for power perks for their egos… way ahead of finessing and doing the hard work of life calling.

It seems to have begun with Bernstein and Woodward who received much money, baroque opportunities and life-long fame as a result of their Watergate investigations. This sudden swerve in ‘what might happen’ if a journalist could position himself or herself, by hook or by crook, and thus be rewarded with endless everything the ego ever dreamed of… overlooked the fact entirely that Bernstein and Woodward didn’t suddenly come upon reward by talent and ego drive alone. The major X factor was their hard, lonely and persistent work.

However, most journalists aren’t seduced by the bum’s rush to be famous. Sure they want to stand out, be known for taking pride in their work, be original, useful, interesting, fascinating even, and win a few prizes so they have something to dust and look at fondly.

But, the gritty journalists tend to look askance at those who put self-inflation and slime-light first. The majority are hard working men and women who truly bend to the craft of journalism. Though they are often a grab-bag of eccentricities, they’re clear: Craftsmanship is about seeking stories in depth, not about seeking to be sought after personally.

Just following the general tones for a ‘return to ethics’ found in Editor & Publisher, the trade paper along with AJR and CJR, some editors appear to be waking up to seeing that the ‘chummy-cum-perks’ relationships between journalists and the subjects they are covering, may be, in itself, a newsworthy and under-reported investigative story. We’ll see.

Thus, McClellan’s book may provoke just such an inquiry. If McClellan didn’t know, didn’t realize, didn’t understand, he wouldn’t be the first person whose admiration and awe of another person got in the way of clear and timely insight. He was the mouthpiece. As such, he did his job. But journos aren’t mouthpieces. Or are they sometimes?

Maybe an ‘old guard’ editor at the news desk could start getting down to deeper news by assigning one of his/her hard working journalists to find out how ‘only’ this much (below) was asked of the current press secretary and how her non-answer was then allowed to be quoted as “news” on such a serious story as McClellan saying essentially that high up governing people went into a crouch instead of stepping up to the plate…

AP reported this afternoon: “White House press secretary Dana Perino said it wasn’t clear what McClellan meant in the excerpt and she had no immediate comment.”

Really? A journo let the CURRENT PRESS SECRETARY get away with saying no more than this on THIS story?

Please excuse me for quoting my father, an old country tailor who sometimes valued faithfulness to principle over finesse: “Soomday somevon gonna make a mint selling belts veet balls.”