« Elitism Bait | Main | A note on my colleagues » She ain't a crook, son...31 Aug 2008 11:17 am This is a great, great post by Josh which elegantly and simply distills TrooperGate. Reading this, I can see I've actually underestimated this story and its Alberto Gonzales-like implications. Old girl didn't simply pursue a vendetta against her creep ex-brother-in-law. She pursued said vendetta, came up completely empty and, instead, took out a civil servant who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong-time. Read the piece. It's not shocking because of the revenge factor, politcians clap back at their enemies all the time. It's shocking because of the ineptness of said revenge. I've always said that the biggest problem with the Bushies wasn't that they were thugs---it's that they're fake thugs. UPDATE: As a commenter below reminds, it's also only right that I give the Post their due for this story, given how hard I went at them this morning. Comments (25)Comments on this entry have been closed. |
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The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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I get the piece, but I think it's a mistake to completely discount the actions of the brother-in-law in how this story will play. These are actions that would have gotten most of America fired and at least in California, arrested. The patronizing tone of the judge comes across as pathetic, given the abuse of the trooper's public station. (I think most mothers may be inclined to give up a little alimony when weighed against death threats from a state trooper.)
I don't doubt that the public servant, who was appointed by the governor, was fired for not being able to do more in this case.
But if the public servant was seen as part of the establishment protecting a state trooper, it's understandable.
You're right about being fake though. Ted Stevens would have had a bridge built just to run this guy out of town. I'm just not sure competent and evil is the preferable "magic quadrant".
Good post, I think elhondo may be right in terms of how the msm deals with it. I got beef with you saying the Bushies are fake thugs. I thought the most thug thing about them was that they f*cked people up in plain sight and then changed the law or bullied congress into doing it or just said F*ck off we're not cooperating. That seems pretty gangsta to me. In my view they were extremely effective. I'd hate to see what happens if elhondo's magic quadrant occured.
El Hondo,
While I agree, the dude could be a bad guy, the only evidence that we have is directly from Palin's family. I'm sorry, in divorce cases, the ex always gets painted as a bastard. That's just how it goes. Let's give him a little benefit of the doubt...
Also, this demonization of Wooten misses the main point which is laid out exquisitely by Josh Marshall.
Elhondo,
I agree about how the MSM will cover this. And living in the land of Diallo and Louima, I make no brief for a cop who tasers kids. I'm more concerned that the dude who did wrong still has job, and some other dude who just happened to be around paid the price. This may turn out to be nothing--in terms of the media. But just becomes it gets missed doesn't mean it isn't a real issue. Also, I'm not advocating Obama cut an ad based on this.
Colin,
There's nothing gangsta about yelling "bring it on" and then having Osama taunt you from the caves. There's nothing gangsta about talking tough to reporters while playing Musharraf's bitch. Best line of Obama's speech was on that dumb-ass "gates of hell" line that McCain uses. Try starting with the "Caves Of Pakistan."
I think there's some pretty big distortions going on over who the bad guy is in the situation. The evidence as I understand it is:
He tased his kid. On the test setting. Because the kid wanted to know what it felt like.
He illegally killed a moose. With Palin's father.
He once drank a beer in his car.
And these were all dumped as complaints on the day the divorce was filed. Is he a great guy? Probably not. Was it an attempted railroad? Indications point that way.
Of course, what will probably happen is that MSM won't bother to bring it up because "she was just trying to take care of a really bad man". But, that's not what the evidence is looking like.
It doesn't matter if he was a bad guy. He isn't the one who got fired. Engaging that part of the story is stupid, and attempts to make a windmill dunk out what is really just a simple layup. The known facts are bad enough. Why try to make this more complicated than it needs to be?
ta-nehisi,
i have a question, well more so a scenario, that i would like your opinion on.
i perused through andrew sullivan's blog (first time ever) and after reading much of what's on his first page, i wondered...
is palin a way for mccain to buy time for the selection of the "real" vp? do you think he may have chosen her in such haste cause the convention is next week and he had not made a real decision and after the election, she will "resign" and the new vp will possess the qualities she lacks?
do you think that is a possible scenario?
i'm just interested on your thoughts of such a thing occurring.
Ta-N said: " the biggest problem with the Bushies wasn't that they were thugs---it's that they're fake thugs."
What kind of bullshit street-logic is this? So if they were "real thugs" their conduct would be excusable? If they had misled the country and been victorious in Iraq, or if they had properly covered their asses on their Katrina response they would be "real thugs" and therefore admirable?
I thought that the idealization of thuggish behavior was below our host. I suppose not.
And enough with this "land of Diallo and Louima" crap. The NYPD is statistically one of the most restrained PD's in the country. You should be more worried about your hero "real thugs" out there than the over-worked and underpaid police officers who have locked up thousands of thugs, real and otherwise, over these last few decades and were a large part of making Harlem safe for transplant bougies like the host who wouldn't have thought about living uptown 15 years ago.
labor,
I think what TNC meant was that at least real thugs, you know, get stuff done. If we got misled and then won in Iraq, that wouldn't be admirable, but we'd have a bunch fewer dead soldiers and saved a lot of money. Same with Katrina. So yeah, I'd have rather had real thugs in office. What we got is the worst possible: vile and indecent and utterly incompetent. Not only do they break laws and abuse power, but they screw up while doing it.
labor,
You're treading on the edge of deletion. Disagree with the post all you want. Save the personal attacks.
Mr. Coates:
Maybe the trasplant bougie part was a bit much. Apologies for any insult. The rest I believe is a valid substantive crtiticism.
However, I lashed out because I take personally when my own friends, family and colleagues are maligned by people who really have very little knowledge or the police department, or if they do, still harp endlessly on tragic, yet rare events such as Diallo and Louima in order to characterize the entire department and its members as racist and abusive. Do you realize that you are slandering probably about 70 or 80,000 active and retired members of the service? And then you have the gall to idealize "real thug" behaviour in the very same post? This is unfair, and offensive.
labor,
Here is the exact quote:
"And living in the land of Diallo and Louima, I make no brief for a cop who tasers kids. "
Please--specifically--show me how I maligned "70 or 80,000 active and retired members of the service." Stating an unsupported opinion like a fact doesn't make it true. Prove that that remark maligns the entire NYPD.
Please--specifically--demonstrate how I've "idealized" real thug behavior.
Here is the exact quote:
"I've always said that the biggest problem with the Bushies wasn't that they were thugs---it's that they're fake thugs."
How your response:
"If they had misled the country and been victorious in Iraq, or if they had properly covered their asses on their Katrina response they would be "real thugs" and therefore admirable?"
On its face, you're claim is--literally--false, if only because, nowhere in that quote do I say that bush thuggism wasn't a problem. I said that the biggest problem was fake thuggism.
This is, like, the third time you've done this. The first time, I was amenable to miscommunication. This time not so much. Your posts are heavy on overstatement (maligning the entire NYPD), strawmen ("if they had properly covered their asses on their Katrina response they would be "real thugs" and therefore admirable") and personal attacks ("making Harlem safe for transplant bougies like the host who wouldn't have thought about living uptown 15 years ago.") I'd ask that you give me the respect of arguing against what I've stated--not your preferred repackaging of it.
Yes, the media will get wrapped up in her personality. Somehow I think that the people who will support her will overlook this scandal. Let's not forget these are the same people who want to teach about Adam and Eve in public school. This is why the Republicans are effective in their negative campaigning. For this group, faith is more important than facts. So she tried to fire a guy who's apparently evil, at least she is pro-life. That says more about her than her sticking to the ethics of a government that allow people to kill their babies. Lying is a sin though. She seems to have a problem with that.
Well just what are you saying? That real thuggery is preferable to fake thuggery, or just that Bush et al. aren't real thugs? It kind of seems like you're saying the former here:
It's not shocking because of the revenge factor, politcians clap back at their enemies all the time. It's shocking because of the ineptness of said revenge.
The idea being, insofar as I understand it, that inept revenge is worse than real revenge. I don't see why - surely political revenge is a bad thing, however common it is, so shouldn't we prefer failed revenge to successful revenge?
I think I get it now.
Palin ran for the position of Governor so she could stick the knife into her ex-brother-in-law.
The point being to distinguish, say, incompetence from revenge/thuggery/etc. So one may disagree with the Iraq War on the grounds that it's simply wrong invade a sovereign nation that hasn't actually threatened the U.S. Think of that, what you will. But that's something different from pursuing said invansion and completely bungling it.
Likewise, one may object Palin pursuing political revenge. But damn, she didn't just pursue political revenge, she exacted it on a dude who hadn't actually done anything.
I'd hope we could all agree that I'm not literally endorsing thuggery.
Man the lack of reading comprehension around here is staggering.
Let me see if I can simplify it, what TNC is basically saying is:
Being a thug is bad enough, being an incompetant thug is even worse.
Okay, but as for the specifics, I don't see the ineptitude here. The guy wouldn't fire the man she wanted fired. So she fired him and installed someone would do the firing. The only inept part is that she should've come up with a better pretense for firing the guy.
"Palin ran for the position of Governor so she could stick the knife into her ex-brother-in-law."
You know, the more I learn about this person, the more I think this is a valid point. So, she runs for Governor as a "reform" candidate. And one of the first things that she wanted to reform was her brother-in-law's employment status.
Okay, but as for the specifics, I don't see the ineptitude here. The guy wouldn't fire the man she wanted fired. So she fired him and installed someone would do the firing. The only inept part is that she should've come up with a better pretense for firing the guy.
Except that according to TPM, dude still has his job--the dude who tasered the kid, that is. There's the case for "inept revenge" or "fake thuggery"--the actual target of said revenge is still standing.
Oh... well then that's the cover-up, I guess; you can't prove she fired Mohegan to get taser-dude if Mohegan's replacement doesn't fire taser-dude. I mean, once she realized people were onto her, she can't let Mohegan's replacement fire the guy. But yeah, I guess I still prefer ineptitude of this sort to successful firing corruption antics - obvious parallel here is Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, where he went through three Attorneys General in one night until one would fire the Special Prosecutor on the Watergate case. Of course, that was sort of inept too in the PR sense - but it did work; Cox got sacked. I guess my point is, it's bad enough to fire people because they won't fire other people you want fired, but it's even worse when it actually works.
The punchline to this whole sorted affair is that the guy that Palin hired to replace the guy she fired because he wouldn't bend the law at her say-so was himself fired shortly after Palin hired him. It turns out he had sexually harassed a co-worker, for which he received a written reprimand.
The punchline to the punchline is when asked why she hired him, Gov. Palin said that it never came up in conversation, and she didn't ask. In other words, in what's now become a familiar twist, she never vetted the guy.
Everyone wants to argue whether or not she's a serious pick as a VP, but that isn't really the key point. The key point is, McCain and the RNC point to her "executive experience" as the reason she is qualified to take over the Presidency in the event something happened to McCain, but what executive experience she has shown is dubious at best, and outright worrisome if you're being charitable.
And we can now definitively say the same thing about McCain's judgement.
Take it easy Mr. Coates. Criticism is part of your game and I don't think you should expect all of your comments to be praise (most of it is). I admitted that the "bougie transplant" statement was out of bounds and I apologized for it.
And as for the others:
First, your statement about living in "the land of" Diallo and Louima is admittedly vague. However I think the most reasonable interpretation is that you live in a City where police abuse is the norm, and where the state of policing can easily be described in glib reference to these two awful incidents of misconduct. I'm not sure if there is another interpretation and I don't think you've offered one. Maybe you meant that you live in the City where Louima and Diallo occurred, but that's not what you said. I think that by saying that this is "the land of", you are saying much more about the NYPD.
On the "real thug" issue, I think you have again demonstrated my point. You say that your "biggest problem" with the Bush/Cheney crew is that they are fake thugs. The most reasonable interpretation of this statement is that their thuggishness itself, their actual immoral and illegal behavior (while you recognize it as such), is less of a problem than the fact that they are fake thugs, i.e., they are inept, sloppy or somehow non-gangsta in their execution of these crimes. I really can't draw any other conclusion from your statement. And I find the conclusion absurd.
I'm not the type to not admit when I'm wrong, and I honestly don't think that any of this is repackaging. As for your general attacks on any of my prior posts, I don't know which you are referencing (except one I think I can guess) so I won't bother to defend. But I'm a fan so I promise to do my best at being civil and fair, even when I strongly disagree.
Happy Labor Day!
(I thought I submitted this hours ago. Hope it wasn't filtered out)
Take it easy Mr. Coates. Criticism is part of your game and I don't think you should expect all of your comments to be praise (most of it is). I admitted that the "bougie transplant" statement was out of bounds and I apologized for it.
And as for the others:
First, your statement about living in "the land of" Diallo and Louima is admittedly vague. However I think the most reasonable interpretation is that you live in a City where police abuse is the norm, and where the state of policing can easily be described in glib reference to these two awful incidents of misconduct. I'm not sure if there is another interpretation and I don't think you've offered one. Maybe you meant that you live in the City where Louima and Diallo occurred, but that's not what you said. I think that by saying that this is "the land of", you are saying much more about the NYPD.
On the "real thug" issue, I think you have again demonstrated my point. You say that your "biggest problem" with the Bush/Cheney crew is that they are fake thugs. The most reasonable interpretation of this statement is that their thuggishness itself, their actual immoral and illegal behavior (while you recognize it as such), is less of a problem than the fact that they are fake thugs, i.e., they are inept, sloppy or somehow non-gangsta in their execution of these crimes. I really can't draw any other conclusion from your statement. And I find the conclusion absurd.
I'm not the type to not admit when I'm wrong, and I honestly don't think that any of this is repackaging. As for your general attacks on any of my prior posts, I don't know which you are referencing (except one I think I can guess) so I won't bother to defend. But I'm a fan so I promise to do my best at being civil and fair, even when I strongly disagree.
Happy Labor Day!
Don't I feel like an ass. I didn't see my previous post because I forgot to reload the page. Sorry.