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White House mass markets fear

By: Gene Lyons

July 10, 2006


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So how dumb would a terrorist have to be not to know U.S. spies
monitor international money transfers?

Maybe dumb enough to fall for the White House's demagogic attack on
The New York Times (but not, oddly, The Wall Street Journal or Los
Angeles Times) as a left-wing newspaper so consumed with hatred for
Bush that it would risk catastrophe to embarrass him.

The New York Times arrogant?

Goodness, yes.

Condescending, too.

During the decade the newspaper devoted to its farcical coverage of
the Whitewater hoax, feeding out of Kenneth Starr's soft little hand
like a Shetland pony, I experienced that condescension first hand.

Even confronted with dispositive documentary evidence its Whitewater
stories were bunk, its basic response never varied:

"We're The New York Times and you're not."

But left wing?

Well, the Times, along with the Washington Post, led the 2000 "War on
Gore" that basically gave Bush the presidency.

Then-columnist and now executive editor Bill Keller actually quoted
his 3-year-old daughter's opinion that the Democratic nominee was a
stiff.

After Sept. 11, the Times, along with the rest of the newspaper
consortium, buried its finding that had all the legal votes in Florida
been counted in 2000, Al Gore would have been president.

Lest we forget, it was reporter Judith Miller's series of leaked,
single-source "exclusives" touting Saddam Hussein's imaginary nuclear
weapons, accompanied by TV appearances by Condoleeza Rice and *****
Cheney carefully coordinated with Times publication dates, that helped
stampede the nation to war.

Columnist Keller thought invading Iraq was a terrific idea.

Now the Times has its reward.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll thinks he knows why.

[Many members of the president's base consider 'New York' to be a
nifty code word for 'Jewish.'

It is very nice for the president to be able to campaign against the
Jews without

(a) actually saying the word 'Jew' and

(b) without irritating the Israelis.]

Actually, that's wishful thinking.

Anti-Semitism, as such, is old hat among True Believers on the extreme
right.

For years, the idea's been percolating through the right's
well-organized propaganda apparatus that Democrats aren't loyal
Americans.

Regarding Ann Coulter's ludicrous book "Slander" (Crown, 2002), I once
wrote that "the 'liberal' sins (she) caricatures -- atheism,
cosmopolitanism, sexual license, moral relativism, communism,
disloyalty and treason -- are basically identical to the crimes of the
Jews as Hitler saw them."

Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Rush
Limbaugh and others peddle the same sterilized American update of an
ancient slur.

Limbaugh recently called 80 percent of Times subscribers "jihadists."

Now the Bush White House, desperate to prevail in 2006 congressional
elections, has taken up the cry.

Reasonable people never want to believe extremists believe their own
rhetoric.

But quit kidding yourselves.

We're witnessing mass psychosis.

The next terrorist strike, should it happen, will be blamed on the
enemy within: treasonous "liberals" who dissent from the glorious
reign of George W. Bush.

Unless confronted, it's through such strategems that democracies fail
and constitutional republics become dictatorships.

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Adolph Hitler would be proud

Harry