Scrapbook
Scrapbook He’s Not the Boss of Us That Bruce Springsteen is not a fan of the present administration will not shock regular readers of The Scrapbook. He spent the closing hours of the 2004...
...When the Toronto Star’s Greg Quill reviewed Springsteen’s recent Toronto show, effusively praising the concert and Magic’s political agenda, he noted that, “The new songs—all of them given specially dramatic lighting effects and video treatments on the large screens that hung on each side of the stage—prompted a mass sit-down” from a crowd that had stood through the rest of the show...
...It is an honor for me that my dear friend is part of Valerie’s day here with you...
...Maybe it was all of their commiserating over right-wing conspiracies or hobnobbing over dinner, but when Wilson endorsed Hillary Clinton for president back in July, the Democratic frontrunner was thrilled with the support...
...At one point, the Kerry campaign even set up a website to highlight Wilson’s attacks on the Bush administration...
...They gave me the forms and I checked everything...
...Friends of Hillary Where did Joseph Wilson turn when the right-wing smear machine maliciously attacked the retired ambassador for telling the truth about President Bush’s rush to war in Iraq...
...What’s that, Joe...
...I cannot tell you how many times they told us to pull up our socks and quit feeling sorry for ourselves because the future of the country is what really matters...
...Our question: When did Joe Wilson become politically acceptable again...
...The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts...
...He wasn’t telling the truth, and we don’t care about Joe Wilson anymore, either...
...Springsteen, of course, didn’t serve in the Vietnam-era army...
...He spent the closing hours of the 2004 campaign crooning with John Kerry by his side, desperately trying to push him over the top in Ohio...
...They had both been through the character assassination gauntlet, and were able to get us to see that the fight wasn’t personal, however painful it might be, but was all about how we conduct public debate and discourse in our democracy...
...The Scrapbook asks because we do care about his interlocutors...
...Byron York reported that Clinton and the Wilsons had dinner last spring, but pointed out on National Review Online: “Joe Wilson’s words seem to suggest that she offered much more extensive counsel...
...Army, or perhaps April 22, 1971, might be a more accurate dating of the Springsteen sensibilities...
...soldiers had “ r a p e d , cut of f ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...
...If you haven’t read Sid’s books . . . you really should...
...You’re right...
...But in July 2004, a unanimous, bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee left Wilson’s credibility in tatters...
...Kerry’s campaign quickly disappeared its pro-Wilson website and quietly distanced itself from the discredited “truth-teller...
...has inspired one of Springsteen’s new songs, this one about the war in Iraq: A downtown window flushed with light Faces of the dead at five (faces of the dead at five) A martyr’s silent eyes Petition the drivers as we pass by Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake...
...his biographer Dave Marsh noted, “Springsteen beat the draft in the classic Sixties fashion...
...Thanks to Sid and Hillary, I think we have, and I think that is reflected in what you have already seen of Valerie’s interviews...
...Kerry’s famous refrain “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake...
...It would be interesting to know more...
...During the publicity blitz that has accompanied the album’s release, Spr ings teen has repeatedly cited the left’s tiresome laundry list of grievances— Bush’s shredding of the Constitution, his ignoring of the Bill of Rights, and, most of all, his war in Iraq, which in the eyes of the military analyst cum rock star is Vietnam redux, only worse...
...Or perhaps it just denoted boredom...
...Wilson’s assertions— both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information—were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report...
...Yes, it would...
...Very few have emerged from the fire tempered rather than broken by the experience...
...Even said I was a homo and all that.’” Nor has he in his three-and-a-half decades as a rock-and-roll star participated in any USO activities or gone to visit military bases or hospitals...
...Joe Wilson has stood up to this administration and held it accountable for the misinformation that led us into the Iraq war,” she said in a statement...
...George W. Bush’s presence haunts the Boss’s new album, Magic, as Banquo’s ghost haunted Macbeth...
...And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address...
...Here is what Wilson himself said in a chat on a left-wing website...
...Given that Clinton is getting advice from Sandy Berger, who destroyed classified documents he took from the National Archives, one shouldn’t be too surprised that she would welcome Wilson’s support...
...I cannot tell you how many times they told us to pull up our socks and quit feeling sorry for ourselves because the future of the country is really what matters...
...He’s remained comfortably ignorant in his circa-1968 view of the U.S...
...Here is how a news story in the Washington Post put it at the time: Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly...
...But just how much did Clinton support Wilson in his disinformation campaign against the Bush administration...
...Quill went on to speculate that the sitdown “perhaps denoted a form of worship or meditation...
...Not Hillary...
...Two people in Washington helped us [Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame] understand the broader implications of the fight we have found ourselves in: Sid Blumenthal, and Hillary Clinton...
...The saving grace is that Springsteen’s anachronistic political rants seem to serve as white noise, even to his diehard fans...
...Back in 2004, Wilson announced his support for John Kerry and Kerry embraced Wilson and his fight against the Bush administration...
...How many times, exactly...
...That was the day when John Kerry appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and testified that U.S...
...No, we don’t care about Sidney Blumenthal either...
...This has been a long battle, far longer for the Blumenthals and for the Clintons than for us, but bruising to all who have been subjected to the viciousness and the lies of the right...
...I am eternally grateful to both for their wisdom and their profound understanding of the pernicious threat posed by the forces of the far right...
...It would indeed be interesting to know more...
Vol. 13 • November 2007 • No. 8
