Sunday, May 04, 2008

Will Torie Clarke roast or merely simmer in hell?

If she does go to hell I'd think she'd at least not have to wait in line. The NYT's David Barstow reports,

"Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.

And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities.

In the months after Sept. 11, as every network rushed to retain its own all-star squad of retired military officers, Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. To Ms. Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” — authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass audiences.

The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.

Hell is too good for this heifer and those she co-opted, not to mention those that have profited from this mess, as she sold the Bu$hCo and neo-conservative foolishness. Eventually that lipstick wears off Torie. There's a statue I walk past every so often out here that has a good number of names engraved on it. I expect their families and other loved ones they left behind might not appreciate your "winning" of "the game". John Gunn

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