Press Prostitutes and the Bush Prosecutors Purge
The Bush White House was notoriously famous for its purchases of positive press coverage. While columnists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher pocketed $240,000 and $41,500 to push the Bush line on education and marriage initiatives, paid-for Pentagon pundits took to the airwaves to back the administration on Iraq. But as new documents from the U.S. attorneys purge show, not all friendly coverage came from whores for George W. Bush. As it turns out, Washington Times editor John Solomon and National Review editor Rich Lowry were only too happy to do it for free.
Of course, Lowry's most lasting contribution to American political culture was his adolescent fawning over Sarah Palin. (He described his near-orgasmic reaction to her debate performance last October, as he "up a little straighter on the couch" while she "sent little starbursts through the screen".) But as TPM detailed, emails released Tuesday reveal Lowry was willing to stroke the Bush administration over the attorney firings as well:
It looks like Rick Lowry of National Review offered the White House his services in doing some positive P.R. on behalf of Rove protege Tim Griffin, who the administration had sought to sought to muscle into the U.S. attorney job in Arkansas as a replacement for the fired Bud Cummins.
In a January 2007 email, White House political director Sara Taylor wrote:
"Prior is going after Griffin. He's made this his cause.... We need to find some folks to defend Tim and his credentials, not to mention our policy.
Your thoughts? Rich Lowry offered to help Tim."
The best part? Taylor went on to ask: "Anyone better?"
But while no one would confuse Rich Lowry with a journalist, the Washington Times' John Solomon is another matter. Before he assumed the mantle of the cro-magnon conservative Times, it turns out he, too, was an unpaid shill for Team Bush trying to spin the DOJ prosecutors carnage.
In March 2007, Solomon was still at the Washington Post and with his WaPo colleague Dan Eggen covering the mushrooming scandal. But just one day after Eggen published allegations regarding the sacking of David Iglesias that "two members of Congress attempted to pressure him to speed up a probe of Democrats just before the November elections," Solomon on March 2 emailed Justice Department press aide Brian Roehrkasse, offering to help "bring some perspective to how the process occurred."
"Thanks for any help you can give on this. I think some tick tock along these lines will bring some perspective to how the process occurred. Of course, the White House counsel's office had to sign off. Of course an administration in its last two years looks for some fresh blood to inject into jobs. Of course, DOJ's analysis of prosecutors goes beyond performance evaluations to achievements or failures on policy issues like immigration. I think we can get this just right with your help."
As Raw Story reported, the Bush administration was evidently quite satisfied with the subsequent article that appeared under Solomon and Eggen's dual byline:
"This is not an entirely accurate picture of what happened, but I think this story is far better than most recent post stories on this subject," Brian Roehrkasse wrote.
And Kyle Sampson -- the counselor to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who would be forced to resign just nine days later for his role in the scandal -- responded, "Great work, Brian. Kudos to you and the DAG. [Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty]"
And so it goes. Through the miracle of email archives, we know that the tire-swingers of the AP supported the Republican agenda in myriad other ways large small. (During the investigation of the death of Pat Tillman, Karl Rove famously received an email message from the AP's Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier urging him to "keep up the fight.") And then there was Jeff Gannon, the male escort turned conservative attack dog who offered Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan his services each day in the White House press room.
But at the end of the day, Rich Lowry and John Solomon weren't prostitutes for Bush. They did it for free.
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