George Rebane
News media’s search for balance is an errand for hubristic fools.
Here I am, writing this mea culpa with a red face. Over the past week or so, I was among the millions of rightwingers who took in the news – hook, line, and sinker – about the business dealings of Hunter, Jim, and Joe (“the big guy”) Biden. This morning my eyes were opened by an incisive and revealing op-ed piece – ‘Never mind COVID, how about Hunter?’ – in the 30oct20 Union by its publisher Don Rogers. There he details a vast bamboozle, now in full swing, managed by Team Trump in the attempt to again illegitimately influence the election. Reading the tightly worded expose, one immediately sees how these shenanigans all fit together to produce a conspiracy of size, depth, and scope never attempted in the history of our Republic.
The first thing I learned from Mr Rogers’ piece was that the country cannot continue executing its C19 response while also attending to the Biden scandal news. I must admit, I never thought of that important detail. We live and learn, when our betters shine the light.
The whole conspiracy apparently started by a rightwing Mac repair shop owner producing a laptop he claimed belonged to Hunter. We should have known that this was a plant because it’s very unlikely that any “Trump follower” and “patriot” would ever operate a computer repair shop – a dead giveaway.
And then more evidence of a bamboozle when Trump’s lawyer Giuliani was given a copy of the alleged emails supposedly on Hunter’s laptop. Everyone knows that Giuliani is in the bag and easy to involve in any of Trump’s shenanigans. And everyone knows that Giuliani in his travels to Ukraine and points east has already been compromised by the Russians, and is now one of Putin’s Pals.
Where it gets really interesting is the report that the FBI was given the computer, and has had it for a better part of a year. But that dog won’t hunt either. We know how the FBI has been complicit in a lot of underhanded doings; it wouldn’t take any silver-tongued devil, say, like Bill Barr (no doubt in on it from the start), to talk the FBI’s leadership to join the conspiracy. Again, I was blinded by FBI Dir Wray et al announcing that Hunter has been under criminal investigation since last year. A clever ruse that has convinced too many of us unsuspecting naïfs.
What really should also have alerted all of us to the magnitude of the conspiracy was how Trump paraded DNI Ratcliffe in front of the nation to announce that the entire intelligence community had analyzed all the doings, and had not been able to find any Russian connection. That that was clearly a lie came to light when we heard of the letter from 50 retired intelligence sector managers. These distinguished gentlemen assured the country that the laptop and emails affair had all the earmarks of a Russian operation. In fact, so much so, that any reasonable person would agree that no further evidence was needed to prove that point. Again, plain as day, the allegation of so many retired intelligence professionals should have, then and there, made clear to all what was really going down. But I and people like me just went ahead believing. (Readers know that I was also bamboozled by all the findings discrediting the Steele dossier – too soon old, too late smart.)
What really took us in were the obviously placed reports of other colleagues of Hunter who had received some of the alleged emails. To include such unknowns in the game was a no-brainer. The real clever and well-thought-out ruse was the whole affair involving retired Navy officer Tony Bobulinsky. Bobulinsky, supposedly CEO of a Hunter set-up company, was put up in a LA hotel room in front of Tucker Carlson (already another dead giveaway) to sing like a bird. Some may argue that since Bobulinsky, from a long and honorable military family, was already wealthy, therefore he would not be on the take for a few more mere millions. But we all know that rich guys are greedy and forever on the take; it really didn’t take much to get him to play along. Anyway, the entire Bobulinsky thing is a sideshow and charade, especially his claim of discussing the whole alleged scam with Joe Biden himself, and now adding on that the FBI has listed him as a “material witness” in its criminal investigation of the Bidens. The whole country knows what a straight-up guy VP Joe has been, a man who would never be involved in crass undertakings such as family-wide influence peddling. Again, another missed dead giveaway.
And now we hear reports that the NY Post, the rightwing rag that broke the story, contracted a well-known cybersecurity expert to authenticate Hunter’s Burisma emails (more here). That desperate ploy itself should have put the kibosh on the whole conspiracy. But no, all this time we have had more rightwing media outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal acting out their roles like a bought-and-paid-for chorus giving credence to the fabricated dirty linens manufactured in Russia, and coordinated here from the White House.
Involving those major discredited rightwing news sources should have put paid on the whole sordid affair. This was made doubly clear by the entire cadre of progressive networks, cable news, and newspapers bravely and professionally refusing to cover any of this insidious conspiracy, lest it poison the minds of the more malleable folks so close to the election. I see this now as a public service of the first rank, and have to admit that it shades all of my misdirected diatribes over the years against the journalistic profession and our Fourth Estate – one of our sacred and celebrated public institutions. And were it not for courageous and diligent journalists like The Union’s Don Rogers, so many of us would never have been the wiser. For me, it’s better late than never.
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