WP's Tina Brown: This Time, the Prosecutor's a Corker

[Pirate Smile]

This Time, the Prosecutor's a Corker

By Tina Brown

Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page C01

It's one of the ironies of our media culture that the mystique of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, grew to mythic size simply by virtue of Fitzgerald keeping his mouth shut until he has something to say.

Manhattan media circles have been so excited by Fitzgerald's silence right up to the eve of the grand jury's term tomorrow that they've forgotten his casting as a First Amendment assassin and turned him into a cross between Philip Marlowe and the Shadow: fearless, honest, independent, laconic and unstoppable. Especially laconic -- and on that point they're demonstrably right. Unlike Kenneth Starr's late, unlamented operation, neither Fitzgerald nor anyone around him leaks.
"Incorruptibility by money is the old story," the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier commented to me this week. "Now it's incorruptibility by media."

-snip-
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald's powerful silence has made him a blank canvas on which Democrats have projected their fantasies, Republicans their anxieties. We are living in an uneasy moment of moral crisis and institutional disintegration in politics as well as journalism. No administration as tightly wound and paranoiac as the Bush regime could hope to hold together after five years of supremacy and sectarian ruthlessness, governing only for its base.

Fitzgerald has been thrust into the role of the un-George W. Bush -- the gritty cop vs. the rhinestone cowboy. In this corner, the scholarship kid from Brooklyn who worked summers as a doorman and went on to be the stellar student mentoring the less gifted. In the other, the son of privilege who goofed off at school, ducked the draft and always fell back on his dad's influential pals to -- in the memorable phrase of Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, writing this week in the Los Angeles Times about Powell's role in the Bush White House -- clean all the dog poop off the carpet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102602524.html

[Straight Shooter]

1. "The son of a privilege who goofed off at school, ducked the draft ...

... and always fell back on his dad's influential pals to ... clean all the dog poop off the carpet."

Bwahahahaha!

I was just thinking last night that Fitzgerald is like a modern-day Gary Cooper, the classic strong and silent type. Unlike bush, who runs off at the mouth as if he actually has anything important to say.

[Pirate Smile]

2. Yes, it is great. This guy's life has been the mirror opposite of Bush's

legacy life.

Here is more:

It's hard not to see Fitzgerald as the possessor of authentic traditional American virtues. Fitzgerald deals in facts, and lets facts speak for themselves. Bush talks ceaselessly of faith. The prosecutor is all about substance, the president all about surface. In nominating his personal attorney to the most august thinking body in the land, the Supreme Court, the president was caught showing the dismissive view he's always held of intellectual depth and scholarly accomplishment.

Fitzgerald's noir mystique was only strengthened this week by news accounts relating that in contrast to the rapier focus of his mind, Fitzgerald lives in a bachelor apartment with old socks stuffed in the desk drawer and three-month-old lasagna stiffening in the oven. Remember how in the first year of the Bush II presidency there was constant promotion of this administration's crisp corporate values? New-broom indicators like the CEO starting every meeting on time and retiring to bed at 10 p.m. were supposed to signify that personal discipline was a sign of intellectual rigor. But an empty desk can sometimes mean an empty head, one that's comfortable only with spoon-fed executive summaries and filtered "coverage" instead of self-processed information.

"It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy," Wilkerson wrote in his startling blast against Bush. "But it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide."

Republicans have been searching for a handle on Fitzgerald. They are trying, seemingly unconsciously, to offload onto him their own bad faith left over from the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's shameless display on Sunday's "Meet the Press" was the cake taker. Hutchison had the gall to blandly rabbit on about overzealous prosecutors and perjury just being an itsy-bitsy crime. The narrative of Clinton's impeachment is being replayed, only this time without such incidental grotesqueries as a thong-snapping intern and a prissball prosecutor leaking like a fire hose and the recourse to churchy lines like "sex isn't the issue, the issue is lying." It's one thing to say, "If he'll lie about sex, he'll lie about something important." But what if the thing being lied about is already important? For Democrats, the prospect of indictments coming down feels like poetic justice for five years of cynicism and sanctimony.

[Straight Shooter]

3. bush has referred to good vs. evil about a million times already.

Well, apparently the Universe was listening and is fulfilling the intent of his words. Here comes a classic good vs. evil scenario, and bush is not the good guy.

[rodeodance]

6. at least!!--but add Karen Hughes comments and we get a Billion at least.

[IndianaGreen]

4. the gritty cop vs. the rhinestone cowboy

With a full 39 months to go, Prince Hal is morphing into Prince Lear. Little wonder we are obsessed with the strength and silence of Patrick Fitzgerald.


What a great piece by Tina Brown! The emperor is indeed naked, and now no one is afraid to say so publicly.

[yellowcanine]

7. Yeah I liked that line also. "Rhinestone cowboy" Heh. It definitely is

not a compliment and will make the bushbots gnash their teeth in frustration. "Gnash, gnash, gnash."

[Pirate Smile]

5. kick - great piece by Tina.