RJ Eskow| Libby Apologists Are A Gift to Anthropologists Everywhere

[Demeter]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/libby-apologists-are-a-gi_b_53139.html


RJ Eskow| Libby Apologists Are A Gift to Anthropologists Everywhere


If I were studying sociology or anthropology I'd drop everything right now and run to Washington, DC. There's a great piece to be written about what Scooter Libby's defenders reveal about that city's power elite. (Think Mean Girls meets All the President's Men.) What an opportunity: The response to a perceived attack on one of the tribe is revealing a hidden culture to the world.

Social scientists will tell you that most communities are divided into at least two groups, insiders and interlopers. Washington is no exception. "He came in and trashed the place," David Broder famously wrote of Bill Clinton, "and it wasn't his place." It's Scooter Libby's place, though. He's part of the capital's power elite, a culture with its own social hierarchy, folkways, and shared beliefs...At the top of the DC chart are the designated leaders, the chieftains. The best way to get there is to have occupied a place in the hierarchy for a long time, after working your way up as apprentice to an earlier chief. A history of senior positions in past administrations fits the bill, hence the prominence of figures like Cheney and Rumsfeld. That's why in some ways Cheney holds more totemic power in Washington than does Bush himself.....On the next line down come those who draw their power from the top-line leaders. That's where Scooter comes in, as a Cheney acolyte. That's where Mary Matalin shows up, too, as a long-time operative for Republican administrations. The law school professors who authored a brief challenging the special prosecutor in the Libby case appear on this line, too. They represent a long line of interest groups, think tanks, and academic institutions who benefit from the largesse of the top-line hierarchy through grants of power, funding, and/or support for cherished causes......Newspaper publishers hold top-line status based on the institutions they control, while the writers and commentators who work for them appear several layers down in the chart. On a practical level, the ability of these writers to survive professionally depends on the favors bestowed on them from their social superiors in government and the media. On a personal level, they identify emotionally with the tribe and react violently when any of its leaders are under attack.

This group's folkways are reinforced every day. Their kids go to the same schools. They go to the same restaurants and clubs. Their intimacy's been ritually celebrated at a thousand cocktail parties, with wine and hors d'oeuvres as the unconsecrated host. And judging from what we've heard lately, it seems that excoriating unruly outsiders (whether they're bloggers, Bill Clinton, or uncooperative voters) has replaced the ritual eating of an enemy's heart.

Maybe that's why writers like Richard Cohen can so casually commit what seems to be journalistic malpractice when writing about the Libby case. For example, no matter how many times Patrick Fitzgerald repeats his belief that an underlying crime was committed in the Libby case, Cohen and his fellows will keep saying that Fitzgerald's asserted no such thing. Why such misdirection, which appears to violate the Society of Professional Journalists' written code of ethics? And now Cohen seems to be asserting that a Republican prosecutor and Republican judge are conducting a leftist show trial in retaliation for the war in Iraq...That sort of twisted logic isn't unusual among Libby defenders. Why do people who are often smart thinkers and good writers allow themselves to bend the rules of logic and ethics in defense of someone like Libby? Because people who do deceitful things often believe that they're obeying a higher ethical law. Often they're not even conscious of doing anything wrong. So when the Richard Cohens of the world repeatedly misstate the facts, one can only conclude that their belief in Libby's "decency" and the "unfairness" of the prosecution allows them to ignore both good journalism and the national good.

Tribe members consider Libby a decent public servant tricked by inquisitors into perjuring himself. Most other Americans recognize him for what he really is: a convict who convinced a Republican prosecutor and judge - and an entire jury - of his criminality, beyond a reasonable doubt.