Frank Rich VS. "White House Propoganda Factory"

Below is an excerpt from Frank Rich's column today "Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito." The entire text can be found at Nevada Thunder.

Rich shows that his earlier career as a theater critic prepared him well for his reviews of the Bush PR Theater Company. (Below he calls it "Rove's White House propoganda factory").

He's also hip to the right wing propoganda strategy of putting the body politic in somatic jeopardy and then promising to protect it against terrorists and Democrats. Rich is going on book leave to write "nonfiction about our post-9/11 fictions" and will be back in the spring.

Let's hope he comes back swinging even harder against the lyin' spyin' Bush cabal.

....
As everyone knows now - except for the 22 percent, according to a recent Harris poll, who still believe that Saddam helped plan 9/11 - it’s the truthiness [emphasis added] of all those imminent mushroom clouds that sold the invasion of Iraq. What’s remarkable is how much fictionalization plays a role in almost every national debate. Even after a big humbug is exposed as blatantly as Professor Marvel in “The Wizard of Oz” - FEMA’s heck of a job in New Orleans, for instance - we remain ready and eager to be duped by the next tall tale. It’s as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.

Democrats who go berserk at their every political defeat still don’t understand this. They fault the public for not listening to their facts and arguments, as though facts and arguments would make a difference, even if the Democrats were coherent. It’s the power of the story that always counts first, and the selling of it that comes second. Accuracy is optional. The Frey-like genius of the right is its ability to dissemble with a straight face while simultaneously mustering the slick media machinery and expertise to push the goods. It not only has the White House propaganda operation at its disposal, but also an intricate network of P.R. outfits and fake-news outlets that are far more effective than their often hapless liberal counterparts.

....
If Karl Rove’s White House propaganda factory is the NBC Universal or Time Warner of G.O.P. fictionalization, then the Miramax and Focus Features of the right are such nominally “independent” satellites as Cybercast News, the Lincoln Group (which places fake news stories in Iraqi newspapers), the Rendon Group (which helped manufacture the heroic image of Ahmad Chalabi) and the now-dormant Talon News (the fake Republican-staffed news site whose fake White House correspondent, Jeff Gannon, was unmasked last year).