Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

In the first week after the story broke, Fox brought up the vandalism story thirteen
times. Uber-conservative Grover Norquist told CNN that:
There have been reports coming out of the White House of damage up to
$200,000.... There have been obscenities scrawled. People have called in and gotten
answering machines with obscenities attached to them. There have been pornographic
things in the computers, viruses in the computer. I got a call from somebody
at the White House today who said, "You can't call me back. Phone lines have
been cut and damaged. I'll try to reach you next week," just in the context of doing
business. And "I'll give you my phone number but it won't work." I called in and it
didn't work. So there's evidently been extensive damage. But I think while Bushand
he's instructed his people to be very, very low-key on this because it really
reflects very poorly on the presidency and the White House and the previous
occupants, that it is important to document what happened because if you don't
take pictures of it, you don't document it, we know the Clintons will deny it ever
happened.
In fact, Fleischer assured the press that, while there was no investigation, "what we
are doing is cataloguing that which took place."
Of course, none of this horrible vandalism actually occurred. But Georgia firebrand
congressman Bob Barr had not been clued in on the ruse. Outraged, he demanded an immediate
investigation by Congress's General Accounting Office.
Fourteen months later, this, the final investigation of the Clinton administration,
yielded a 217-page report that found no damage to the White House nor to the Executive Office
Building. "There is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by employees
of the Clinton administration."
The White House had been damaged. But not by Bill Clinton. No, the vandals were
Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and their lickspittles in the right-wing press. And while no shits
were found, Grover Norquist could not have done more damage had he taken a dump in each
of the White House's 132 rooms.
The Bush administration had established its game plan. Pretend to stay above the fray;
use surrogates to lie, attack, and discredit; then get the media to report it. And, parallel to the
campaign to get the message out, there was a no-less-vigorous effort to keep certain messages
in.