Let’s Make the War on Parody More…Bipartisan!
Lanny Davis, verbatim I swear, discussing his well-compensated lobbying for tyrant and war criminal Laurent Gbagbo:
“I had a bad experience trying to convert non-democracy to a democracy for the State Department,” he told me. “And I learned that no good deed goes unpunished.”
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Then there’s the way that makes sense:
Humanitarian missions like that are just the kind of thing we haters of bipartisanship deplore!
Alas, Davis’s generous crusade to spread democracy throughout the globe takes on a somewhat less heroic hue if you understand a few crucial facts. When Davis says he tried “to convert a non-democracy to a democracy,” he means that when Gbagbo stole an election, Davis announced, “there is substantial documentary evidence that President Laurent Gbagbo is the duly elected president as a result of the Nov. 28 elections”; when Davis says he represented Gbagbo “for the State Department,” he means he did it over the express opposition of the State Department; and when he describes this as a “good deed,” he means he charged a mere $100,000 a month fee for the work.
Just remember that if we sell this blog to the Koch brothers, we’re just trying to convert them to liberalism. Do not punish us should we do this good deed!
Analyzing Davis’ statements using one of SEK’s favorite devices, the Triangle of Rhetoric: who is the audience to whom he is addressing his remarks?
It’s not us. And it’s not the public at large, because fuck knows they don’t give a shit. And it’s not Beltway Insiders, because they already know exactly what Davis is and interpret his words accordingly. And it’s not Potential Clients, because “a multinational company ‘in crisis’; a foreign country seeking to attract tourist and commercial investment; and a company having difficulty with regulatory agencies” could give a shit about the rhetoric Davis and Steele sling on some two-bit website on a fourth-rate news service.
So . . . who’s left? And could they possibly give a shit about what Lanny Davis and Michael Steele have to say?
Since Davis has fronted for so very many bad people, he is probably very good at convincing them that he is influential through his media appearances and the people he knows. They don’t know that he sucks at it, they just have gobs of money and are looking for a connection in Washington.
Though these days they need only cut a check to a superPAC.
The principle of Occam’s Razor suggests that Davis says these things simply because he is a habitural bullshitter. He needs neither an audience nor a rationale. He needs only a keyboard or microphone, and it will simply pour out of him, with no more care or self-awareness than that demonstrated by an actual bull taking an actual shit.
How. Dare. You. How dare you sir. How dare you besmirch actual bulls.
I dislike the use of words connoting prostitution. I have met a lot of prostitutes and they all said that there were things they would not do. Mercenary seems to me to be a better fit for people like Davis. Perhaps we can all make an effort to come up with the proper contempt-filled pronunciation to give the word the heft it needs.
Cheers,
Alan Tomlinson
On the stupid/evil axis, I think Lanny Davis has actually gone so far into the evil section he has become stupid. It’s why evil dumbasses like Laurent Gbagbo are so eager to use his services.
To be fair, if you do sell to the Kochs, it well be because there will have been substantial documentary evidence that they’ve already embraced the core tenants of liberalism.
The Kochs can damn well keep their sooty hands off my tenants, thank you very much.
It is a dangerous concentration of Fail they have there, a serious risk of Fail Critical Mass. No-one in either party really cares to hear from either one of them, so I suppose it’s right they should throw in together.
As a matter of fact, let’s wish all success to their budding firm, and hope that it takes on other, similar people to fill its ranks. The firm can be the Golgafrincham B-Ark of American politics.
Lanny Davis’ appeal is exactly that of a prostitute. Nobody hires him for a LTMR – there’s a basic need, and for his clients there are no alternatives with access to the media.
So if you believe any publicity is good publicity, if you think that any love is good love, then you take (pay for) what you can get. And I’m sure Lanny dazzles them and says ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’
BTO caught the Lanny Davis thrill for his clients completely, roles are completely interchangeable:
‘I met a devil woman, she took my heart away
She said I had it comin’ to me, but I wanted it that way’
The North Korean Ministry of Information’s description of John Bolton readily and aptly applies to Davis: “Human scum.”
So $1.2 mill p.a. is the going price of soul remnants this year?
Nice thought, but that was what he charged for the P.R. campaign of lies. The soul remnants, he tossed in for free as he wasn’t using them anyway.
Just one more thing to keep clean.
I feel $100,000 a month is a fair price to have LGM become a pro-Koch blog.
$100,000 each, surely.
“Just remember that if we sell this blog to the Koch brothers…”
How much do you suppose you’d get for it? Serious question, I’m just curious.
I expect they would get at least a shiny new donkey, as long as they throw in the head of Colonel Montoya as part of the bargain.
“Work hard, Zutroy, and each day you’ll get a shiny penny.”