Sunday, February 05, 2012

Ari, abortion, and alternate universes


Seems former White House Bush spokesy, sometime Steve fluffer, and anti-Planned Parenthood campaigner Ari Fleischer was involved in vetting job applicants for the Susan G Komen For the Cure foundation, which then dropped their funding for Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screening last week after its anti-choice leadership reverse-engineered its funding rules to align with anti-choice groups opposed to abortion, contraception, and stem cell research. 

Dr. Dawg has already done a takedown on their subsequent non-apology apology, made in the wake of considerable public backlash, and Fleischer is insisting he had nothing to with any Komen policy changes about Planned Parenthood.


This reminded me that as recently as three years ago Ari Fleischer was still plumping for an alternate universe in which Saddam Hussein was the guy behind 9/11.   15 second clip above; full Hardball show here.


Eighteen days after that March 11, 2009 TV appearance, Ari, acting in his capacity as Steve's US media fluffer, arranged the now infamous Fox News luncheon attended by Steve, Steve's director of communications Kory Teneycke, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News president Roger Ailes. Four months later, Teneycke left Steve's employ to pursue his dream of creating a Fox News North for Canada and voilĂ  - the alternate universe of Sun TV where they just make shit up was born. 


The night before the Foxy lunch, Ari had also arranged for Steve to have dinner in Washington with  "Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, William Kristol, and conservative syndicated talk-radio host Laura Ingraham."
Good grief but those little applets never seem to fall too far from the RepubliCon family tree, do they?

In 2004 Ron Suskind related the following conversation with a Bush aide :
"The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' 
I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' 

Meanwhile, Con MP and Fetus Festivus alumnus Stephen Woodworth will hold a public press conference tomorrow in Ottawa to ponder the question "When is a human being a human being?"
According to Section 223 of the Criminal Code of Canada, in this universe a human being obtains upon having "completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother."
Hope this helps.

.

6 comments:

the regina mom said...

Oh, Alison, I had a feeling you were up to something good! Hawt dayyam, sistah! I got so excited I had to tweet it before I finished reading it. Well done!

PS: Find me on Twitter @thereginamom pls?

Alison said...

Honeybun, I'm not on twitter. Will lurk at you however ;-)

thwap said...

Imagine if you could get full-time work with wealthy institutions sticking it to capitalists, imperialists and racists?

Imagine if all you had to do was mouth banalities, lie shamelessly, and it didn't matter how many times you got caught!

It's a sign of a sick culture that there's money for the Ari Fleischers and David Brooks of the world.

Anonymous said...

Do we know why Ari met with Stevo the second time? Can't find it anywhere so far. I read somewhere that he was paid an amount that would be just under the limit needed to be monitored.

Alison said...

Anon : No, we don't but then we don't really know why he was hired the first time either, aside from the official "get American media exposure in advance of a critical G20 summit in London" explanation.
Second time 6 months later was for "a number of ongoing issues"

He was paid $24,500 each time - just under the amount needed to be put up for public tender. I just assumed they split the contract into two payments although that would be illegal in Canada. For comparison - Ari's single event speaker's fee is $20,000 - $40,000.


On good days, Thwap, I consider that most people are just getting on with their lives in their communities and don't require flacks to get their story out or to explain the latest version of political calvinball to them.

West End Bob said...

Ahhh, Alison.

Once again, you've gone above and beyond the call of duty - Thanks!

Still chuckling over this very apt description, BTW:

the alternate universe of Sun TV where they just make shit up . . . .

Blog Archive