Filling in last night on MSNBC's "Countdown" last night, Lawrence O'Donnell, the Democratic Congressional staffer-turned-Hollywood type, proved that la-la land values have gotten to him--or maybe he just proves that a lie is a lie, on either coast. From a purely partisan point of view, it's hard to blame O'Donnell for doing what he did, trying to extricate his beloved Democratic Party out of an embarrassment, but from a truth-telling point of view, well, O'Donnell came up way short.
The issue at hand was the party identification of Lyndon LaRouche, the crazy cult-like activist who has turned into a bitter critic of Barack Obama. It's LaRouche's followers, "LaRouchies," they are called, who are holding up those posters of Obama morphed into Adolph Hitler.
OK, that's atrocious. And there's little doubt that LaRouche--born in 1922, is an old-time 60s radical who has been on a long and winding ideological trek over the decades--and his followers are some sort of sect, which has gone by various names over the years: US Labor Party, National Caucus of Labor Councils, and National Democratic Policy Committee. But by whatever name, the fact remains that LaRouche ran for president, in the Democratic presidential primaries, seven times, from 1976 to 2004. And the LaRoucheans have been effective in other Democratic primaries, too: In 1986, two Illinois LaRoucheans, Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, won the Democratic nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state, respectively. Indeed, scores of LaRoucheans have run for political office, mostly as Democrats.
OK, so that's the history of LaRouche as a Democrat. Yet last night on "Countdown," O'Donnell turned LaRouche into an excuse to attack Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC); O'Donnell said that Wilson had said that LaRouche was a Democrat, which is, as O'Donnell put it, "completely untrue."
That's a scandal right there, that someone anchoring--not just being a guest, but sitting in the anchor's chair--would say something that was, itself, completely untrue. For good measure, MSNBC flashed a photo of LaRouche, with the chyron underneath his image reading, "(Labor Party)".
Then O'Donnell trotted out a guest Craig Crawford, listed as a writer for Congressional Quarterly and also as an MSNBC contributor to agree with the falsehoods O'Donnell was presenting as fact. Crawford referred to the LaRouchies as "nativist revolutionaries," which might be true, but any such besmirchments don't change the fact that they are Democrats.
One might think that Congressional Quarterly, which puts out a string of sober-minded high-end publications for DC professionals, would not one of its employees go spewing out, or even be agreeing with, falsehoods on TV. If your brand is built on trust and truth, lies are bad for the brand. CQ ought to have a talk with Crawford, because when he goes on TV, he is bringing with him all the credibility that CQ has earned.
But as the "Countdown" audience, well, O'Donnell can lie to them all he wants. MSNBC is built now, on the twin pillars of Democratic partisanship and left-wing advocacy. The audience watching O'Donnell last night, missing their great hero-leader, Keith Olbermann, is its own kind of cult, and they don't care what the truth is.
And as noted here at TCG recently, don't be surprised if Olbermann ends up running for president.
