@Lash,
Maybe the lion can lay down with the lamb. I can't believe I'm so in step on this with a Sanders Supporter, but then you're actually a Fascist in Socialist's clothing (or is it Putin Troll? I can't keep up with the unmaskings) and so it actually makes perfect sense.
The blatant journalistic malpractice reflected in much of what these shills have said and written would be breathtaking if it wasn't old news.
Presumably "progressive journalists" are a different breed from
the good old fashioned sort. Their job isn't to cover or uncover the facts of a story and report them regardless of what political entity or faction is harmed or helped, it is to either ignore them if they don't advance their progressive cause(s) or manipulate them so that they do.
Their argument seems to be that while they appreciate that the
Right has, in the past, used allegations of foreign (especially Russian) influence to manipulate public opinion and suppress dissent, the Nation needs to realize that this time around it's being used by the Left and they, (
of all US publications for Chrissake!), being a revered elder of the leftist media tribe have to get on
the right side of the story, and stop rocking the damn boat!
("I mean c'mon Katrina we have this thing steamrolling now and you're throwing a ******* wrench in the engine works!")
And to make matters that much worse,
far right adversaries like those Neo-Nazis schmucks, Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter, are using the Nation's reporting as ammunition against the Good Guys, the Resistance!"
("WTF Katrina? We were just laughing our asses off during lunch at Somtum Der about that bitch's freaky huge hands!"
Shortly after the Nation published it's story on the
Russian Hoax, Resistance propagandists launched a damage control effort designed to could blunt the devastating claims being made, but stop short of ripping out the throat of Grand Dame vanden Heuvel (Lord knows, the vast majority of them want to bitch slap that omnipresent pursed lip smirk off her face, but they fear the effect taking her out will have on the
ecology of American journalism)). Instead they have disseminated a two tier narrative:
The first is that as a long time fan of the Soviet Union, the Nation retains a flaky sentimental hope that Putin will eventually restore it to it's former socialist glory, and is chaffing over the casting of Russia (and Putin) as the international heavy in the drama. Katrina vanden Heuvel was, to put it mildly, never a big fan of Hillary Clinton and it especially ticks her off that Russia is being cast in a bad light to cover for the incompetence of a militaristic, corporate shill who masqueraded as a left-winger.
The second is that she is being heavily influenced by her husband Stephen F. Cohen, the renown scholar and professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University who has also been criticized (by the Left) as a Putin stooge.
During the Reagan and Bush presidencies Cohen made regular appearances, as a Russia Expert on television news programs (he was practically a regular on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS.) He has had a long personal friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev and a great many other friends and contacts within the Russian government. When the Soviet Union began to crumble, Cohen was an adviser to Pres. George H. W. Bush, and often, during his appearances on television, spoke to
what the Russians in Moscow were thinking.
He never thought much of Bill Clinton and accused him of worsening relations with Russia by treating it like a failed state. That alone was enough to put him in the cross hairs of Establishment Democrats.
He came under fire from most quarters for defending Putin's encroachment into the Ukraine, but the Left put a bulls eye on his back when he publicly stated that the left-wing media's "assault" on President Trump was intended to undermine the US/Russia alliance against terrorism. I've personally seen him on TV (maybe even with Tucker Carlson!) attacking the Left (primarily the MSM) and defending Trump. At the time I thought that poor Prof Cohen wouldn't likely be getting any at home after he delivered that moderated tirade, but apparently the supposition is that rather than repelling his wife with support for Trump, he was acting in unison with her...to the intended benefit of Putin and Russia rather than, per se, the president.
We are always warned against judging a book by it's cover, but Katrina's perpetual steely demeanor doesn't suggest to me that she is likely to wilt under pressure from the Left. She published the Russian Hoax story well after her husband came under attack so the opprobrium from the Left, that while directed at him had to have deflected in part to her, didn't cause her to rethink her position. Maybe it even reinforced it.
Full disclosure: I've never been a fan of vanden Hueval. She's certainly highly intelligent but she is far too much of an anti-corporate bolshevik for my taste and is too wrapped up in the sort of vast right wing conspiracy theories that Latham loves to peddle. However, she's also clearly not a shill for the Democrat Party or Establishment Progressives, and regardless of what her motives for going with the story are, she's got steel in her spine and I hope, and even suspect, far more journalistic integrity that the frauds interviewed for this article.
You had to expect the Nation article would be mocked here, and I'm sure the trite references to Benghazi don't surprise you. That you were accused of lacking the
morals ascribable to these propagandists isn't surprising either. That it came from Olivier though just makes it that much more amusing.
