The Wall of Silence Crumbles

Finally, the MSM wall of silence erected on the behalf of their Chosen One has broken. The leaks were too many for it to maintain its integrity — even though those jornolists were “heroic” (i.e., obedient) in their efforts to build that wall and stand before it singing in unison with Himself and his cohorts, “It was the video, it was the video, it was only the video…” while they frantically tried to seal the leaks in their crumbling edifice. Our valiant jornolists did their best.

Nor did any of them raise the smallest demur when the film’s creator was hauled off to jail in the middle of the night — a place where he will remain until after the election.

If those two strong indications that we may be headed for a police state do not awaken my fellow citizens, I don’t know if there is any hope for us.

Fox is only a kinda, sorta MSM outlet — at least that’s what the other alphabet soup media would tell you. This is simply one more version of the cordon sanitaire put up around those who stray from the left’s orthodoxies. Thus, the “real” media repeat the mantra that Fox isn’t “really” legitimate like they are, hoping we’ll buy their lie that CNN is the fair one. On the other hand, I’m sure our readers could point out the times when Fox did indeed toe the line in order to maintain a thin red thread connection to that all-important access. Early on in Obama’s administration Fox was singled out by an administration that would prove to be the most vindictive since the days of Nixon.

But on this story Fox broke radio silence first, never mind that it took them more than a month to do so. And now all the MSM’s Sunday talking head shows featured Benghazi today. Benghazi as told by conservatives for the most part. As far as I know, though, none of the Dan Rather progeny have taken up the subject in a prime time news hour. Or if they have, it’s too little, too late: from September 11th until now is simply an unconscionable delay.

The initial credit goes to Glenn Beck, who is a force increasingly to be reckoned with. All the dismissive ridicule heaped upon him by his putative ‘betters’ is proving futile. His audience continues to grow. Frankly, now that he has accepted the ugly facts of the dangers the Muslim Brotherhood represents for this country, I’m in his corner. He gets it; Glenn Beck has broken the silence on civilizational jihad, and due to his influence with average Americans, this fact alone may save our sorry selves.

Mr. Beck was already questioning the events in Benghazi when he happened to hear a radio call-in show. The caller was the father one of the two men who were killed in action in Benghazi as they tried to hold off the hordes of attackers. Listening to the account moved Mr. Beck to arrange for his own interview with the grief-stricken, angry father. Beck had been on this story all week, a determined hunting dog following wherever the trail led. When he could find them, he pulled in experts to give their point of view on timelines and motives. Among them was Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer. It was her belief that the Ambassador was simply left to die.

I’d give you more links from The Blaze archives, but I’ve yet to figure out a good path through that labyrinth. That’s not pejorative; it’s simply the case that Beck has floods of information. Back when we had a satellite connection, I couldn’t retrieve much at all. Now with our new connection things are a bit smoother, but it does take big-city connectivity for optimum access to all his material. However, there is one crucial DVD he and his people have assembled. Along with other foundational texts on the menace of Islam, everyone with an interest in the danger ought to have a copy of The Project. I watched it on the site last week and to call it ‘riveting’ doesn’t do this production sufficient justice. What an important Rosetta Stone project it would make! I hope Mr. Beck considers doing versions in other languages so that those who don’t speak English can become more fully informed. If any of our readers knows someone connected to The Blaze, please pass the idea on to them for consideration. They surely have the means to employ translators and transcribers aplenty.

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Even while I’ve been haltingly put the pieces together during the course of this ominously quiet Sunday, the ooze from under the wall has been slowly but steadily increasing.

Parallels between the rising furor over Benghazi and the wrath of the oncoming hurricane are both ironic and eerie. It’s hard not to make comparisons between that Benghazi debacle and the advent of the dreaded Hurricane Sandy . They are both singularly evil, each an unprecedented phenomenon, or almost so.

That Frankenstorm, whipped up on steroids and bearing down on a large portion of the Northeastern coastal corridor will come ashore in a way sure to cause maximum damage. Hurricanes are notoriously unpredictable, but this one is so very large and slow that authorities do know the subways in New York City had to close. And they know Sandy and her newly joined friends plan to extend their stay for a few days [all the way down here, hundreds of miles southwest of this massive attack, we could well lose power due to strong winds swinging from the arms of this hybrid monster].

Yet, as awful as she is, Sandy could become a welcome distraction for President Obama. He relentlessly criticized Bush for his handling of Katrina — now he gets his turn in the hot seat with a storm not categorized as severely as Bush’s nemesis, but with the potential for equal destruction. However, with Benghazigate brewing up to be a deadly blowout when all is fully revealed, Obama must be relieved to have a mere natural disaster riding his back. Sandy could become his ace in the hole as he sidesteps the pointed sticks of that epic FAIL in Libya. For at least part of the time early this week, Mr. Obama will be stuck in the White House at least for appearances’ sake. He will be forced to make meteorological theatre newsbytes to prove his concern for those not fortunate enough to live in his sheltered circumstances. Despite how closely we approach Voting Day, Obama can hardly run away from the storm to obsessively campaign. While his fellow citizens within reach of the maelstrom are riding out the storm surges and the immense havoc wreaked by Mother Nature and by opportunistic looters happy to cash in on someone else’s tragedy, he needs to do what he says Bush failed to accomplish.

A campaign speech under such circumstances would be so lame that surely even the Obama machine would recognize the anger that campaign blather would generate from those afflicted here? Besides, he could use the occasion to hide behind the Sandy surges, safe from the storms of Benghazigate, at least for a while. Whether it will be long enough to do him any good remains to be seen, given his determination to put all Libya talk off-limits. At some point stonewalling will be counterproductive, even with his base. The question is whether Obama will recognize the stopping point; Nixon’s hubris blinded him. Will history repeat itself with Obama? One hopes he is in the Situation Room watching old films of Nixon’s fumbles with the Watergate scandal, if only to pick up some pointers about missteps to avoid. For sure, he will not have a media target painted on his back as Nixon did. They will, as they have for years, fall all over themselves to see who can do the most to help him out of this mess.

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Obviously, things have changed greatly since Woodward and Bernstein persecuted Nixon; so unrelenting were they that Watergate became their raison d’être. Behind them, a whole new generation of reporters, leftists all, would emerge, imprinted with the reflected glory from those days, and all of them breathlessly determined to mount their own investigative reportage and ride to glory.

There have been numerous opportunities to do so, especially in some of the more perfervid Clintonesque escapades and injustices. But it would be the major heresy to attack a liberal; anyone who did so would be pilloried, or worse. Sadly for those in the media, their energies must needs stay focused on hastily covering over each rip in the tissue of lies draped over the Obama administration, or plugging each leaking hole in their wall of silence, atop which are perched those monkeys who see and hear and say NOTHING.

Remember this administration’s motto of never letting a crisis go to waste? How ironic that the press has a golden, bejeweled crisis with Benghazi, and yet they have to let it go… if they ever want to work in Washington again. Or even visit there. The utter heresy of investigating a liberal president — never mind the fact that he is a black liberal president — doesn’t bear thinking about. To consider such a move is to see the epaulettes being ripped from your shoulders, to hear the sound your keyboard makes as it is smashed in front of your eyes. Nuh-uh. Compromised they may be, but none of them is that crazy.

Funny, we turn to the press because it’s been what we do for so long. Yet the point of gravity has moved way down, all the way down to places that didn’t exist when President Nixon was facing the court of no appeal as personified by Woodward et al. Journalism as a “profession” is a sick joke. It is overrated and over-populated; journalism has become jornolism and the graduate schools tend to attract the bottom half of the GRE (Graduate Record Exams) takers. Not exactly the cream of the crop. But out of habit, we — the Baron and I — kept waiting for the MSM to ’fess up to Obama’s misdeeds, failing to take into account that the real action had moved elsewhere.

Yes, part of the pushback came from the blogs and from conservative magazine websites, and there may have been some movement via Facebook. The latter would have been my initial guess. But just as with the Occupy messes and the faux revolutions that our Press nattered on about at the time, the energy of Benghazigate came riding in on Twitter. On the conservative side of Twitter, to be precise. The Left was still calling names and literally threatening assassinations as the Right continued to demand answers to increasingly disturbing revelations. I watched this from the sidelines, occasionally retweeting a message here and there. The Twitter stream is swift; trying to keep up is a white-water ride and at some point one must swim to shore to watch from the bank.

Thus I saw the flow of sarcasm beating against the wall of silence. The questions continued to rise, as did the frustration at the lack of credible answers by the administration. Evasions were met with ridicule; all sense of any respect owed to those responsible was disappearing under the avalanche of evasions. I couldn’t see how, given the intense level of engagement, there could be any resolution with enough credibility to satisfy those who were increasingly concerned with what appeared to be a desertion of Americans by our government. While no resolution seemed possible, the process was worth observing.

A breaking point did come though, and when it arrived, the dénouement was unexpected. While I was looking in the wrong place, waiting to see the MSM crack, conservative Twitterers were pushing to a breakthrough of sorts, using the MSM to do so. Because Instapundit linked SM’s account of the story, it is his which is spreading. That’s fortunate, since he describes it well. I happened upon him a month or two ago and Followed him, so I was pleased to see his version be the one to get up and walk. I particularly liked his title:

How Conservatives on Twitter Forced Obama to Face the Benghazi Debacle.

Some background: conservatives who use Twitter have noticed on more than one occasion that their messages are heavily policed by the Twitter patrol boys. The same does not hold true for the liberal side of the swamp. Physical threats and vicious ad hominem attacks are allowed to stand with impunity, as Michelle Malkin can attest. Most days she re-tweets her “favorite” slam from some less-than-literate hater who directs his/her vitriol particularly in Malkin’s direction. Meanwhile, conservatives complain their accounts are suspended for no apparent reason.

So that gives you an idea of the landscape. Now to the chronology of events as related by Sooper Mexican. It is full of hashtags, etc., that you don’t really need to understand in order to get the gist of what happened. This long snip picks up at the point of SM’s explanation of the recalcitrance of the Obama people. His chronology differs somewhat from mine, but the accounts are largely the same. More importantly, he supplies that missing link:

…[Did the] Obama administration…withhold assistance to the attacked, as many as three times[?]. This set the conservative blogosphere afire, but was met with glassy-eyed yawns from the lapdog mainstream media all too eager to protect Obama.

On Friday morning, Fox News and conservatives on social media mounted a beleaguered attempt to force the issue and make the administration face the accusations from a frustrated and angry father of a deceased Navy Seal.

And then a fissure in the stranglehold of the mainstream media appeared.

Kyle Clark of Channel 9 News was able to secure an interview with President Obama, and to his great credit, opened up to twitter for suggestions on what questions he should ask:

"Interviewing @barackobama today. What would you like to hear him address? @9news #copolitics

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) October 26, 2012"

[…]

Your favorite friendly neighborhood Mexican jumped in…I paused to try to zero in on what I thought was the most precise and incisive question on this issue. After considering how best to phrase my question, I made this suggestion:

.@kyleclark ask Obama a very simple question — did White House or State Dept deny security requests to #Benghazi during the 7 hour attack?

— el SOOPer (@SooperMexican) October 26, 2012

[…]

Many other conservatives made similar requests…

[…]

After the interview, Clark posted this blockbuster twitter message that lit up the twitter conservative sphere:

.@barackobama would not directly answer our repeated questions on whether requests for help in Benghazi were denied #copolitics

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) October 26, 2012

Think on this — after the media wanting you to think that the most important issue this election is whether Big Bird will keep his government subsidized welfare check, a local reporter taking question suggestions from twitter forced Obama to face a real question about Benghazi.

Clark clarified that his questioning to Obama had to do precisely with any denials of security during the attack — not before:

@copeakpolitics To clarify, our question was whether requests DURING the attack were denied. Full writeup/video coming

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) October 26, 2012

After 9 News in Denver posted a transcript of the interview and a video, the headlines shouted out the inability of a feckless president to admit any responsibility:

Obama Refuses To Answer Directly When Asked if Security Denied DURING Benghazi Attack

The headline traveled from blogs to smaller news outlets all the way up to Fox News:

Obama avoids question on whether Americans in Libya were denied requests for help

and Glenn Beck’s Blaze news source:

Obama Refuses to Answer ‘Repeated Questions on Whether Requests for Help in Benghazi Were Denied

And finally, Jake Tapper at ABC News:

President Obama Begs Off Answering Whether Americans in Benghazi Were Denied Requests for Help

This is not a small matter. Prior to this event, the Obama administration had claimed they had not denied security requests from the embassy in Benghazi. The CIA made it clear that they didn’t deny any security requests, but their wording left it open to interpretation that someone else higher up in the chain of authority had. Leon Panetta said they could not send in any military without sufficient information, further substantiating the claim that request were denied.

With this seemingly pedestrian interview, Obama could not answer whether he or anyone else in his administration had denied security requests while Americans were under attack from terrorists.

Because of conservatives on twitter, he had to deny this twice.

This is the new face of journalism; this is how we break through the pathetic and deplorable lapdog media complicity with the Obama administration.

This is war.

His last statement is instructive. No matter the outcome of the election, where Obama is concerned something fundamental has changed for many average conservatives. I have no idea how it will work itself out, but I can hear the sad echoes of Nixon down the years; I do believe Obama will eventually have to resign if he does win this election. And who knows what fate awaits him in Congress in any event. There are forces in motion now that will assume a life of their own. Just as Sandy moves inexorably to join those other two storms…

Leaving Americans to die — in fact, watching them die — is an unspeakable act in the eyes of average citizens. They will forgive much, but not that. Benghazi is proving to be a betrayal too far. So many broken promises, so many cynical lies… the accounting will be long and ugly. But this one, even more than the deaths caused by Fast and Furious, is not going to be simply put on the accounting books to be totted up later. This one demonstrates a serious lack of any moral compass.

This is a permanent stain on our history as a nation. No amount of washing will remove it.