Tough Way to Make Sophomore!

Well isn't this a fine dust-up! Frosh Congressman Mel Martinez of FL, with a well-established rep by now for scapegoating obviously carefully hand-picked staff to keep his hems clean, has fessed up to the "play Schiavo for political gain" memo that Fox and similar non-media swine wanted to pin on Democrats. Or perhaps he's an easy stand-in given his well-established routine and reputation.

It might have been a great move actually for the Dems, were they cast from same mold as the sleazeballs who appear to nest so happily in the mainstream of the Republican party these days. Who knows - it might have been worth a gamble given that the neutered MSM that seems to be the only channel to many folks finds issues like the Jackson trial and the Pope's death all the "news" they can deal with.

We must not forget that Dan Rather went down over some carelessly checked memos despite the fact that the contents of the memos, pointing to criminal AWOL behavior by George Bush are, from the evidence, probably correct. Bush broke his contract for military service and broke the law. Memos most probably faked in that case by Republican partisans were apparently used to discredit reporters and were - amazingly - enough to distract the mainstream media and their sheep from recalling that their beloved ubermensch is actually a repeat-offending criminal. Paying attention and questioning authority are obviously endangered skills in our country these days.

The excellent site Media Matters seems to have a down-to-earth perspective on the apparently quite earth-bound Martinez:

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Already the focus of intense media scrutiny, the Senate memo promoting the potential political benefits to Republicans of the Terri Schiavo case garnered further news coverage late in the day on April 6, when freshman Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) acknowledged publicly that one of his aides had produced the document. In covering this scandal, however, the media has largely ignored Martinez's history of blaming staffers for other controversies during his Senate campaign.

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Josh at Talking Points Memo is also on to Martinez and appropriately pungent:

(April 08, 2005 -- 10:29 AM EDT)
From the Miami Herald ...

The campaign ads were bitterly divisive, even by the standards of a bare-knuckle primary, accusing the opponent of then Republican senatorial hopeful Mel Martinez of playing to the "radical homosexual lobby.''

Martinez blamed the ads on "young Turks" in his campaign and apologized to his GOP rival. Weeks later Martinez found himself again blaming a staff member after a press release from his campaign likened U.S. immigration agents to "armed thugs" for seizing Elián González from his Miami home in 2000.

Now, for the third time, Martinez finds himself under fire -- and blaming an aide for the conflagration.

Good help is so hard to find.

In a separate post, Media Matters reminds us of what should be obvious - resignation of one staff member as a sort of purgative doesn't cut it. There are a multitude of questions yet to be answered given what we have learned in the last couple years about the formerly somewhat independent media being so deftly played by highly skilled propagandists:

Following the April 6 revelation that that a senior aide to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) authored a memo that described the Terri Schiavo case as "a great political issue" that would excite "the pro-life base" and be a "tough issue for Democrats," Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, told CNN congressional correspondent Joe Johns on the April 7 edition of CNN's Inside Politics: "Now that we know where the memo came from, and the staff member has resigned, that's pretty much the end of it."

But the Martinez revelation is not, as Lott claimed, "the end of it." In a follow-up article on April 8, Washington Post staff writer Mike Allen wrote that Martinez's staff is looking into whether other staffers in the office had seen the memo and whether Brian Darling, the Martinez staffer who resigned after reportedly admitting authoring the memo, had distributed it to other Senate offices. But there are other questions, and perhaps the media will look past Martinez's account of what happened, especially given his history of disavowing politically damaging conduct by staffers, and look past the results of Martinez's staff's investigation, to try to resolve these questions . . .

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Those of concerned about our non-sheep credentials and with even a modicum of concern about authority these days certainly hope so!