Everybody, this is up on Drudge now, and it is appalling. It purports to describe how Karl Rove supposedly asked an Alabama woman to take photos of former Gov. Don Sieglman (D-AL) in an extramarital affair. As if.
In light of this week’s huge focus on media bias and just slipshod, poorly sourced or validated stories, I warn everybody in advance against this sleazy piece of tabloid journalism as promised by the masters of the genre, 60 Minutes.
As an Alabama journalist for eight years, I have been following from afar (her stories started breaking after I moved back to DC) this lady’s utterly baseless, frankly nutty, string of allegations involving supposed skullduggery related to the conviction of former Gov. Don Siegelman. I do not know of a single legitimate journalist in Alabama who takes seriously a single thing she says. And we’re not talking mere local yokel journalists; we’re talking recent Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalists — who do NOT lean right, but who, to my personal knowledge, are either center or left of center in their personal views.
This lady making the allegations actually testified before a congressional committee last year, and the buzz about all her allegations suddenly died. Why? Because not even the lefty Dems found her credible. Question: Why, after all the stories she has told, including having a chance to testify before the committee, does she just now suddenly start telling this story about Rove when it never was part of her narrative before? Repeat: NEVER part of her story before. (See paragraph three of this story today.)
And why would any self-respecting journalist (which, I guess, by definition excludes 60 Minutes) believe that Rove, with all the other, more sophisticated campaign tools at his disposal, would do such a thing? And why would Rove ever have reason to believe that this woman would even be in a position to photograph Seigelman in flagrante? I mean, this is so ludicrous as to belong in black helicopter, tinfoil hat territory. PLEASE continue to watch this space, because I am putting together a major report here refuting the 60 Minutes slime job, with lots of excellent sourcing. But I wanted to get this posted now, as it is getting late on a Friday afternoon.
