Supplemental: Back inside the “I, Claudius” scam!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2015

While haplessly letting it happen: By now, it’s fairly obvious. We’re back inside an “I Claudius” bubble.

Here’s what we mean by that:

In 1976, the Robert Graves novel became a massively popular PBS series. In each format, Graves’ entity created a fascinating picture of the way politics can work—more particularly, of the way the public can be deceived about the way their republic is functioning.

On the PBS series and in the novel, we were taken behind the scenes of the Roman republic. We saw what was actually happening inside the halls of power—and we saw the way the public was misled about the nature of the deliberations which controlled their alleged republic.

We’re back inside that world today as we get handed a very familiar old story. Candidate Clinton is being portrayed as the world’s biggest liar. We’ve been handed this tale every step of the way during the Clinton/Gore years.

The liberal world has always accepted this treatment. We’re accepting it once again.

Quite correctly, Joan Walsh is complaining today at Salon. More specifically, she's noting the contradictions of the industry-wide, melodrama-driven, good-old-Joe Biden build-up.

Unfortunately, Walsh accepted the familiar “biggest liar” charade when it was worked against Candidate Gore. Her mentor, Chris Matthews, was one of the most important authors of that disastrous deception—a twenty-month onslaught which sent George Bush to the White House.

Walsh has never told the truth about that version of this play. She’s complaining about the revival now.

The mainstream press corps is up to its ears in this familiar revival. They led the charge against Candidate Gore. Their complicity is only slightly less this time around.

Question:

Does anyone have the slightest idea what is actually being alleged in the latest revival of the long-running hit, “The press corps against the Clintons?” Does anyone understand the ball of confusion contained in Ruth Marcus’ Sunday column? And how about the various things Ellen Tauscher just said?

Tauscher, D-CA, is a former six-term member of Congress. From 2009 through 2012, she served in two different major posts at the State Department.

This Sunday, Tauscher appeared on Fox News Sunday, where she pushed back against the current ball of confusion, which our major news orgs are making exactly zero effort to clarify, explain, unpack, delineate, explore or resolve.

To her credit, guest host Shannon Bream let Tauscher speak at some length about the current ball of confusion concerning State Department operations. As Gene Lyons notes in his current column, her most striking remark concerned the claim that federal judge Emmet Sullivan recently said that Clinton violated policy in some way:

TAUSCHER (8/23/15): If we're going to cherry-pick, let’s stay with the cherry tree. You talked about what Judge Sullivan said. Judge Sullivan’s extraneous remark was about something completely different and it was about something going on with somebody else, an employee. And so, it has really nothing to do with what is going on right now.

For the full transcript, click here.

Judge Sullivan’s widely-quoted statement wasn’t about Clinton? Is there any chance that Tauscher’s statement could possibly be accurate?

We don’t know, and it’s unlikely we ever will. At present, the press corps is running a familiar old scam, of a type it knows quite well. No one is trying to clarify matters as the excitement, drama and gossip build. In fairness, there’s no reason to think our “journalists” would have the chops to do so even if they tried.

(It has been a very long time since they used any such skills.)

In I, Claudius, we saw the world through the eyes of “the street”—and we saw what was occurring behind the scenes, where “the street” wasn’t allowed. As of now, we the people are back in the scam zone again. If you think this can’t send a Republican to the White House again, we own screen rights to a very good novel we would be happy to sell you.

The liberal world has tolerated this long-running scam every step of the way. Has there ever been a less vigilant tribe than the one we belong to?

Obvious question, widely ignored: Didn’t everyone in the White House know that Secretary Clinton was using a private email address? Absent some technical explanation, how could they not have known? Did she never send an email to anyone in that realm?

It seems like the world’s most obvious question. We hear it asked every now and then.

As far as we know, no one ever tries to answer it! But then, that’s what the world looks like inside an “I, Claudius” bubble—in a world where the national “press corps” mainly just clowns and pretends.