The Plame Blame Game

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6688

The Plame Blame Game
by Jaime O'Neill | Apr 11 2007 -


It's already been a month since Valerie Plame appeared before a congressional committee to tell the tale of how she lost her career at the CIA because some people were annoyed with her husband. A month isn't a long time, but that story has faded like a rose in a cancer ward as the news media's attention is diverted to new and emerging scandals. Sometimes it seems to be a Machiavellian refinement on political strategy, to load one screw-up or scandal on top of another so fast and frequently that the gravity of each individual act of malfeasance is negated one after the other.

But before the Plame story loses our attention completely, it might be worth remembering that there was a human being at its center, as there usually is when bad things are done.

When I first met Valerie Plame, we were at a party aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean, one of those "theme" cruises the travel industry has been so adept at marketing. In this case, it's a cruise for liberals who want respite from the Bush cloud that has so divided the nation, making lots of places uncomfortable for people who call themselves progressives. So this cruise provided the chance to schmooz with the mostly like-minded without having one's patriotism called into question.

Where liberals congregate, guilt usually comes along for the ride, so, in addition to the good food, and the fun in the sun, there are seminars and panels featuring people like Scott Ritter, Jim Hightower, Victor Navasky, and Valerie Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, all of them sharing what they know about the crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration, a list that will continue to grow long after this particular ship has sailed, then docked, then sailed again.

It's difficult for liberals to justify the decadent opulence of a cruise ship, with ports of call at places where dark skinned people live in poverty. A cruise that devotes much of its time to cause-focused symposia about the woes of the world serves as the perfect rationalization for people whose consciences require justifications for personal pleasure, the kinds of activities conservatives engage in routinely without need for such palliatives. When the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, the passionate young civil rights leader takes the stage for one of the panel discussions, he opens his remarks by saying, "When I was invited to be a speaker on this cruise, I had to hesitate. Black folks always hesitate when white folks ask them to get on a boat." It's a good line, but the laughter that follows it is, in part, excessive and compensatory.

There is a small irony to be found in the fact that I meet the most famous spy I will ever know in the stateroom of an anti-spyware computer mogul. It's a pretty heady place to be. To my left, I see Steve Earle, social activist and controversial singer/songwriter, accompanied by his beautiful new wife, Allison Moorer. At my right elbow, Scott Ritter, the former Iraq weapons inspector, is talking with passion to a cluster of attentive listeners, expressing his fears that war with Iran is a virtual certainty. Jane Smiley, the novelist, is out on the verandah, talking about fiction with my daughter as the ocean rolls by. I engage in this shameless exercise in name dropping strictly to set the scene, of course.

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