Friday, February 20, 2009

I don't like Bill Moyers, haven't for quite a while

due to his bullshit. Now some interesting things are coming out about Mr. Conservatives Are Intolerant Bigots, like
Moyers and J. Edgar Hoover worked together to illegally bug Martin Luther King jr. as well as leak unflattering information about political enemies to the press. Andy Ferguson wrote the definitive Bill Moyers takedown years ago, but sadly it's not online (it is collected in one of Ferguson's books). Anyway, in lieu of the main course, as an appetizer here's a very damning excerpt on Moyers from Morley Safer's autobiography.
and
When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too.

From the linked excerpt from Morley Safer's book:
"I find it hard to believe that Bill Moyers would engage in character assassination over one evening news broadcast — even given the political imperatives of the moment. But I confess, I find it harder not to believe it.

His part in Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover's bugging of Martin Luther King's private life, the leaks to the press and diplomatic corps, the surveillance of civil rights groups at the 1964 Democratic Convention, and his request for damaging information from Hoover on members of the Goldwater campaign suggest he was not only a good soldier but a gleeful retainer feeding the appetites of Lyndon Johnson.

It's all too confusing. Bill Moyers, the sometimes overly pious public defender of liberal virtue, the First Amendment, and the rights of miniorities playing the role of Iago."


Just a wonderful guy, isn't he?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Scratch a lib, find a petty(or not so petty) tyrant.