Scott McClellan and the Politics of Profitable Hurt

Well, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan got the media firestorm he was hoping for, which will make the unemployed propagandist millions of dollars, which, I'm sure, he was hoping for even more.

Old -- sometimes even young -- right wingers never seem to die; they just fade, and not even courteously away, into filthy and immensely undeserved riches.

He's now being offered up by many on the left for political sainthood, because he's perceived as having turned on his old boss (which, according to those who've actually read all of What Happened, isn't quite the case). And that's the sort of Greek political drama we love. It's more than Oedipal, it's tasty.

But lest we forget: If Scottie had not been pushed out of Propaganda Central, he would still be standing there at the White House podium, spewing the vilest of deceptions and lies on behalf of his criminal keepers.

Setting the record straight and reclaiming his credibility, my butt. Truth is, this vengeful turncoat got his feelings hurt, as opposed to losing an arm or a leg or his manhood or his head in a cockeyed war without justification, except from a political marketing point of view.

Watching others suffer those far more monstrous fates was somehow emotionally bearable for Scottie, as long as, that is, he was one of the boys. When his innate incompetence caught up to him, however, and Bush's chief of staff decided to put him out to the pasture in which he had always belonged, what once was bearable became oppressive.

So Scottie got scruples. Along with a nice book contract.

And just "what happened," may I ask, as reported by Scottie not that we didn't already know? Which is to say, what Scottie knew all along? What is it that Scottie learned after leaving the White House that he didn't well know when he was in the White House -- when, that is, he was playing its game, happily attempting mass deception for personal notoriety and a paycheck?

Was he aware of the Iraq war as having been marketed as casually as a new toothpaste? Yep. Was he aware of the White House's "political propaganda" machinery having grievously "manipulat[ed] sources of public opinion"? Yep. Hell, we all were.

Was he aware that his White House comrades had "downplay[ed] the major reason for going to war," which actually was twofold: the idiotic idea of establishing something idiotically called "coercive democracy" in the Middle East, largely for the greater personal glory of President George W. Bush? Yep, and yep.

And when did Scottie do something about all this? While he may not have been in the White House loop that was piecing the bloody and irreversible scam together, he learned of its infrastructure and working details while actively around them.

Yet he did nothing, said nothing, revealed nothing when it might have mattered -- when, as he now writes, the White House was "turn[ing] away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed."

If those words hadn't been written by a typically opportunistic right winger, they'd be breathtaking.

One of Scottie's criticisms of Bush is that the president "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment." You don't say, Mr. McClellan. That trait seems to run in his political family, does it not?

But here's what I know, Scottie. Here's what really happened.

You and your criminal cohort damn near destroyed this nation. I could sit here and write a long list of the hows, whats and whys, but they are too universally known to any longer bother with. By now, virtually everyone knows "what happened," Scottie.

Only a few will profit from it, however. Very few. You were one of the few then, and you're one now.

Congratulations. As others struggle over the next 20 or 30 years to overcome the vast wreckage you helped cause, you'll be sitting pretty. Congratulations, indeed, you criminal ass.