Rush has a Conniption Over McClellan

Here's how Rush Limbaugh is reacting to McClellan's memoir: "he [Scott McClellan] doesn't know diddly-squat about what's in his book because he didn't write it." Limbaugh, trying to explain away the devastating criticism leveled at his hero, George W. Bush, is claiming that Peter Osnos, McClellan's publisher, ghost wrote McClellan's book.

But of course, not our Scotty! Not our loyal Scotty! How could he? Scotty, beam me up out of here and into the rapture, because I can't take it anymore!

Here's Rush doing his thing: "Peter Osnos... is a huge, far-left liberal. His publishing house is affiliated with The Nation magazine. His company has also published The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. This man's name is Peter Osnos, and so far six books have been bankrolled by George Soros. So there is a George Soros connection to the Scott McClellan book. In addition, this guy, Peter Osnos, has ripped me."A reporter and editor at the Washington Post during the 1970s and 1980s before going into book publishing, Osnos pens a weekly column for the left of center The Century Foundation. In a March column he denounced Rush Limbaugh as 'bombastic, aggressive, and mean,' bemoaning how the late William F. Buckley Jr. left behind 'a right-wing culture that tends to be as coarse and leaden as his demeanor could be buoyant,' charging Buckley provided 'unfortunate cover to others who followed with a spirit that was distinctly and consistently malevolent.' So that's the publisher. This is the guy who published McClellan's book. This is probably the guy who wrote McClellan's book." (DL: errors in the original).

Here is how PublicAffairs Book's website, publisher of McClellan's memoir, describes Peter Osnos:

"Peter Osnos
FOUNDER AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE

Peter Osnos was a correspondent around the world for The Washington Post [now there's a left-wing paper if I ever heard of one!] and the newspaper's foreign and national editor. He was Associate Publisher and senior editor at Random House and publisher of Random House's Times Books division [oh my, another huge left-wing publisher!]. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs, an independent publishing company specializing in books of journalism, history, biography and social criticism. Among the authors he published at PublicAffairs are, Wesley Clark [left-wing radical that one!], Dorothy Height, Vernon Jordan, Wendy Kopp, Robert McNamara [another hero of the left-wing!], Andy Rooney [we all know that beneath all that folksy wisdom stuff that Rooney's actually a stooge of the commies], Natan Sharansky, George Soros, Boris Yeltsin, and Muhammad Yunus, and journalists from America’s leading publications and prominent scholars. He is executive director of The Caravan Project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, which is developing a plan for multi-platform publishing of books. He is Vice Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review [oh, please, another left-wing institution, I'm dying here!] and is active in a number of other journalism and human rights organizations. He writes a regular media column that is distributed by the Century Foundation (www.TCF.org). He is a graduate of Brandeis and Columbia Universities. He lives in Greenwich CT with his wife Susan, a consultant to human rights organizations [ah ha! Human Rights! Clearly a front group for left-wing radical types. Right thinking conservatives don't believe in human rights!]."

Here's NewsBusters' Brent Baker, echoing Rush's talking points and also trying to claim that McClellan didn't REALLY write his own memoir, but was manipulated (unlike what happened when he was Bush's press secretary when he was, of course, just speaking his own mind and telling it like it is):

"On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Ari Fleischer related that 'Scott told me that his editor did "tweak," in Scott's word, a lot of the writing, especially in the last few months.' In an 'Eat the Press' blog entry Wednesday, Rachel Sklar asked Osnos: 'Did you work directly on the book with McClellan? (Who was his editor?)' Osnos replied: 'The editor was Lisa Kaufman and yes, I worked very closely with them.'”

Has Brent Baker ever worked with an editor? (Apparently not, looking at his work, if this article is any indication). Does Baker know that "tweaking" a manuscript is what editors do? In fact, sometimes editors do more than "tweak."

Does Baker even read what he writes himself? "The editor was Lisa Kaufman." If you're going to claim that Peter Osnos ghost wrote McClellan's book, do you really want to reveal the fact that the editor wasn't Osnos but Kaufman?

Baker goes on:

"Amongst the authors Osnos has worked with at PublicAffairs and previously at Random House: Wesley Clark, Vernon Jordan, Robert McNamara, Andy Rooney, George Soros, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Rosalyn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Sam Donaldson, Morley Safer, Molly Ivins and William Greider. Hard to find more than a few conservative names in the PublicAffairs list of authors."

How remarkable! "Hard to find more than a few conservative names in the Public Affairs list." Imagine that! Rush and Baker slam PublicAffairs for being a liberal publisher and then Baker is surprised to find that they have only a few conservative authors that they've published!

I guess that right-wing publishing houses publish "more than a few" liberals! When my next manuscript is ready, I think I should send it to Regnery Publishing. They could use a few more "liberal" names on their list. From their website, touting some of their latest: "Newt Gingrich’s influential Real Change, which quickly vaulted to #3 on the list, and remained on the printed list for ten weeks running. Soon to come are books by rock legend and gun rights leader Ted Nugent; martial arts expert, actor, and political activist Chuck Norris; and several repeat Regnery bestselling authors, including Tony Blankley, Chris Horner, and Robert Spencer. We also have a blockbuster exposé on O.J. Simpson by his longtime agent and confidant, Mike Gilbert; as well as three new volumes in our bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide™ series."

Baker and Rush claim that PublicAffairs is linked to the ultra liberal Nation magazine (the actual "link" being that the Perseus Group, which owns Public Affairs, also owns a number of other publications of which the Nation is one).

I really should read the right wing's stuff more often. Everyone could use more humor in their life.