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| Blumenthal -- WSHU Cliff Owen |
Dick Blumenthal is the most “appeared” candidate for office
in Connecticut history. He himself has joked that he has been “known to appear
at garage door openings,” one of the infrequent jokes he’s told during his
three decades in office, first as a consumer protection Attorney General and
now as consumer protection U.S. Senator.
Facing the public is an important part of politics. Over the
course of years, Blumenthal’s public face has been obligingly presented by a
soft-core media determined not to play the devil’s advocate with him.
Part of the Blumenthal-Media-Complex is business related.
Blumenthal gives the nation’s left of center media what it wants, progressive
hard copy, and the media throws at his feet fresh bouquets of unfiltered copy
Blumenthal has pre-assorted for them. His media releases are richly detailed
and bursting with self-praise. The Blumenthal media has only to paste these
direct and indirect encomiums in their pages and adopt a non- threatening
posture to insure that its non-combative, thirty year, amicable relationship
remains unimpaired . Blumenthal tends to shut down disagreeable reporters --
i.e. pretty much anyone who persists in asking him hard questions.
Some few reporters who properly resent political
manipulation will have noticed that Blumenthal has tended in the past to make
himself scarce when he meets a reportorial opposition that is not easily
intimidated. On these occasions, Blumenthal vanishes. And on rare occasions
when reporters throw a hardball question his way, he adroitly dodges the question.
Artful dodging is a staple of the practiced incumbent
politician.
Facing a non-critical media and the kinds of poll numbers
that would make a stone smile, Governor Ned Lamont already has foreshortened gubernatorial
debates with Republican opponent Bob Stefanowski. The Governor has announced he
is pleased to allow no more than two debates. One of the debates will present
three debaters, Lamont, Stefanowski and Connecticut Independent candidate Rob
Hotaling .
As in times past, the debaters will field questions from the
media. Unlike the Lincoln-Douglas debates , in which the political contestants
shaped their own question and debate format, a patient media allowing
the debaters enough time, two to three hours, to ventilate fully
their positions on issues of the day, the postmodern “debate” resembles nothing
so much as the usual media availability. During the upcoming 2022 gubernatorial
debates, both Stefanowski and Lamont will be encouraged to answer questions
framed by Connecticut’s non-contrarian, presumptively objective, left of center
media.
And since the second debate will feature three rather than
two contestants, it may be said, with due apologies to third party candidates,
that the second of the two debates Lamont has graciously permitted will be
reduced, time wise, by a third, an undoubted benefit for Lamont who, as an
incumbent, already has enjoyed the kind of media good-news bonanza showered on
Blumenthal.
Few will disagree that Lamont’s media stage during his three
years as Governor has been extraordinarily friendly and infinitely larger than
Stefanowski’s. Blumenthal’s media stage over a period of three decades dwarfs
that of any other politician in state history. The man’s media immodesty knows
no bounds.
In the absence of a critical contrarian media, incumbents,
allied with an obliging media, pre-shape debate narratives. This should
surprise only politicians who show, for political purposes, astonishment at
demonstrable truths.
“Where’s the proof?” someone will be certain to ask.
The proof is in the reportorial pudding, and what is not in
the pudding – reports in Connecticut’s media, for instance, on Special Counsel
John Durham’s recent pretrial motion – is every bit as important as the usual
pudding’s usual ingredients.
Durham’s most recent pretrial motion in limine shows that
the same FBI that raided ex-president Donald Trump’s plush estate in Florida
had, according to a commentary published in September 21 issue of the Epoch
Times – “FBI
Put key Dossier Source on Payroll in Apparent Effort to Conceal Dossier
Fabrications” – draped a cloak of invisibility, Confidential Human
Source (CHS) status, around Igor Danchenko, in order, as the column put it, to
“conceal FBI malfeasance from Congress, from the FISA court, and from the
public.”
Danchenko is the primary source for the notoriously
fraudulent Steele dossier – actually, an opposition research document
purportedly showing that Trump had colluded with an unnamed Russian communist
agent to deny presidential nominee Hillary Clinton her rightful place as the
nation’s first female president.
The most recent Durham filing shows that Danchenko had been
awarded CHS status by the FBI in March 2017 – after Danchenko
“had disowned the Steele dossier in a January 2017 FBI interview.”
Is this a story, or is this a story?
Durham was, before he retired, the United States Attorney
for the District of Connecticut from 2018-2021. His record as a corruption
prosecutor – Google it -- is unimpeachable.
So, crank up Connecticut’s presses, and ask Blumenthal to
comment on Durham’s recent explosive filing. If he dashes off, catch him around
the bend and wait for an answer.
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