Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Floating Down the Nile
My new hero:0 comments
Dr. Nile Gardiner of the rabidly right-wing Heritage Foundation.
Ol' Nile has been getting more airtime recently than Janet Jackson's tit. Our boy, it seems, is everywhere, spinning madly in the best neo-con "The world is flat" style. Spreading newschannel "Nile Bile," as I've taken to calling it.
This particular Nile Bile, obviously, is about the Spanish explosion and election, and he's one of the minions sent out around the dial to preach the "Oh No! The bad guys will win if the U.S. doesn't continue to embrace the complete neo-con world view, so be afraid, be very afraid" party line. Paul Wolfowitz is out there, too, so this obviously is a full frontal assault.
That Nile is out there spewing like he is doesn't bother me; I figure it's just his day job.
And I'll respond to the Spanish tragedy, and its implications, in a later post.
My interest here is Ol' Nile, himself, and his relationship with the media he spews on/in regularly.
Another in a long line of neo-cons who give every impression of having been "the kid most beaten up in school," Nile has popped up on both CNN and FOX in the last two days. He may well have been on everything short of Al-Jazeera for all we know.
Now, CNN stayed in bounds and introduced Nile simply as a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. No prob, there. He is.
But our journalistically pure friends at FOX, however, insist on padding Nile's intro, calling him either, simply "an advisor to Margaret Thatcher," as Brit Hume said recently, or a "Foreign Policy Researcher for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and an Advisor to Ms. Thatcher," as was the very impressive case stated by John Gibson on his show earlier today.
Very impressive, indeed.
"Reseacher?" thought I. An odd title for an important advisor. Sounds suspiciously like a fact-checker. Pollster, maybe?
Plus, I'm thinking he's awfully youthful-looking to have been a Thatcher advisor.
It's time, thought I, for a Google!
Sure enough, Ms. Thatcher left office in 1990, a full 8 years before Ol' Nile even got out of college.
So, what IS Nile's connection with the "Iron Maiden"?
Seems "former" was the key word here. Yes, Thatcher was far removed from 10 Downing St. by the time young Master Gardiner came along. Turns out, after he got out of school, he got a job as secretary to an aging Ms. Thatcher for two years, as she wrote her latest book.
One can only assume his advisory capacity fell to which tea to have at 4:00 pm, and whether to include "Anecdote A" or "Anecdote B" at any given point in the book.
So, just being priggish and condescending isn't enough anymore. Now, even British neo-cons on our shores are now ashamed of getting a Phd. in History from Yale University?
Hopefully, Ol' Nile can right himself before he allows the Rupert Murdoch empire to make him the new Jayson Blair—a story unto himself.
posted by Gotham 8:44 PM
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