Here's a truly pathetic reach by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. The Kerry intern affair rumours have completely flamed out due to not being true. But of course the time honoured principle of scandal-mongering is to look for the cover-up, and so Andrew Sullivan does his best today: with some research by Matt Drudge, he reports devastating inconsistencies in Kerry's story, that surely call for someone like, say, Ken Starr, to be appointed as an independent prosecutor to investigate:
the father [of the Kerry Monica] said: "I know my wife will not be voting for Mr Kerry, let's put it that way...Whatever audience he is talking to, he will tell them what they want to hear." The father also referred to Kerry as a "sleazeball." Now it's all sweetness and light: "We appreciate the way Senator Kerry has handled the situation and intend on voting for him for President of the United States." The father says he was previously misquoted. If he was, that is in itself a story. That's a hell of a quote to have fabricated...But the extreme reversal of opinion still strikes me as strange - and possibly dangerous for Kerry.
So this new Lewinsky affair rests on what the father of the woman who didn't have an affair with Kerry is alleged to have said about his voting intentions over the course of a weekend? But it gets worse. As Sullywatch always advises when reading Sullivan, follow the link. And his link to the source of these quotes: that would be The Sun, Britain's tabloid trash paper par excellence. Now we're not saying that you shouldn't read the Sun -- in its trashy way, it's pretty funny. For instance, today, the paper that will bring down President Kerry also invites you to check out the assets of Krystle from Manchester on Page 3, has some good pictures and quotes from The Darkness at last night's Brit awards, and in a weird echo of the Clarence Thomas affair, explains why an Arsenal player has the nickname "Le Long." Woodward and Bernstein, eat your hearts out!
UPDATE: The Sun's reputation as a source might be undermined by Page 3 and the laddish reporting, but it's not like the "upmarket" Daily Telegraph is any better. Day after day, the VRWC uses it as a source, gets the story into circulation, with the occasional pointless admission once that purpose has been served that, yes, the original story was not in fact correct. Here's Wednesday's Wall Street Journal online page:
It seems Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not planning to tear a roof off California's state capitol to make way for a "smoking plaza," as the Daily Telegraph had reported (and we repeated yesterday).