Diary of a Mad County

July 19 - July 25

Comments (0) By STEVE LOWERY Thursday, Jul 27 2006

Sunday: You're a winner!

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Tuesday, July 25 F
rom my colleague, Will Swaim: "Over on hughhewitt.com, conservative talkhole Hugh Hewitt uses the website Greer's OC (www.greersoc.com) as evidence of the decline of the print industry; his readers—their lips flecked with foam—make the leap he implies: that the decline of print is linked to the decline of the left, which, if you believe Hewitt, runs the newspaper industry as a newsletter for Democrats. Whatever its failings, we can hope the Times would be more honest about its motives than Hewitt. Hugh's are a confusion of personal and political: Greer's OC for example is run by a friend—a friend whose husband, ironically, works for the LA Times, the paper one of Hugh's readers compares to the former Soviet Union. Linking Greer's OC to the decline of print is, you'd reasonably conclude, just a highfalutin excuse to promo a friend's business. On the left, they call that a conflict of interest. (My own full disclosure: Hugh is a friend of mine. So is Greer Wylder. And her husband.) But the conservative movement has become all about such self-interest masked as patriotism. Ken Lay's role in the Bush administration energy policy? A matter of legitimate executive branch secrecy. Halliburton's role in Iraq? National defense. Outing Valerie Plame? That was merely giving the public all the facts around the president's unassailable Iraq policy. It's crap all over, and rare is the conservative who can recognize the smell of feces even when it's smeared on his upper lip." But, hey, "Greer's OC" is a terrific place to find great deals, if you consider it a great deal to pay $600 for a "hand-blown Grappa light fixture." These days, I'd consider a hand-blown anything a bargain.