wead

as u know - im skeptical about the whole doug wead tape-gate thingy - the whole "gee - blinky sounds exactly the same in private as he does in public" line seemed to get swallowed by just about every observer.

the LATimes did another story about it earlier this week - in their 'STYLE & CULTURE' section.

heres a question i hada month ago:

"* apparently Wead quotes the tapes 'briefly' in his book - itll be interesting to see when that book went into print (released jan5). itll also be interesting to see how 'briefly' he quotes the tapes - and how directly... presumably he didnt mention the tapes in the book - otherwise the furor would have began earlier..."

i couldnt find the answers at the time, but the LAT piece attempts to fill in some of the details

heres the money quote from Weads book:

"George Bush apparently experimented with cocaine. He has never spoken about it publicly and so we can only speculate on if and when it happened…. The fear that it might flare into the open would become at times an obsession. Privately he brought the subject up often in his run for the presidency in 2000…. "

you'd think that was kinda the end of the story - but i noticed something weird - for all the brouhaha about tape-gate and the excoriation and/or self-flagellation of mr wead, and for all the ensuing punditocracy, heres the funny thing - if u google any of those sentences that were apparently at the center of it all, you only get four hits - and they are all just copies of this recent LAT article. does that seem weird? i wouldnt have thought anything of it, except that i had specifically asked the question at the time, and i had noticed at the time that nobody was actually quoting the relevant passages. if you google "wead tapes bush cocaine", you get 4000 results - and the only 4 which actually include the quotes from the book are all this one LAT article. weird. if any of u lot can actually get your hands on the book, id be interested to see if these are the actual quotes. if they are the direct quotes then its kinda odd that no-one ever quoted them before. and if they arent the actual quotes, then we have a bunch of new questions.

hmmmmm

lets go to the timeline - according to the LAT article, the NYT got an advance copy of the book in december "and began pressing Wead to show that his assertions about Bush — who, Wead wrote, was worried that questions about drug use would haunt a presidential campaign — were based on fact or firsthand knowledge." the book was then released jan4, and then "more than a month later", the nyt announced that it had heard the tapes with their explosive allegations... apparently a 3500-word A1 pieceon a sunday (feb20) called "In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President "

ok - so if im understanding the situation so far, a former high-level bush1 staffer, a bush2 spiritual advisor and family friend who has recently "produced two intensively researched books on presidential family dynamics" publishes a book where he says that he has first hand knowledge of blinky doing blow, and the nyt (*or anyone else*) doesnt mention it for 2+ months till they have proof in blinkys own voice, and only one source (LAT) has published the quotes till this past week. compare and contrast with kittykelly, who made the same claims and was on matt lauer's show for god knows how many minutes for 3 consecutive mornings.

from memory, kitty kelly got her info from estranged ex-bush sharon. i think the bushs would probably like to forget both of them. presumably the same goes for dougwead right?

heres what laura bush says: "I don't know if I'd use the word 'betrayed,' but I think it's a little bit awkward for sure."

heres what george bush says (joking@gridiron): "Anyone looking for a transcript of the program should call Doug Wead"

everyone else was 'furious' - except the famously forgiving bush family. blinky has murdered 100,000 folk for much less.

thank goodness mr wead is contrite - and happy to do the president a favor by slinking into the background and letting the matter quietly disappear. oops - that didnt happen - he did his mea culpa op-ed in USA Today, and then went to Chris Matthews, and then did Hannity just 10 days ago. in full volume: dear mr president, im a bad person, im sorry that i released tapes which demonstrate that you really a straight-talking texan who are exactly the same in private (when you are being surreptitiously being recorded) as you are in public. everyone knows that you had a reckless childhood, but the damascene conversion was really cool.

who thinks wead would be allowed on hannity just to apolgise? or perhaps they actually wanna remind the world about those tapes? why would that be?