IT'S NOT TRUE, NOW GET OVER IT

Mickey Kaus swings at air for a while, trying his darndest to spin Kerry non-paramour Alexandra Polier's quite entertaining recounting of her ordeal in such a way as to damage Kerry and continue to suggest that he has affairs and, of course, character problems.

Kaus has five suggestive questions, all of which are suggestively stupid:

1. Just how had she "cadged a ticket to the World Economic Forum in Davos" in 2001, where she forumed with Vicente Fox, Thabo Mbeki and Naomi Campbell? My impression is that Davos tickets are not that easy to cadge.

Billmon went to this year's WEF. I'm pretty sure a motivated AP reporter or two would be able to get in.

2. Why didn't she just deny immediately that she'd had an affair with Kerry? Isn't that what most people would do? She says she "should have asked more clearly for advice" from Kerry aide Stephanie Cutter. But wasn't this a no-brainer? Why didn't Cutter ask her to issue an immediate denial?

My first response to this moronic question is "YOU try dealing with a shitstorm like this right when it hits you!" But for a political blogger who prides himself on knowing the nuts and bolts of how politicans use the media and vice versa, doesn't he know that a high-profile denial is exactly what the press is trying to get (just as the political opponents of the target are)?

One of the main points of floating scandal rumors is getting the targets of said rumors to prominently deny them. At the bare minimum, that means that the party involved viewed the rumors as important enough to warrant a response.

Both Kerry and Polier had a good reason not to initially dignify the rumors with a response: Drudge. Kaus himself refers to Drudge as "80% true". Well, this is that other twenty.

Onward!

3. "We shook the tree," a reporter for The Hill tells Polier. "A bunch of names fell out, and yours had the most flesh to it." A bunch of names? Hmmm. Had Polier heard such names? Doe she think the hopes for a good Kerry sex scandal are completely unfounded? She's remarkably reticent about Kerry's behavior with others. ...

Again, Mickey digs himself into an even deeper hole. Does she think the hopes for a scandal are unfounded? Well, Sherlock, let's add it up:

She knows the rumors about her and Kerry are bullshit.

The reporter from The Hill refers to her name has having "the most flesh to it."

Therefore, other names would have "less flesh", so to speak.

Since the one with the most flesh is completely false, the other names can only be even more preposterous.

If Mickey had better reading comprehension skills and didn't have finding any opening whatsoever on Kerry on his mind, he would've figured that out for himself.

4. How clueless is Polier to have--until the end of March-- "assumed that the story was part of a Republican dirty-tricks campaign to break Kerry's momentum" when there were plenty of Democrats who wanted to do Kerry in, and Drudge himself had cited General Clark? ("As I continued to dig, it occured to me that Bush wasn't the only one with a motive." Duh!) And is Polier credulous or cynical when she says that Kerry "seemed to be under the impression that he was a victim of the right," as opposed to seeming to want to give the impression that he was a victim of the right.

To answer that question, may I please refer you, Mickey, to the 1990's in their entirety!!! Whatever could have given her that idea? You know, since she was being described as "an intern" and all.

In regards to the other question, Kaus is projecting his views on to Polier. Par for the course for him.

Lastly,

5. And, OK, why did Senator Kerry call her right back when she called his office?

Knowing Mickey, if Kerry hadn't called back, he'd go on and on about how this was yet another example of Kerry shitting on a member of his campaign team. He'd file it right next to the Secret Service agent into whom Kerry accidentally crashed on skis, and pronounce to the world that the Senator has -- yes -- fundamental character problems.

Bill Gates pays this guy?