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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:42 am Post subject: Robert Novak is dead |
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Conservative columnist and TV commentator Robert Novak died Tuesday morning after a battle with brain cancer. He was 78.
Novak had returned to his home after being hospitalized for two weeks last month. His brain tumor was discovered in July 2008.
�He was someone who loved being a journalist, loved journalism and loved his country and loved his family," Novak�s wife, Geraldine, told the Chicago Sun-Times, where Novak had worked as a columnist since 1966.
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I never really had much of an opinion of the guy either way. I enjoyed him on the McLaughlin group and Crossfire, back when I still watched those shows. Kind of odd to see him making the news himself, during the Plame affair.
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hogwonguy1979

Joined: 22 Dec 2003 Location: the racoon den
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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he should have been put in jail for revealing the name of an undercover cia agent, that is a violation of us law and put a huge number of informants in great danger. thats almost the equivalent of treason.
then again he was doing cheneys work so maybe it excuses it a little bit as he was played by bush admin and they should have put cheney in jail for it.
he was "the dark knight" and for good reason but unlike his contemporaries he actually did some good work as a reporter not like these talking heads on fix noise |
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Moldy Rutabaga

Joined: 01 Jul 2003 Location: Ansan, Korea
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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Despite the Plame debacle, Novak seemed to mellow in later years. I watched a YouTube Crossfire clip where he is sneering in an interview with Frank Zappa, and Zappa is taking none of it.
I didn't generally agree with his politics, but Novak represents an older, dying conservative intellectual tradition. That term is so out of fashion that it sounds like a joke now-- but Novak was well-educated and did his research; he would not have mixed up his country names like a Fox reporter. There is much less journalism at his caliber now.
Ken:> |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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Hey Moldy, nice to see ya again after all this time! |
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bacasper

Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:40 pm Post subject: |
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Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
Despite the Plame debacle, Novak seemed to mellow in later years. I watched a YouTube Crossfire clip where he is sneering in an interview with Frank Zappa, and Zappa is taking none of it. |
Great clip! It is here.
Who was that John Lofton tard anyway? At least Novak gave Frank due respect. |
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Moldy Rutabaga

Joined: 01 Jul 2003 Location: Ansan, Korea
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 7:23 am Post subject: |
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Thank you, OTOH. I've only been back a few weeks.
Ken:> |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 10:47 am Post subject: |
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Left-winger Alexander Cockburn deviates somewhat from the party-line on Novak...
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But Novak was not Pure Yahoo like talk radio�s Rush Limbaugh and his epigones. Limbaugh has always been a standard-issue, utterly cynical opportunist. Novak had a strong libertarian streak and once the war on Communism was won, became isolationist in instinct, opposing the Iraq war and supporting Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas.
Novak�s obituarists have almost uniformly dwelled on the �stain� that the Plame affair supposedly left on Novak�s reputation. Vice president Dick Cheney used Novak as a conduit to disclose that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee, the inference being that her status was the reason why her husband Joe Wilson had been sent to Niger, whence he sent back a report on uranium smuggling discomfiting to Bush and Cheney�s war plans.
But as Robert Lowe, the great nineteenth century editor of the London Times once wrote, �It is the duty of newspapers to obtain the intelligence of the news and instantly communicate this to the readers.� What Novak�s prissy colleagues and competitors never liked about him and Evans (who died in 2001) was that they made obvious what most journalists preferred to conceal, that their information came from self-interested sources, using the press � in this case Novak � to fight their bureaucratic wars. Particularly ludicrous was the spectacle of the liberal-left in periodicals like The Nation solemnly deploring Novak�s leaking of Plame�s name as somehow �compromising national security�, as if The Nation magazine in the 1960s had not been a trailblazer in exposing the activities of the CIA. In short, the Plame disclosure was one of Novak�s finest hours.
Novak wrote many hateful things, but I never found him hateful in the manner of Limbaugh. Novak plied his trade con amore, had passionate opinions, many of them athwart the mainstream - and strove to promote them � all highly estimable characteristics in our business.
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jonah47
Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Location: San Jose, CA
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Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 3:45 pm Post subject: Novak Quote |
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"Always love your country but never trust your government". |
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