http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001261586(October 06, 2005) -- After its starring role Wednesday night on "The Daily Show," the Sept. 15 letter "aspens are already turning" letter from "Scooter" Libby to "Judy" Miller has now reached a new level of infamy. Next stop: "SNL," a book of Libby poems, then the movie, starring Harrison Ford and Annette Bening.
On his show last night, Jon Stewart graded Libby’s prose a “D,” on merit, and suggested that he might flunk Miller, on general principles. David Ignatius of The Washington Post probed the letter’s journalistic meaning, a New York Observer headline referred to it as a “love letter,” while others suggested Libby could be indicted for coaching the witness, even if he didn’t out Valerie Plame.
One blogger declared that Libby and Miller had obviously conspired to nail Karl Rove: “Since all neo-cons are connected by their roots and grow in clusters, why pull the roots out of two neo-cons, when you can pull the roots out of only one (Karl Rove) and overall still have a healthier forest of (neo-cons) aspens.”
Above ground, columnist Gene Lyons pondered “that metaphor for a moment” and then decided: “Here’s all I know: If Hillary Clinton had written Susan McDougal a letter like that, the Washington press would have exploded with indignation. Or would the TV talking heads be predicting indictments?”
Well, I’ll give him that: Miller was certainly sympathetic to Libby, his delusions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and his drive for an invasion that may be this country’s greatest blunder in decades and already caused the deaths of tens of thousands. In fact, she helped him sell it. No code needed to figure that out.
Last night, Jon Stewart gave Scooter an award for Man With Silliest Name Who Generated Mass Killing, or something like that. Funny. Not so much.