Dick Durbin - America's Asshole

The following is an excerpt from an interview of Illinois Senator Dick Durbin by an editorial board of the Daily Herald, a suburban newspaper of the Chicago area. The rest of the interview can be read here, but I'm printing the part of the interview relating to his "apology" and what he sees as an orchestrated effort to "get him" by the VRWC - who he claims control the Mainstream Media!!

Q. Your comments about Guantanamo Bay obviously caused a political firestorm and you apologized and it seems like you’re on a bit of a semi-apology tour. One remaining question is why didn’t you run that imagery past someone, staff or fellow senators, before you busted it out?

A. Let me just say those were my words, nobody else’s, they were mine. I embellished a good speech given to me by a staffer on the issue. So I take complete blame for whatever was wrong with those words. It’s not the type of thing, in my business, where you pull over senators, and say, let me read a speech to you. It isn’t done. Nor do I expect them to do that to me or ask me to review their speeches. As I said, and I’ll repeat here, it was a very poor choice words. The imagery of Nazis, Soviets, Pol Pot and the rest of it went way beyond the pale. I thought that I was making a pretty clear reference to an FBI memo, but others did not see it that way. I have said that I apologize for those words and I feel that I should have chosen different words, better words, for that purpose.
But what an interesting reaction, when I think about it, as I look back on a half dozen, twelve words that were used. I discovered, as some others have discovered, what the other side has available that we don’t. They are so well-organized. Here’s how the process went, I can just tell ya, from speaking the words on Wednesday night, to a reaction by the White House on Thursday, public reaction against the words, leading to a variety of talk show. And the bloggers, I don’t know if you all tune into the bloggers, that is a new phenomenon, I don’t do this stuff, but there are people who sit there on these party lines all day long and blog back and forth. The Washington Times ran a front-page banner headline with my name in it for five straight days. Fox cable channel, it reached such a level of embarrassment that Republican senators in the gym, turned it off. It’s all they watch in the morning, but they turned it off because I was sitting there on this bicycle reading the paper while they were just beating the heck out of me every single morning. Even they were a little embarrassed by that. Two Republican senators, four or five days into it, who came to me privately and apologized for things they’d said about me on Fox. They said, `we just went too far. We realized it afterward.’ And what happened is, it grows, I’ve talked to people from the Washington Post and other papers, it starts growing with a life of its own to a point where the mainstream media jumps in and says, we’re following. This is the story, we’re going after the story. It’s much like the story about the television ads that were going to be run against me on the Fourth of July. We did a little digging to find out who are these people that can generate every radio station, every television station, every newspaper asking me about the television ads they’re running against you on the Fourth of July. The group, Move America Forward, is a California Republican Web site, run by a fellow named (Howard) Kaloogian. He looks for a headline and puts together a low-rate ad, one you’d never run or pay any time for. It’s just still photographs, then he sends out press releases across the state of Illinois ‘we’re running this ad on the Fourth of July to blast Durbin.’ So what was his statewide buy that led everyone to ask me about this television ad campaign against me? $2,800. It’s a joke. You wouldn’t buy one ad on a network TV station in Chicago for $2,800. If he bought a quarter-page ad in the Rockford newspaper against me, or his group did, no one would report it. But they are so good at this thing, they know just how to move mainstream media right in line to ask questions. Now why would they do it? It’s a Web site that asks for money. When any (media outlet) mentions their name, they get hits on their Web site and more money. It’s a fund-raiser. They really have developed this into a very skilful approach to moving the media in a certain direction. Now I gave them the opening. I’m not pleased. I’m not saying those were the right words. I gave them the opening and then I watched this whole thing come crashing around me.

Q. Isn’t that the way it works in Washington?

A. On one side it does.

Q. There are Republicans who get dirtied up too.

A. Yeah, but I’ll tell you what, we have nothing. We are not even in this league. We’re sitting on the outside of the stadium listening to the cheering inside. We don’t have the right-wing radio operation. The bloggers are getting started, I’ll be honest with you, on our side as well.

Q. So do you see this as almost an orchestrated attack on you…

A. Oh, it definitely was.

Q. …or do you see it as the media really doesn’t know what they’re doing?

A. It’s an orchestrated right-wing attack that brings the mainstream media in. If they make enough noise. Here’s how they do it: go into a press conference in Washington and the guy stands in the back from Fox and just screams the same question over and over and over again to the point where the other reporters are, my god…

Q. How did they bring Mayor Daley in?

A. (Syndicated conservative columnist) Bob Novak. He came to Chicago one Monday and had lunch or a meeting with the mayor. Told him his side of the story. And unfortunately, the mayor didn’t know that we had put out a statement the Friday before about this and he made some statements along those lines. He’s also the father of a young soldier training to be a Ranger. I’m sure he felt extremely sensitive about that. We talked about it afterward. I don’t think he knew the whole story.

Q. Do you feel personally hurt by that?

A. I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed by it, but I’m going to continue to work with Mayor Daley. I’ve known him for 30 years. He came to see me after this event to talk about things that the city needed and I’m going to continue to help.

Q. What sort of reaction did you get yesterday at events you marched in?

A. I went to Oak Park and Evanston, those are friendly areas anyway. Oak Park was overwhelmingly positive. I always do Evanston. I would say that was in the 95 to 98 percent positive range. There were a few who were unhappy.

Q. Were you heckled?

A. Yes, a few.

Q. What did they say?

A. I didn’t hear of much it, but I could tell by the look on their faces, it wasn’t pleasant.

Q. Does a senator normally get some heckling?

A. It’s happened. It depends on the issue. This is different. This is my own problem. It wouldn’t have happened to (Sen.) Barack (Obama) in this situation. This was my own creation, I understand that.

Q. How do you recover politically?

A. Well, let me say also, I got more negative comments yesterday from people who said you shouldn’t have apologized. ‘Why did you apologize? Brutality is not American. Torture is not American.’ Why would you apologize?’ I said, for whatever reason, I just think my words went too far. Those, of course, are people on my side of the spectrum who feel very strongly on this issue. In terms of recovering, politically, I’ve been around this business for a few years and there aren’t many of us in this business who don’t make some mistakes. If I keep working at the issues people care about, I don’t think it’s going to have any long-term impact. I’ve taken it seriously. I didn’t duck and run. I’m not hiding.

Q. Your apology is essentially you didn’t mean to offend anybody. Some people might say the danger in overstating the problem isn’t so much offending people as it is a United States senator handing Muslim extremists propaganda in the Middle East where we’re trying to forge friendship.

A. Well, I can tell I became an expert on Senate apologies. I decided to look and see how senators apologized. I never found the word ‘apology’ in any of them. What they do is regret, sincerely regret, sorry that my words were taken out of context. Those are things usually said by my colleagues.
In terms of what you have to say to finally let people know you apologize, I’m not sure what those words are anymore. Obviously, “sorry” and “apology” are not enough for some, and quite honestly I don’t think there words that will be enough for some. They’re not going to accept anything that I would have to say and that’s their right to hold their own standards.
The Al-Jazeera story is interesting. The White House started talking about Al-Jazeera on their Web site and my words almost immediately. We checked it out. That was the English version of the Al-Jazeera Web site. It wasn’t until the Republicans had made a bigger issue of this on the floor and kept their media going for four or five days that it ever reached the Arabic version of Al-Jazeera. They kept the story alive. They were the ones that pushed it, for whatever reasons. It was after all of their efforts and after all of their publicity and all the people who spoke about it that it ever reached that point. So, I don’t know where the blame lies there. I can tell you had I given the speech, made my statement on Friday night “I sincerely regret,” I don’t think it would have gone any further.

Q. You’ve had a long political career. Has it ever felt like you were in a firestorm of this magnitude before?

A. Never. Nothing even close.

Q. Hard to sleep?

A. Yeah. Tough for my family. But you know I am a public figure. You know what you’re getting into.

© 2005 Daily Herald, Paddock Publications, Inc.

So now you know the truth - that Dick Durbin never really did apologise and that the right wing and the Republican party are responsible for Al Jeezera's articles. Mayor Daley's comments - the ones that basically forced his 'regrets' - was because the mayor had been manipulated by a 'right-wing columnist'.

I feel sorry for him. His levels of ignorance and self-deception have reached heights I previously thought impossible for an educated human being.