John Boehner: "Rolling Stone" Article Describes New Speaker-of-the-House in Unflattering Terms

As a working journalist for over half a century, I am always aware of my old journalism class teachings about libel and slander. When covering the recent mid-term elections, I read every article on the candidates and made a concerted effort to give only the facts, as the records reveal them. Only when asked to write an editorial piece outlining my own particular vote preference did I express any opinions about either candidate in the Kirk vs. Giannoulis or Schilling vs. Hare political contests in Illinois. [An editorial piece is, by definition, different in tone.]

However, times do change. It seems that the "proof is a defense" standard has emboldened any number of journalistic endeavors.

I was reminded of the idea of "pushing the envelope" (in terms of commentary) during the Golden Globes program on Sunday, January 16th, when host Ricky Gervais' comments about the year's film and television offerings set off a firestorm of controversy. I found Gervais' remarks to be hilarious and spot-on, but he did seem rather brave, in a self-destructive Joan Rivers or Don Rickles fashion, as he made fun of the Biggest of the Big stars, sometimes while they sat only a few feet away from him.

Returning to the topic of politics as a spectator sport, I was surprised to read commentary so blunt that it seemed to border on libel or slander in an article entitled "The Crying Shame of John Boehner" by Matt Taibbi in the January 20, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone magazine (pp. 57-78). Liberal bias aside, Matt Taibbi really, really does not like John Boehner. I offer up just a few snippets from the article for those of you inclined to purchase the new issue (with Jimmy Fallon on the cover):

Page 57 (lead sentence); "John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich."

Page 57: "But in the new Speaker of the House, the Republicans own the perfect archetype---the quintessential example of the kind of glad-handing, double-talking, K-Street toady who has dominated the politics of both parties for decades."

Page 57: Boehner is described as having "a talent for perpetuating our corrupt and debt-addled status quo: He's a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done."

Page 57: "The underlying dynamic is bought-off congressman ignoring real social problems -- "

Page 58: " -- dissolute, pay-for-play, you-scratch-mine, I'll scratch-yours intramural bureaucratic calculus."

Page 58: Quoting Chris Littleton (who heads a coalition of Tea Party groups in Boehner's home state of Ohio): "Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act---practically any significant piece of legislation that came out of the Bush presidency, it was a joke."

THE RISE OF JOHN BOEHNER

Citing the story behind Boehner's rise to power, the author (Matt Taibbi) notes that Boehner's predecessor, Donald "Buz" Lukens, got caught on camera talking with a black woman in a McDonald's restaurant in Columbus, Ohio about how he had paid the woman's daughter $40 to have sex with him. When Lukens was convicted of contributing to the unruliness of a minor, he still refused to resign his seat.

Enter a young plastic salesman named John Boehner, who ran and won on a platform of "restoring morals and ethics to Congress." Joining with other freshman congressman, including Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (whom the author describes as "God-humping"), they formed the "Gang of Seven" and gave "sanctimonious speeches blasting Democratic congressional leaders for things like getting free haircuts at the House barbershop." Boehner also helped co-author Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America."

Taibbi then goes on, "Forget about free haircuts: Boehner was soon caught literally handing out checks from the tobacco lobby on the floor of the House." (1995)

Caught red-handed and called out on this reprehensible practice by football player turned GOP congressman Steve Largent, Boehner immediately flipped and said, "It's a practice that's gone on here for a long time that we're trying to stop, and I know that I'll never do it again -- It's a bad practice. We've gotta' stop it." Caught out in such a public fashion, Boehner had little choice about stopping the payola, but Taibbi notes that, "While he may have stopped handing out checks on the floor of the House, Boehner didn't stop taking in lobbyist money and doing favors for his favorite industries."

BOEHNER'S BUDDIES

Then comes the litany of Boehner's buddies who supplied him with piles of money. Says Taibbi, "For years, Boehner was one of the largest recipients of campaign donations from UPS; by an amazing coincidence, he was also the sponsor of a bill that would have allowed companies that pay into group pension plans---like UPS---to cut pension benefits for their own employees if another employer in the group went out of business."

Taibbi adds that Boehner received hundreds of thousands of dollars from for-profit colleges and private-student-loan-industry, which led to him sponsoring laws that restricted the Department of Education from making less expensive government loans to students. He pushed for federal subsidies for private colleges and trade schools. He began meeting weekly with "The Thursday Group" in the 90s, developing close ties to Citigroup, MillerCoors, UPS, Goldman Sachs, Google and R.J. Reynolds.

GOLFING JUNKETS

In response to the question of what Boehner does with the mucky-mucks from those prominent companies, Taibbi answers: ""Well, one thing we know he does is play golf---shitloads and shitloads of golf, which he apparently likes a lot more than, well, working." Joe Scarborough (former congressman and current MSNBC host) describes Boehner as "Not the hardest worker" and another fellow congressman used the term "lazy."

Boehner golfing facts:

Once went on 180 golf junkets in 6 years.
Played 100 rounds of golf yearly.
Boehner's PAC spent $83,000 on golf events in 2009.
In the past 18 months (mid-2009 to Jan., 2010) ran up a $67,000 tab at the Ritz-Carlton golf resort in Naples, Florida.
Flew on a corporate jet 45 times between 2000 and 2007, an average of 6 to 7 trips per year.
In the past decade, took 41 other corporate-sponsored trips.

Indeed, Boehner's penchant and passion for golf is so well-known that the anti-Boehner ads I heard running on an NPR radio station used the sound of a golf ball circling the hole as background to the actual message regarding his record in Congress.

DEFENSE of BOEHNER by GOP CHAIRMAN MICHAEL STEELE

Michael Steele defended Boehner's golfing mania and his "out of Congress; in the bars by 5 p.m. M.O." by saying, "The only time Boehner is around town these days is to raise money for our House Republican team. Thus far this year, he's headlined more than 230 events and raised about $27 million." When Steel made this statement, the year was only half-over, which means that Boehner was attending 1.25 fundraisers a day. This was at a time when Boehner was being paid a 6-figure salary to be a working Congressman, presumably present in Congress for votes.

FUNDRAISING

Fundraising is, however, something that the always-schmoozing Boehner is good at. He raised $44 million for other GOP candidates and, in his most recent re-election effort, the PAC donated $2.4 million to his own campaign, an amazingly large amount.

BACK TO THE BASICS (ARTICLE EXCERPTS)

Page 59: "He was a key figure in the historic waste of time that was his and Newt Gingrich's witch-hunting effort to get Bill Clinton impeached for lying about a blow job."

Page 59: "He crossed the aisle to co-author the '˜No Child Left Behind Act,' a grotesque and grotesquely expensive expansion of federal power that helped jack up the federal education budget by an astounding 80% in the first 5 years of Bush's presidency."

Page 59: "Voted for the obscene Medicare Part D, a staggering $550 billion handout to the pharmaceutical industry."

Page 59: "When the news broke in September 2006 that Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida, had been sending sexually suggestive e-mails to a 16-year-old male page, it turned out that Boehner had been sitting on the information for months."

Page 59: "When he wasn't busy protecting sex offenders, Boehner was gracing the hallowed halls of the Capitol building with all the dignity and class of a boxing promoter, calling one legislative deal a '˜crap sandwich' and blasting an Obama tax compromise as '˜chicken crap.'"

Page 59: "Co-owner of the loathsome new political phenomenon of men crying in public, along with screeching media dillweed Glenn Beck."

Page 59: " -- Boehner represents a certain type of hollowly-driven, two-faced personality unique to the Beltway."

Page 59: " -- you have to spend a lot of time in Washington to know the type, but he's the kind of guy who would step over his mother to score a political point."

Page 60: "Others in Washington see Boehner not so much as a bloodless partisan, but as a clueless yutz, one who rose to power through a combination of accidents and bureaucratic inertia."

Page 60: "Boehner is the butt of a lot of jokes around the Hill, with his wino eyes, perennial Crayola-orange tan and phallic surname, providing even members of his own party with endless comic material." ("W" famously nicknamed him "Boner.")

Page 60: "His pseudo-acceptance speech on the night in November when Republicans retook the House was brilliant clown theater, a '˜Wayne's World' version of a right-wing political rally.

Page 61: (regarding the Lesley Stahl "60 Minutes" interview): "He looked like a Girl Scout watching a puppy get pushed through a meat grinder as he flogged the '˜I've been chasing the American dream my whole life' act."

Page 61: "Jon Stewart was moved to call this remark by Boehner '˜the most profoundly retarded statement I've ever heard." In a quote out-doing even George "W" Bush at his lamest, Boehner said, "The only way we're going to get our economy going again and solve our budget problems is to get the economy moving."

Page 61: " -- he doesn't really have much, if any, control over his Republican members."

Page 61: "He's all talk. He has no ability to control his base. Look at the TARP vote in '08."

Page 61: "Boehner, over the course of his political career, has collected nearly $4 million from the finance and insurance sectors, backed TARP from the start, summoning his full rhetorical arsenal to argue for the bill."

Summing up Boehner's career and that of a lot of other Congressional types, Taibbi says, "The fact that Boehner supported TARP and No Child Left Behind and mega-handouts to the pharmaceutical industry and a range of other federal subsidies is hardly surprising, for this is what mainstream Washington politicians of both parties do---they take great buttloads of money from giant transnational companies, play golf with the CEOs of those same companies, and deliver taxpayer money back to their buddies when the need arises, or sometimes even when the need doesn't arise."

Page 61: " -- in short, Boehner has for most of his career been a Bush Republican, i.e., a corporate schmoozer and a remorseless spender of taxpayer money for whom the notion of small government is just something to say when the cameras are on, or when the public money in question might go to poor people or immigrants or other such unlikely golfers."

Taibbi goes on, "This was a fine way to be back in the 200s, when America was still unf***** enough to enjoy a phony real estate boom and launch recreational wars of conquest in the Middle East, but in this new decade, post-Bush and post-crash, there is serious doubt on the Hill that a reflexive favor-churner like Boehner will be able to keep delivering Republican votes to lavish taxpayer money on his industry pals."

Page 61: An amusing Taibbi reference to "dingbat Republican party chief Michael Steele."

Page 76: "Whether the Republican establishment led by Boehner can keep the support and approval of Tea Party leaders (like Littleton) over the next year or so is, right now, the most fascinating story line in all of American politics. The whole system of entrenched Beltway hackdom that Boehner represents is at stake."

Page 76: "This was always going to be the model of how Republican Party hacks would deal with the Tea Party: Bash the living hell out of hated blue-state Gorgons like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, jack off the mob by incorporating the Tea Party's Constitution-and-liberty rhetoric, hand the Tea Party those reforms that the GOP's big campaign contributors want anyway, most notably tax breaks for the rich and deregulation of big business, and then cough up a note from the doctor or some other lame excuse when the time comes to actually cut spending."

Page 76: "Professing his love for the sacred document (the Constitution), Boehner pledged to '˜stand here with our Founding Fathers, who wrote in the preamble: '˜We hold these truths to be self-evident.'" The crowd was silent. Boehner had confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence."

Page 76: "Boehner's irrepressible hackosity is a serious problem for the Republican establishment, which desperately needs a more convincing con man to stave off voter anger on the right."

Page 76: Quoting Littleton, a serious Tea Party leader from Boehner's home state of Ohio (and even Boehner's own home town): "They hate us more than they hate the left. The left's just an enemy. We present a legitimate threat to them (i.e., business-as-usual GOP Congressman).

Page 76: "Everything's negotiable, everyone's pals with everyone else, and the only thing that matters is keeping the right people in office."

Page 76: "This is where Boehner comes in: He represents the last stand of the Bush Republicans against this rising tide of public anger. The GOP establishment wants the energy of the Tea Party, but they don't want to have to work for it. They're hoping---and they have plenty of reasons to have this hope---that the vast majority of Tea Partiers will be dazzled by their new status in Congress, or be willing to be bought off with corporate money, or be just plain dumb enough to fall for whatever pulled-out-of-the-ass phony reform rhetoric that guys like Boehner come up with, instead of making real changes to the way Congress does business."

Page 76: Taibbi notes the $900 billion tax breaks and huge debt our country now faces and quotes Boehner's recent announcement ("cue the clueless Dr. Evil laugh") that he is going to attack this trillion-dollar deficit by pushing to cut committee budgets and member allowances by 5%. Noting that this would save, at best, $30 million, Taibbi says, "That's not government; it's stand-up comedy."

Page 76: "It's virtually unimaginable that Boehner will push for such a radical agenda" as sweeping changes in defense spending and Social Security.

Page 76: Littleton asked Boehner what he wanted to cut and was brushed aside, told they'd be "discussing that in April." Said Littleton: "I thought to myself, '˜You campaigned on an entire platform of cutting government spending, and you don't know what you're going to be cutting until April?' I don't trust those guys---whether it's Boehner or anybody else."

In summing up what can only be described as an envelope-pushing, extremely critical piece on our new Republican Congressional majority leader, Taibbi ends with this statement (p. 76):

"Things are different now. America is so broke, there's no longer really any money in the Treasury to give away. The job of overseeing corporate handouts that used to belong to the leaders of Congress has now moved to the Federal Reserve, which itself is so broke that it has to invent dollars out of thin air before it can give them away to influential billionaires. This leaves congressional leaders with nothing to do but their ostensible jobs---i.e, fixing the country's actual problems, and few of the current leaders have any experience with that, Boehner being a prime example."

My Illinois district voted out a Democrat with 27 years experience in Congress and handed the reins to a Tea Party Republican and "Young Gun" Republican (Bobby Schilling) with 2 years of junior college, whose chief claim to fame is owning and operating a pizza parlor that employs 12 people.

So, good luck to us all, and, as Tiabbi said in his article-ending rant, "The tee times are over."

I can only add, "What will the tea times bring?'