Glass Man

Two posts down, I wrote about George Bush's little Christmas present to the American people and the Arab world: professional hustler James Glassman, who invented a new genre of "opinion journalism" in which corporations pay to have their opinions represented, and who Bush named to head public diplomacy efforts in the Middle East.

That inspired this comment from one of you loyal readers:

Am I the only one whose threshold for outrage has been raised so high by modern conservatism that I feel the urge to do little more than shrug at this story? Honestly, if Bush started publicly announcing that he had created the Thousand Year Reich and that he was heretofore to be called The Fuhrer, it would just make me shake my head."

I know the feeling.

After all, I didn't even include two of the more damning pieces details about Glassman and the various insults against truth and decency his appointment represents. Today I correct the slight. Merry Christmas!

1) This Glassman, moving into one of the most geostrategically senstive roles imaginable, will not, however, require confirmation from the Senate. That's because, as the AP noted, he's already won confirmation for his current administration job. Which is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Which is the agency that oversees the Voice of America.

Yes, that's right. This snake oil salesman was already in charge of presenting America's public face to the world.

2) This Glassman, in the work that made his "reputation"—Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market—proved himself either epochally stupid or a world-class liar. There's really no other choice. Paul Krugman explains: appropriately enough, this man who captains America's ship of propaganda maintains, almost literally, that two plus two equals five.

Here's another Christmas tie-in, by the way. I just read off Nexis an article from Variety about the failure of these "public diplomacy" efforts in the Arab world, and learned that, in his new post, Glassman will have a budget of $845 million to play with.

Just by way of comparison, that's about fourteen times the budget afforded the agency charged with making sure your kiddies' Christmas toys aren't tainted with lead.