Huck attack, a new level
Mike Huckabee's attack on the Little Rock paper's reporter who did the piece about Huckabee's depleting the emergency fund and crushing the hard drives -- well, let's call it stepped-up. Huckabee had a little press availability at state Republican headquarters this afternoon to discuss this presidential thing. He got one question about the local controversy and referred to the reporter's "total distortion" in saying the Huckabee camp couldn't be reached for response when, in fact, Alice Stewart had relayed Huckabee's response in a 15-minute phone conversation with the offending reporter. So, curious about that, I positioned myself in the path of Huckabee's likely exit and engaged him further on the matter. In our conversation, Huckabee accused the reporter of "taking a half-truth and presenting it as whole-truth . . . that's Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke type stuff." My goodness. Blair was the plagiarizing fabricator fired by The New York Times. Cooke was forced to give back a Pulitzer Prize for concocting a story about a supposed 8-year-old heroin addict for The Washington Post. Cooke's little boy didn't exist. Crushed hard drives and depleted emergency funds were real, this issue of who said what when aside. Frank Fellone, the Little Rock paper's deputy editor, responds for the paper with a time line purporting that Stewart did not, on that first day before the first article, do anything beyond leave a voice mail saying she'd try to get Huckabee to respond. She did respond later, and get quoted. As for any of this deserving comparison to Blair or Cooke, Fellone said, "Oh, spare me." Huckabee said crushing a hard drive is no more than shredding paper and that it was "protocol" to destroy it mainly to protect personal user information amassed over years of computer use. As I have said, I agree with that. It's throwing his emergency fund around at the end and going off because his Blackberry got disconnected — those interest me as more relevant and revelatory. The story to me is tackiness, fiscal liberalism and raging hyperbole. Here's the deal with Huckabee: He can go along fine, even impressive, perhaps on the verge of inspiring, and then you look up and he's gone plumb over the top on you. Presidential? Well, after George W. . . .