Can We Put This Meme To Bed?

Endured a very long 10 minutes last night watching The Nation's Katrina Vanden-Heuvel on CNBC's "McEnroe."

As I've just mentioned in a letter to CNBC, the trick is to have the bombastic (and telegenic) Ms. Vanden-Heuvel on your show, have her spin some outrageous yarn, and then have a sensible guest or host set her straight. That's how the game is played. I've watched it a hundred times.

Mr. McEnroe doesn't know this game, having focused too much of his time on winning 63 million Tennis Championships. He let her go, while his sidekick and a singer egged her on; "Bush wants to return this country to the 19th Century!" "Bush wants to take away ALL the rights of women and minorities!" "They are just Neanderthals who don't care about anybody but the rich!" &c...........

Then at the end, she says "They have plans to suspend the elections you know! Even though we held elections during the Civil War and WWII, they just sent plans to Tom Ridge to postpone the elections."

"What should we do to stop this?" asks the host. "Write the Federal Election Commission tomorrow," says K V-H

Oh deary, dear. I had read this on the WSJ Ed Page yesterday. Some low-level bureaucrat has floated this crazy scheme. The WSJ and I both hoped that the administration would squash this before it spread.

Dr Rice rides to the rescue this morning. Take it away, Condi:

Yahoo! News - Rice: No Plan to Delay National Election

Rice said the Bush administration, while concerned about the impact of terrorism, is not thinking of postponing the elections.
"We've had elections in this country when we were at war, even when we were in civil war. And we should have the elections on time. That's the view of the president, that's the view of the administration," Rice told CNN on Monday.

I fear this will not quell it. When will they learn: "Please Do Not Feed The Conspiracy Theorists!"

UPDATE: AlexC explores a more serious side to this in a post at pstupidonymous. Besides alarming the Moore-brigades, it is also an invitation for terrorists to attack: pretty cool to disrupt the Great Satan's elections, all the cool kids are doing it now...

Posted by jk at July 13, 2004 10:27 AM