Don't let them lie

The Week of Reagan is about to end tomorrow with a nice ceremony at the National Cathedral. And I'm already beginning to see evidence in the very small slice of the conservative blogoverse that I read that the Paul Wellstone memorial lies are coming out again.

I know that most of the liberal bloggers and blogreaders out there probably already know all about both what really happened at Wellstone's memorial service back in October 2002, and the very different reality conservative commentators and pundits and everyone else who never watched a second of tape said happened. A long, detailed account can be found in Al Franken's Lying Liars etc.. But I can offer a quick summary.

20,000 people packed into the Williams Arena in St. Paul to honor the memory of their beloved Senator who had died just four days before in plane crash. Also killed were Wellstone's wife Sheila, their daughter Marcia, aides Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy, driver Will McLaughlin, and two pilots.

At the memorial, of course, were Democratic heavyweights: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Walter Mondale (who would be replacing Wellstone on the ballot just a week later), and many members of the Senate. Republicans were there, too: Norm Coleman, Wellstone's opponent; Trent Lott who, at the time, was majority leader; former Minnesota Senators Rod Grams and Rudy Boschwitz; not-Republican but certainly not-Democrat Jesse Ventura. A whole host of others, too.

There were eight speakers in all, besides George Latimer the former mayor of St. Paul who acted as MC. Iowa's Tom Harkin was the only elected official to speak; the rest were friends and family of the victims. One of them, whom Wellstone described as "there is no one person outside of my family that I admire and love so much" Rick Kahn, ended his eulogy with an impassioned plea to carry on the legacy of Paul Wellstone, and to "win the election for Paul." That was the only political moment. A couple of minutes, tops, out of four hours of remembrance where things got a little partisan.

But that didn't stop those with an agenda from lying. Immediately after the memorail, Coleman's campaign manager Vin Weber was in front of cameras to denounce the whole thing as "a political event [. . .] a complete, total, absolute sham." And of course Limbaugh was on the air the next day blubbering about it. And the TV pundits, too. Everyone seemed to take that one small slice at the end of Kahn's speech and extrapolate to believe that moment was representative of the whole event. And boy were they indignant.

Their claims ranged from Trent Lott getting booed by the whole audience (there was a smattering of boos, but he smiled and waved) to the whole event's being scripted, including telling the audience when to applaud and jeer (evidenced by the words on the Jumbotron--you know, the closed captioning that was there for the deaf). They claimed Republicans who wanted to speak were shouted down by the partisan crowd--but the only people on the schedule were the ones delivering the eulogies; there was no open mic. And more.

What we must do over the next few days is not let them use Wellstone's memorial as a fictional counterpoint to the staid memorials for Reagan. Here are some actual words from an actual conservative earlier today:

I suspect the reason that some Democrats are getting hot and bothered about this (and connected matters like the Drudge-fueled rumor that Our Bill is in a narcisistic snit over not being asked to speak at the funeral), is that many of them are still bitter about being slapped down over the Wellstone Memorial debacle, and that they hoped that having Clinton or Carter speak at the funeral would be too much for some Republicans to bear, creating a spectacle that they could point to and whine about unfair press coverage when it didn't result in the catastrophic effects the Wellstone Memorial had on the Democrats. It ain't happening--deal with it.

You and I both know that any ceremony in the National Cathedral will be more subdued than a 20,000 person event in an arena. You and I both also know that they will try as hard as they can to rub it in, and say how apeshit crazy Democrats are, and how we have to turn everything into a partisan moment.

We must not let them lie. I'm sure Al Franken, an old friend of Wellstone's who was at that memorial, will be on top of major media that try to pull this lie. But we have to get all the pernicious little liars around the blogs.

Do not let them lie. Bookmark this page. It's the full video of the Wellstone memorial. Anytime anyone brings up that event in a comparison to Reagan's memorial service, give them that link and tell them to find where there was partisanship. Find where there was anyone going apeshit. Find any point where it was not a moving and loving tribute the one of the best damned Senators this country has ever seen. Do not let them get away with it.