You know what this is all about, right? Take money away from special Olympics, 
investigate Barack, re, re, re, re-investigate Hillary, kill the ACA, yada, yada, many more “yadas…” it’s all about creating distractions after the attempt to replace the Mueller Report with the whitewash Barr Report flopped like a dead fish on the deck of the ship of state. If the administration has any true, unquestionable, talent it’s making a lot of nasty noise in an attempt to distract from their usual passing of gas in public… while smirking about it at the same time and claiming, “No, we didn’t do that. How dare you even suggest what’s obviously true is true?”
Like we all know the head redactor is determined to redact anything that doesn’t put their presidential deity in a good light. Why is it I have the feeling in my gut that if we do get to see the report, as is claimed, it will be 99% black?
We shall see: maybe.
I write to say that I hope Bob Mueller has many copies of his report: un-redacted. If the redactor and his redactees do the butchering job I suspect they will do Mr. Mueller with be in a bind: if he truly has ethics rather than a mere anal focus on “the way things are done.” His report, all the resources and the time put into it will have been a waste. America has a long history of whistleblowers: rebels that release important information despite corrupt government officials persecuting and prosecuting them. These whistleblowers have come from the left, the right: all sides of the political spectrum. Question their motives, their tactics, their cherry picking damaging information especially via selective editing… this is still an American tradition, as is attempts to prosecute them.
A lot has been claimed about Mr. Mueller’s honesty and ethics, but if his report is being butchered for political purposes, rendered worse than useless, will Mr. Mueller, or those who helped him, find a way to leak out un-redacted copies? Truly an ethical dilemma. I know what I would do, but I suspect that Mr. Mueller would be more obedient to rule of law: no matter how much a mockery is being made if it, and do nothing.
I understand that a lot of what they uncovered went to more regional courts, but to me, ethically, that is not enough. Not for a true patriot. Not for someone less than ethically challenged.
I am very familiar with this kind of “editing.” About 20 years ago my wife: Millie, and I, wrote an article for a local magazine reviewing brewpubs. I told the editor that the way we write is every brewpub comes under a little criticism. We had no desire to write some nothing but praise-filled puff piece.
When I was finally through writing I sent it off to the editor who told me his proofreader would look over it, then it would be published. Casually I asked who his proof reader was and he told me it was the brewer for one of Nashville’s brewpubs we had reviewed. I told him that was a mistake: I was a Communications/Mass Media major, who had been an English Education major too. One of the best lessons I learned from one of my editors and in class is you never let anyone who you are writing about edit you. You can consider suggestions, at best.
But it was out of my hands. When the article came out the criticism of his brewpub had been edited out, the others left in, and as an extra insult a bucket load of commas has been dumped all over it, appearing in odd, nonsensical places.
That’s one article of little consequence, and quite mild compared to what highly compromised Barr and administration will do. He got his job because he didn’t believe in the investigation and had squashed one before. He is one severely compromised ‘editor’ and I wouldn’t trust him only to redact what would compromise sources, as is the standard. When it comes to editing it’s less like the editing knife our article was put under and probably more akin to some editor inspired to use his literary surgical tools like Josef Mengele used his.
If the butchery happens that I suspect will happen, I hope someone, somewhere, will un-redact the redactor’s efforts by releasing it all, or at least making sure representative on all sides of the aisle see un-redacted copies.
It would be the patriotic thing to do.
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
©Copyright 2019
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
all right reserved