Joe Conason’s Journal
How Pat Robertson and others use military fiction to pump up their patriotic credentials. Plus: The best media critic in the nation.
Topics: Politics News
Liquor officers and other veterans
Writing about that fraudulent flag-waver Ralph Reed reminded me how prevalent a certain brand of pseudo-patriotism is in his circles. Pat Robertson, Reed’s old boss at the Christian Coalition, used to claim he had served in Korea as a “Marine combat officer.” (In fact, his Web site still suggests that he somehow earned three battle stars.) The truth, revealed by two former members of Congress, was that Robertson’s father, Virginia Sen. A. Willis Robertson, used his influence to get the future televangelist out of combat duty. Instead, he held down a soft job at Marine headquarters, where he was known as the “liquor officer.” The full unflattering story, including Robertson’s boomerang libel lawsuit, is told here.
Another Reed buddy, South Carolina Rep. Lindsey Graham, resembles Robertson in his tendencies to puff himself up as a superpatriot — and to inflate his military record beyond recognition. Graham likes to be called a “Gulf War veteran,” although he never shot off anything more dangerous than his mouth. Several years ago, the Hill exposed the discrepancy between his actual record as a military lawyer who never left South Carolina during the Gulf War and the description of his service in the bogus biography he wrote for his congressional Web site. (This was his feeble answer. Don’t skip the editors’ response.) Amazingly, Graham’s Web site still lists him as an “Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran.” That must be why newspapers, including this story from the Washington Post last month, continue to misidentify him.
In keeping with this theme, Graham has resuscitated a phony patriotic issue — the constitutional amendment to prevent flag desecration. He wants people in South Carolina to believe that if he is elected, that will somehow stop the occasional loony who wants to burn the flag. (Very few people notice these profane gestures unless posturing clowns like Graham call attention to them.) But anyone who checks the Senate tally on the last occasion when this amendment was defeated in 2000 will see that installing Graham in the place of retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond will do nothing to improve the chances that this act of constitutional vandalism will pass. (The tally is here, though you have to scroll down to click onto voting records from the 106th Congress.) The proponents are still four votes short of the two-thirds margin they would need to revive this ill-considered legislation — and only two of the 37 no votes are even remotely in danger of losing their elections to the 108th Congress. Graham can count votes and he knows this “issue” is going nowhere. Like his military record, it’s just boob-bait.
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