At this point it doesn't much matter whether she said it or not because it's become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about.
That was Cokie Roberts in
1999 commenting on the false story that Hillary Clinton was blaming Bill Clinton's bad behavior on "abuse" from his mother.
14 years later, Cokie's law is in full bloom.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you today's Daily Caller:
Bill O’Reilly: Shulman’s 157 White House visits ‘a smoking gun’ in IRS scandal
OMG -- there it is: The IRS/White House Link! That's it! Dig up Rehnquist and his striped-sleeved robe; Draw up the Articles! Appoint the Managers!
Wait?
What?
As Steve Benen shows, (quoting Garance Franke-Ruta) this is total horse-hockey:
Shulman was cleared primarily to meet with administration staffers involved in implementation of the health-care reform bill. He was cleared 40 times to meet with Obama's director of the Office of Health Reform, and a further 80 times for the biweekly health reform deputies meetings and others set up by aides involved with the health-care law implementation efforts. That's 76 percent of his planned White House visits just there, before you even add in all the meetings with Office of Management and Budget personnel also involved in health reform.
Complicating the picture is the fact that just because a meeting was scheduled and Shulman was cleared to attend it does not mean that he actually went. Routine events like the biweekly health-care deputies meeting would have had a standing list of people cleared to attend, people whose White House appointments would have been logged and forwarded to the check-in gate. But there is no time of arrival information in the records to confirm that Shulman actually signed in and went to these standing meetings.
So actually, it was more like 11 visits.
As Emily Littela said, "Never mind."
But Cokie's Law trumps Emily's. It's now "out there." The gals in the salon will be talking about it. David Brooks will be falsely moderate about it: "Of course, we can't just yet accuse Obama of knowing about the IRS tea party jihad." Bill Keller will call for the joint appointment of Ken Starr and Savonarola.
The IRS matter is spawning hundreds of Cokie's Law "out there's." Just a few:
It's connected to Obamacare!
It's the same as audits! (Watch this become absolute truth, because who the f&*k can even explain what a 501(c)(4) is.)
This leads to gun confiscation!
Lois Lerner took the Fifth, so obviously Obama is guilty!
The sad thing is that, unless the media actively and forefully corrects these lies (Ha!), they will become accepted wisdom. Don't believe me?
Ask someone whether Obama cut $716B from Medicare.