The campaign to demonize Edward Snowden, whose revelations about the National Security Agency’s ubiquitous and ongoing spying on the American public has the Obama regimein furious disrray, has taken on a new dimension – now they’re going after Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter and columnist Snowden chose to tell his story. Glenn has already preempted some of this in his Guardian column, but there is sure to be more. What’s interesting about this effort is that it tells us far more about the smear-merchants – and who they serve – than it does about Greenwald.
There were a few preliminary fusillades coming from liberal bloggers when the NSA spying story broke – lame attempts to debunk Greenwald’s reporting, and vague insinuations directed at his objectivity as a reporter. However, as the Obama administration and its apologists flailed about, while Snowden – and Greenwald’s reporting – ran rings around them, the nasty stuff started. David Gregory, echoing Rep. Peter King (R-IRA), wondered aloud on national television why Greenwaldshouldn’t be jailed forthwith – but that was just the beginning. A few days later, the dirt really started to fly with an article in the New York Daily News detailing Greenwald’s various personal, legal, and financial troubles, and I quote:
"The reporter who broke the story about the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs has a little secret of his own.
"Before he was a reporter and commentator for The Guardian newspaper, Glenn Greenwald was a lawyer — and had a part-time job in the porn business."
Glenn – a porn star? Well, uh, no, not exactly, or even remotely. But that’s the Daily News for you, a tabloid modeled on those British rags with screaming headlines over photos of scantily clad "celebrities." After that lascivious opening – like a whore beckoning at the reader from a dark corner with promises of unimaginable carnal delights – the letdown is dizzying.
It turns out the "part time job in the porn business" was a business relationship with a friend and a third party producer involving video distribution rights. Yawn. And it’s downhill from there: Greenwald owes back taxes, Greenwald has been involved in some lawsuits (he’s a lawyer!), and – last, and certainly least – one of those lawsuits involved a dispute with the Manhattan co-op he was living in involving the size of his dog, deemed "too large" for the co-op board. To Guantanamo with him!
None of this is too interesting, except for its value as an object of near-universal derision: last [Wednesday] night and well into Thursday, Twitter users were riffing on a new hashtag, #ggscandals, mercilessly mocking the smear-mongers’ sheer lameness.
Far more interesting than the content of this misfired dirtball is the dirtbag who wrote it, one Dareh Gregorian. Aside from being a low-level gossip-monger for the low-rentNYDN, he also happens to be the son of Vartan Gregorian, head of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the major dispensers of corporate cash to various philanthropies and nonprofit outfits throughout the country.
The connection matters because it was Dareh’s dad who lobbed $49.2 million in Barack Obama’s direction when the community organizer and future President headed up the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Gregorian, as the Annenberg Foundation’s representative in the matter, was instrumental in securing the funding for a group led by Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky, two sixties-era former radicals turned education reformers. Gregorian chose the Ayers-Klonsky-Obama proposal over competing bids from Mayor Daley, the Chicago Public School system, and the teacher’s union. Obama, CAC’s founding president, resigned in 1999 to run for Senate. When Obama took office, Vartan Gregorian was appointed to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, which "mentors" up-and-comers deemed worthy by the Regime.
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