'Tis a Puzzlement . . . or a Conspiracy

The way things are going in this sorry land, how can you NOT be some kind of conspiracy theorist?

See, the Rooskies hacked Hillary because they wanted the Pussy Grabber to win so that all those loans he has from Russian oligarchs would enable Putin to dictate U.S. policy in Madagascar.

OK, maybe not that one.

How about the latest goings-on in the media world?  Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like . . . .

First, there was the business with Jill Stein and the Greens raising all that money for recounts in states where the Pussy-Grabber’s margin was razor thin.  Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.  The rust bucket rebellion.  The Greens said they didn’t want to help Clinton, necessarily, they just wanted the American people to have a degree of certainty that their electoral process was safe and sound.  Well, the Clintonians said, if that’s the case, we’ll join you in initiating recounts because, while we’re not sore losers, we think the American people have a right to know if they can trust their electoral process.

Then the New York Times  came out with a strange piece saying “the Administration” has one hundred per cent faith in the integrity of the American electoral process.  At first, the Times didn’t explain who in “the Administration” said this or why suddenly at this time they issued a “statement” exclusively to the Times.

This seemed passing strange to a lot of journalists familiar with the old-fashioned standards of the Times regarding attribution by name, rank and serial number.  Even several former Times journalists joined the chorus questioning the story.  Hastily, the Times rushed out the text of the “statement” by “the Administration” with a weird introductory paragraph written by Times editors.

That paragraph said the “statement” was issued by “the Administration” because the Times asked for it.  With all this hullabaloo about recounts and fake news and such like, well, the Times just decided that  maybe “the Administration” might want to quell people’s fears about the integrity of the election system.  “The Administration” would not  say which of its officials wrote the statement, or what his/her position was in “the Administration,” or even characterize his/her level of importance within “the Administration” hierarchy. Why would the Times agree to such terms?  Well, because  . . . .just because.

Next, less than 48 hours later, the Washington Post came out with an eerie story about the recent wave of fake news, producing a list of 200 news aggregators and reporting agencies that were said to be guilty of soliciting fake news from the Rooskies and rushing it out to the unwary public. The Post learned this from a murky outfit that crawled out from the cyber-woodwork only last August; refuses to identify any of its operatives; whose alleged collaborators deny having anything to do with it; and whose executive director was only too happy to give the Post juicy quotations  about the success of this Russian disinformation campaign — but who wouldn’t give his name for fear of reprisals. Reprisals by whom?  Wouldn’t say.

Got that?

Nameless, faceless officials of “the Administration” . .. .  Nameless, faceless agents of an outfit nobody ever heard of, whose credentials are chimeras, whose spokesman may or may not even exist . . . . assuring us of “integrity,” decrying “false news” by issuing false news . . . .

I give up!  If there’s no conspiracy here, somebody tell me, what the hell is going on?