Ever since Robert Novak experienced a lexical malfunction and subsequently walked out during a pas de deux with James Carvell midway through “Inside Politics’s Strategy Session,” I have read various political blogs, and comments to blogs, assessing and analysing the incident.
I have made a discovery.
Here is an event which occurred during a live (and taped) television program. Many people saw the event, and all others had access to a taped repeat immediately thereafterward. As a media circus event, Robert Novak’s barnyard epitaph will probably equal Jon Stewart’s Crossfire fracas with Tucker Carlson, in that more people will have seen it online, than have seen the original program on television.
Isn’t it curious then, that there are so many different opinions about what caused the incident? Who is the villain, and who the hero?
Did Novak snap under the pressure of the Rove case? Was it a case of one too many straws of abuse from Carvell? Was Novak flummoxed when he realized just how much scorn he had left himself open to receive by claiming his pictures, like Katherine Harrison’s, were “colorized” by unscrupulous liberal-biassed newspapers?
Was it Ed Henry’s warning that he would question Novak on the Plume case during the “Inside Politics” program? Did Novak suddenly realize that offering “no comment on advice of his lawyer” was no longer a viable answer, following his August 1st Chicago Sun-Time column?
Does anyone have the real skinny? Does everybody?
This has brought me to the realization of a fact, long obvious to police investigators, and reporters who limit themselves to stories that have more than one source. People make rotten witnesses.
To the old question: "If a tree falls in the forest where no one can hear it, does it make a sound?" we must add; “If a tree falls in the forest and everyone sees, how long before the first fist fight breaks out over what kind of wood the tree was made of?”
