Bolton’s New Accuser
I had started to write a mean, snarky post about Lynne Finney, the USAID diplomat who said John Bolton made her sell formula to starving Africans because Nestle was a big company. (Here’s the Dog Trainer’s account of her accusations.) I followed the Corner’s link to her rainbow-hued website and clicked on some of the floating butterfly icons. Her New-Age meditation practice will soon become legend if the likes of Mark Steyn light into her, and I expect the sharper wits of the right-leaning blogosphere will not spare her. She’s low-hanging fruit, and I suspect that the backlash from her accusation will discredit the Democratic efforts to smear Bolton (“Look how they’re scraping the barrel to find something to throw at this guy!”)
The really, I don’t know, odd thing here is in her bio page. It sounds like she actually does some good work in helping people come to terms with abuse and learn to respect themselves. However, she describes her career in this way:
Lynne has created many realities for herself as diplomat, United Nations policy advisor to the Agency for International Development, and a professor at law schools in Washington, D.C., California and Utah.
Among those ” realities she has created” seems to be a recovered memory of childhood sexual abuse by her father. Recovered memories are tricky things and are often are the result of suggestion implanted by zealous questioners. The Gerald Amirault case was precisely such an example of false memories of abuse dredged up by prosecution psychologists. In fact it’s rare that such memories of abuse are repressed; the opposite is usually true–people can’t forget or ignore such memories.
In the meantime, Finney seems to be “creating a new reality” about John Bolton, or perhaps one has been suggested to her.
UPDATE: Ms. Finney’s accusations come just a little too late for Mark Steyn to address them–seeing as his Sun-Times column today is a veritable Sizzler of hearty red meat about Bolton, and too much more would leave us bloated and burpy. He inveighs against the Voinosquich Republicans who are, unlike the Butterfly Lady, a real threat to Bolton:
The rap against John Bolton is that he gets annoyed with do-nothing bureaucrats. If that’s enough to disqualify you from government service, then 70 percent of citizens who’ve visited the DMV in John Kerry’s Massachusetts are ineligible. Sinking Bolton means handing a huge psychological victory to a federal bureaucracy that so spectacularly failed America on 9/11 and to a U.N. bureaucracy eager for any distraction from its own mess.
I am pleased to see Steyn concur in my comparison between the Benedict XVI nomination and the Bolton confirmation, although Steyn runs with it:
Unlike the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the conclave of cardinals takes its job seriously. They understand the demands of the New York Times: women priests, gay sex, condoms for all. But, as befits an ancient institution, they take the long view: They think that radical secularism is weak and that the consequences of its weakness will prove dangerous and possibly fatal for the Western world. Therefore, there’s no point accommodating it — and, after all, those churches that do (the Episcopalians, for example) are already in steep decline. You can disagree with this, particularly if you’re as shrill and parochial as Pope Benedict’s American critics. But the conclave at least addressed the big issues.
Now is a gut check for the Right, all across the board. These are simply tests of whether or not we believe our own rhetoric. College of Cardinals gets a pass. Senators? Whether you do or not, your constituents do. And we’re watching you.
You guys might enjoy this Kremlinesque bit of PhotoShoppery over at The Daily Kos.
Who knew John Bolton was so micromanagerial?
Toby Petzold (cd28cf) — 4/24/2005 @ 12:41 amYou can’t make this stuff up. I’d say the campaign against Bolton (he’s not Alan Alda) is pretty much dead after this.
Yeah, a lot of folks will have fun with this.
Jim Rockford (e09923) — 4/24/2005 @ 2:38 amMoonbat on butterfly wings … you are right you can’t make this up anymore.
Heck you can’t even slip out a ‘pubic hair on a coke can’ joke before everyone starts laughing these days. What’s a Dem to do?
bill (26027c) — 4/24/2005 @ 3:15 amIt’s stuff like this that threatens to render all conservative satirists without jobs.
Buckley F. Williams (82e13a) — 4/24/2005 @ 3:50 amHey, one butterfly does not a UN appointment make, wasn’t that a good paraphrase.
I fear that just being tough won’t make Mr. Bolton into a viable rep of the US. And having attempted to override intelligence is kinda out of favor for some reason.
But you can be sure Ms. Finney’s business will not suffer as along as you spell her website name right.
Ruth (061410) — 4/24/2005 @ 5:21 am“I fear that just being tough won’t make Mr. Bolton into a viable rep of the US.”
Maybe, maybe not. The bottom line is that certain countries will continue to dislike us regardless of what our approach is. At the very least he appears to be a man that will call a spade a spade. I for one would like to see someone give voice to the frustrations that I (and many others) feel.
Buckley F. Williams (82e13a) — 4/24/2005 @ 6:52 amIsn’t it the wingers that ‘create their own reality’?
actus (0f2616) — 4/24/2005 @ 7:17 amleft-wingers.
The Angry Clam (fde4e6) — 4/24/2005 @ 8:39 amYou guys are nuts. Please withold judgement until you attend one of her reality creation workshops.
When you feel your feelings, you accept what is and open yourself to the flow of energy that wants to give you every blessing.
Ladainian (91b3b2) — 4/24/2005 @ 9:01 am— Lynne Finney
BFW:
Looks like Mr. Bolton’s more inclined to call a spade a catapult, from the hearings I did watch.
actus & TAC:
The wings involved are light and diaphanous, is that left or not? Dunno.
Ruth (3b9a9f) — 4/24/2005 @ 11:39 amWow…I just visited the Lynne Finney site, thanks to your link. What I find truly odd people actually pay money to hear this woman speak! I don’t know about the rest of you, but my “flow of energy” is hurriedly flowing away from anything Ms. Finney-related.
Ann (901629) — 4/24/2005 @ 12:26 pmFolks, I want you to know that I screwed up. I believed that the photo I referred to above was fake, but it is not. I am very embarrassed and do apologize for talking before I knew the facts.
At any rate, there were countless Republican and Democratic lawyers alike swarming all over Florida in the aftermath of the 2000 Election. The fact that John Bolton was among that number is irrelevant, except insofar as it feeds into the moonbats’ belief that everything is connected in some inscrutably Masonic way.
Toby Petzold (cd28cf) — 4/24/2005 @ 12:56 pmA hellishly hair-raising coverup?
Classical Values (6ec4b2) — 4/26/2005 @ 11:51 amOn August 20, 1994, a white buffalo was born on a farm in Janesville, Wisconsin, fulfilling ancient predictions of many Native Americans tribes that peace will come to men of all colors when the white buffalo returns. As a white…
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Patterico’s Pontifications » See-Dubya: Boosting Bolton (0c6a63) — 6/10/2005 @ 9:44 amWho’s Gonna Be A Psychic Spy?…
They tried to scan him, but his CIA cranial implant made the MRI machine catch on fire. I’m only a few minutes in, but so far he sounds like a cross between this guy who thinks Steven King killed John……
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