From: The White House Office of Media Distraction
Boss:
This whole fatal-attraction astronaut story was a godsend. Now Anna Nicole - and these things seem to come in threes. And Pelosi's plane? There you go - these are gold and we're going to ride them for all it's worth.
But these things don't fall into our lap everyday. If we're going to keep the media focused on something other than what's really happening - and give them the excuses they need to ignore Iraq, the Libby trial, etc. - we need to plan ahead. We've still got almost two years until we run out the clock.
Here's where things stand with ongoing projects, along with some new ideas submitted by the think tank:
Prince at the Super Bowl: I can't believe more people aren't up in arms about this. That was something out of "Austin Powers" - like the shadow of the devil's penis! We'll feed something to Bill Donohue at the Catholic League or Don Wildmon at American Family Association; show it to them in slow-motion if we have to. They know how to fan those flames and pull Fox into this (thankfully, the Super Bowl was on CBS and not Fox; looking into whether we find a way to blame Dan Rather, even though he's gone).
Paris/Britney/Lindsay: Our guys did some nice work landing that Newsweek cover; way to keep the surge out of view. We'll keep paying the girls those retainers to get photographed without panties or whatever it is they do - the media are like hounds in heat around them. Worth every penny to have our own private paparazzi crew feeding those pictures to the wire services.
Hillary-Obama: We didn't get as much traction as we hoped from the whole "Barack Hussein Obama" angle or from that story about the radical Islam elementary school (although sourcing it to the Clinton campaign was a nice touch). Still think Obama's college drug use will yield benefits but let's save that and come back to it at an opportune moment (like if he's actually nominated). The same thing with that whole Sisters of Sappho story about Hillary; keep that source on the payroll until we need her.
Other Democrat candidates: God, there are a lot of them - knocking them out with oppo-research should be like ducks in a barrel. There has to be stuff out there on Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich (is he even an American?) and the rest of this crowd. Still, it would be nice to keep Joe Biden in the race for a while. We teased out his gaffe about Obama as long as we could; but he's bound to say something else that will pull media focus for a few days. We're talking to our "Meet the Press" sources about making him a regular. And we're offering a bonus for even a wild rumor that gets a Drudge Report headline about that goody-good John Edwards.
Nonbinding resolution: This one is working wonders. We've got everyone so caught up in debating whether or not to pass something that means nothing that no one's paying attention to what's happening in Iraq - at least until the next massive car bomb. Stay focused!
Global warming: I know you think this one is hurting us but we've got to keep our eye on the ball. It's all about distraction and misdirection. If we can keep the media playing that "on the one hand, on the other hand" game with our bogus data, we're winning. We think we've come up with a terrific follow-up: We want to have the Prez announce a compromise, acknowledging that there might be such a thing as global luke-warming. That ought to buy us at least two weeks of headlines.
War against Xmas: We've got O'Reilly in our pocket on this one. An evergreen (no pun intended) - but one we can't really exploit until at least Halloween. However, we've got some interns working on the War on Easter.