To Each One’s Own Facts, or One Reason Alec Baldwin Isn’t Very Smart

Apparently Alec Baldwin has never heard of Richard Armitage. We say this, dear reader, because Mr. Baldwin’s latest Huffington Post rant on the Valerie Plame brouhaha demonstrates a shocking ignorance of the case at hand.

In his recent “posts” for the Huffy Po, Mr. Baldwin has been outlining for his readers various goals that he would set for himself were he the next president of the United States. According to the latest “post” in this deeply enlightening series, Mr. Baldwin says he would “prosecute whoever is responsible for outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.”

Uh, okay, Mr. Baldwin. That would be Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s erstwhile underling. You did know that, didn’t you?

In addition, perhaps someone should let you know that a fellow named Patrick Fitzgerald served as the special prosecutor regarding the Plame affair. Interestingly, as it turns out, he did not charge anyone with the outing of Valerie Plame. This was surely the result of the fact that Ms. Plame’s CIA career was well known around Washington and, in addition, Mr. Fitzgerald could not prove that Mr. Armitage had leaked her name to Bob Novak with any sort of malice.

Gosh, you’d think that Mr. Baldwin would have studied up on such details before writing a paragraph like the following:

Robert Novak will go to his grave with the disgrace of having served as the handmaiden of this heinous act, but his time has already passed. Those in government who are responsible must be prosecuted. The integrity of our government is always imperiled when men like Bush and Cheney are at the wheel. But the Plame affair puts all of us on notice. Political acts of this nature are the bailiwick of communists and fascists, not Americans whose country fights for freedom and democracy this very day in a foreign land, spending billions upon billions of dollars and sacrificing the lives of brave men and women in the process. Valerie Plame was a soldier in that war, too. We owe her all that we owe any American who serves this country.

We know what you’re thinking, dear reader: Geez. Even for an actor Alec Baldwin is coming across as a complete moron. When you can out-dumb your average thespian, you’ve really accomplished something.

But we mention this, dear reader, not because it proves that Alec Baldwin isn’t exactly a brain surgeon. On its own, that’s a rather unremarkable discovery. In fact, we think you could come to such a conclusion from merely eyeballing Mr. Baldwin.

Rather, we thought Mr. Baldwin’s “post,” and umpteen comments on it, demonstrate the great mental disconnect between the far Left and the rest of the American political spectrum. From what we can tell, it appears as if our far-lefty pals have extraordinarily different versions of the Plame affair in their head.

What else would lead them to ignore Richard Armitage’s role in the brouhaha? What else would lead them to suspect that Joe Wilson was a completely objective fellow who wasn’t sent to Niger by his wife?

We sincerely hope that these studied misunderstandings are to be found among the radicals alone. But this sort of nonsense doesn’t bode well for the future of American politics. If everyone’s dealing with his own set of facts, we’re highly unlikely to accomplish anything of value. Nietzsche might be happy with this state of affairs, but we ought not applaud.