The truth about Carter's skybox.

This is pretty frivolous, but as someone who believed that canard about how the elder Bob Casey wasn't allowed to speak at the '92 Democratic Convention because he was pro-life for years (would any organizer worth his salt schedule a speaker who was busy providing anti-Clinton fodder to the National Review?), I think this story, via Tom Tomorrow at HuffPo, should be wider knowledge:

So. You want the true, inside scoop on how Michael Moore ended up in the Carter skybox that evening [at the 2004 DNC]? Simple: utterly at random. After Michael went head-to-head with fightin' Bill O'Reilly (the reason we were on the skybox level in the first place), we were walking through the corridor and the crowd was gathering around us and starting to get scary in that Hard Day's Night kind of way. We happened to be passing the Carter skybox at that moment, as one of Jimmy Carter's sons -- Chip, if memory serves -- was coming out. He saw us about to get crushed by Michael's fans, and offered us sanctuary.

That one random moment of kindness has fueled right-wing conspiracy theories for two years now.


For the record, my theory has always been that, whatever you think of Micheal Moore, President Carter can do whatever and fraternize with whoever the hell he wants -- so I've never bought the Joe Klein "disgraceful" line on the subject. But this version of events seems imminently more plausible and appealing than the idea that Carter purposely brought Moore up just to personally stick it to Bush one more time, pundit-, conservative- and Kerry-handler-opinion be damned. I also makes the wingers who perpetually harp on this non-event seem that much more histronic.