Him: “So, man like why do you call him Deep Throat?”
Me: “Because you can’t say ratf*ck on television.”
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Since the Watergate crisis, the term “Deep Throat” is synonymous with information leaked by a political source for varying motives.
The original Deep Throat is a character who fed information to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward at the Washington Post for the work that eventually led to their book, All the President’s Men.
Supposedly it was a play on the idea of deep background – detailed briefings given legitimately to reporters but not for attribution – crossed with a porn film popular at the time. Deep Throat’s identity remained a mystery until about five years ago when he was identified as Mark Felt.
But deep throating in the political context has another name, one borrowed from military slang:
Ratf*ck.
Now in the military a ratf*ck comes from the idea that anyone who would screw over his own friends is a rat or that only a rat would stoop so low as to screw over his own kind. There’s an image in there as well in some definitions that conjures up the image of disease-riddled vermin picking over anything and everything to find something in it for themselves. The origin and use of the word is open to wide-ranging debate, but still the idea of that the terms means is clear.
You will find people who use the term to describe just about any political trick, dirty or otherwise.
But in politics, about the lowest form of ratfuck would be the deep throat-style leak. Not only is the information being passed along to sources who normally wouldn’t or shouldn’t have it, the person actually leaking it is trusted by the inside crew. There’s something about the whole business that reeks of spies and double-agents.
The motivation for the leak might have some impact on how a leaker is viewed. In Watergate, Deep Throat exposed an organized criminal gang that ran out of the one of the three major branches centre of the American federal government. Few people would have difficulty with that leaker.
Even in that situation, though, there are people who would argue that any leak of information is a mark not only of fundamental disloyalty but of sinister behaviour in the process. Rather than resign and then present the information openly, Deep Throat spoke only on the condition that his identity would be kept a secret until he died or decided to expose himself. That veil of secrecy lasted for decades.
In this case, the veil of secrecy over who screwed the Premier’s plans will likely last much longer than at Watergate.
At the very best, the plan to slip away have the surgery and slip back was a high risk plan which was more likely to fail than not. But in a place where even gigantic public policy stories don’t get reported by local news media, there’s a chance the whole thing might have gone down according to plan.
Oddly enough, that very same quality on which the Premier’s plan rested may well wind up being the very thing that winds up working instead for his own, personal Deep Throat.
And while the Premier’s personality cult continues to blast away at all in sight – 1,2,3,4,5 - the Premier’s very own personal Deep Throat has slipped quietly back into the shadows.
Where he or she will safely remain.
Likely for ever.
-srbp-
