Continue reading "Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man? Or This One Either?" »
Continue reading "More Controversy, Crap, & Confusion! (Bumped & Updated!)" »
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
The Times Raises Another McCain Non-Issue
The staff at the New York Times has burned the midnight oil trying to find ways to derail John McCain's campaign. After endorsing him in the primary, the paper then ran an unsubstantiated smear against him as a philanderer. Now they ask whether he is eligible for the office, given his birth in the Panama Canal zone while his father served the country:
The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.
“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”
It's a slam-dunk to the millions of military families whose service to this country should have left then with no doubts about their children being relegated to second-class citizenry. They sacrificed enough for their country without having to sacrifice the futures of their children. Any other conclusion would amount to a penalty for military service on those who did not volunteer.
The Founding Fathers recognized this. They passed a bill in 1790, three years after the adoption of the Constitution, which made clear that "natural born" applied to children born of American citizens "outside the limits of the United States". That law remains in effect and has never been challenged. At the least, it speaks to the intent of the founders when they used the term "natural born" in the Constitution.
It's beyond absurd to argue that John McCain doesn't qualify to run as an American for the presidency. The candidate or party that files a lawsuit to challenge him on this point runs the risk of alienating a large swath of the public who have served this nation in uniform, in diplomacy, and in government.
Besides, if the Times thinks this to be an issue, then why did they endorse McCain in January? Didn't they bother to do their research on him then?
Sixty-Six Percent Say 'Smear!'
The New York Times marks another milestone on its journey to National Enquirer status. The Gray Lady's smear piece on John McCain got 66% of Rasmussen respondents believing that the paper deliberately trying to kneecap the Republican frontrunner. Only 22% think that the paper had clean motives in publishing the unsubstantiated gossip:
The Times recently became enmeshed in controversy over an article published concerning John McCain. Sixty-five percent (65%) of the nation’s likely voters say they have followed that story at least somewhat closely.Of those who followed the story, 66% believe it was an attempt by the paper to hurt the McCain campaign. Just 22% believe the Times was simply reporting the news. Republicans, by an 87% to 9% margin, believe the paper was trying to hurt McCain’s chances of winning the White House. Democrats are evenly divided.
Let's take a look at the crosstabs. Among age groups, a majority in each demographic believe that the NYT deliberately set out to damage McCain's reputation. The youngest give Bill Keller and company the most credit, with 34% believing that the Times was just reporting the news, as opposed to 53% who believed that the paper aimed to smear McCain. No other age demographic has more than 23% who believe that the Times operated with pure motives, and two-thirds across all other ages believe that they acted out of malice.
It doesn't get better in the other demographics, either. Whites, blacks, and "others" all strongly believe that Keller and his reporters acted maliciously. Sixty-nine percent of independents joined 40% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans in that belief. Only self-professed liberals believe that the Times used sound news judgment in running the piece; conservatives and moderates overwhelmingly blame bias and malice. And only liberals and 18-29 year olds view the Times more favorably than unfavorably.
The Times, under the management of Bill Keller and especially Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, has reduced what had been the nation's premiere newspaper to the credibility of a supermarket tabloid. People used to think conservatives overreacted to the attack memes of the Gray Lady. Now only liberals defend the paper -- and only then by the barest of majorities.
Gray Lady Issues Correction On McCain Smear
Well, it's not what one might think. They have a correction on an irrelevant point in a completely discredited article -- but at least it's right at the top:
A front-page article on Feb. 21 about Senator John McCain’s record on lobbying and ethics, including his role in the Keating Five case, described incorrectly the reprimand delivered to three other members of the Senate in 1991 for intervening with government regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr. The Senate Ethics Committee rebuked the three senators for improper behavior, but under a parliamentary agreement the full Senate did not censure them or take any other vote on the matter.
Wow. That really builds the ol' credibility, doesn't it? Here we have a story that got held for months while the editors tried to build a case for their accusations. We've been told by no less an authority than Dan Rather that we should trust their smear because all involved are, and I quote, "very responsible journalists."
And these responsible journalists -- the ones who accused McCain of possibly thinking of having an affair with a lobbyist on the word of two disgruntled staffers who couldn't even offer testimony that such an affair had taken place -- couldn't be bothered to fact-check the end result of the Keating Five investigation in the Senate? How hard would it have been to check their own archives for the right information?
Very responsible journalists. Hmmm. Sure. (via Lawhawk)
Is This Helpful?
The ascent of Barack Obama to front-runner status has also given rise to some highly irresponsible talk in the media, mostly sotto voce, about the potential for assassination. The New York Times breaks this into the open, giving Obama more uncomfortable associations with Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy than those his soaring rhetoric had already generated:
There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence.
“I’ve got the best protection in the world,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in an interview, reprising a line he tells supporters who raise the issue with him. “So stop worrying.”
Yet worry they do, with the spring of 1968 seared into their memories, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in a span of two months.
Mr. Obama was 6 at the time, and like many of his admirers, he has only read about the violence that traumatized the nation. But those recollections and images are often invoked by older voters, who watch his candidacy with fascination, as well as an uneasy air of apprehension, as Democrats inch closer to selecting their nominee.
Why does the Times, and other media outlets, even make this an issue? Will talking about this make Obama or anyone else one whit safer? Of course not. The Times makes it worse by releasing Obama's Secret Service code name, which has usually been considered confidential. Karl Rove recently refused to reveal his, and he no longer has Secret Service protection.
In one sense, the debate over the potential for assassination gives Obama even more of a messianic veneer. King and Kennedy were both cast as martyrs, the former for more reason than the latter, after their murders. This focus on Obama as a prime target is giving him a pre-martyr sense, something Obama and his family certainly don't appreciate for very obvious reasons. He doesn't want to martyr himself -- he just wants to run for President. And while Obama probably likes people comparing him to Kennedy and King, he doesn't want to join them.
2008 isn't 1968. The Secret Service knows how to protect people to the extent they can be protected, and Obama has had their protection for almost a year. Nothing more can be done to keep him from harm. It serves no purpose to have public hand-wringing over his security or that of any other candidate, and it could encourage nutcases to test the Secret Service.
Clark Hoyt, Conscientious Objector
On Thursday, New York Times editor-in-chief Bill Keller hysterically accused the John McCain campaign of "wag[ing] a war" on the Gray Lady simply by issuing a clear and calm denial of Keller's smear. If that's true, then give Times public editor Clark Hoyt conscientious objector status. Hoyt wants no part of defending Keller or his journalists, which he makes clear in a stinging rebuke:
The article was notable for what it did not say: It did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not make clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately — an affair or just an association with a lobbyist that could look bad. And it did not say whether Weaver, the only on-the-record source, believed there was a romance. The Times did not offer independent proof, like the text messages between Detroit’s mayor and a female aide that The Detroit Free Press disclosed recently, or the photograph of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart’s lap. ....“If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we’d have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members,” he replied. “But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career.”
I think that ignores the scarlet elephant in the room. A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide. ...
I asked Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if The Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair. “That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed,” she said.
But what the aides believed might not have been the real truth. And if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed.
Keller has tried to retreat on the sexual-affair front of his war ever since he launched that attack. He claims that the article wasn't about sex at all, but improper access. However, the lede of the article runs this explosive sentence before any other concerns: "Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself ..."
The Times can't retreat from that lede. Concerns over supposed favors all sprang from this supposed romantic interlude. The very plain implication of the piece was that McCain was doing favors for Vicki Iseman because she was providing sexual favors to McCain. Without that, where's his motivation to support her clients? A few plane rides, which were perfectly allowable under Senate rules at the time and which he properly disclosed?
Without the sex, there's no scandal. In fact, as the McCain camp pointed out, a look at McCain's record shows dozens of times when Iseman's clients got disappointed in his votes on the Commerce Committee. Even the one supposed intervention -- McCain's letter to the FCC -- doesn't demand a result favorable to her client, but just any decision on a long-overdue case, considered for over two years. Their one point of supposed corroboration, John Weaver, publicly repudiated the Times' version of his story, saying his intervention with Iseman had to do with her activities outside of McCain's presence, not her interactions with the Senator.
Even Lanny Davis called the charges baseless. That's Clinton administration official Lanny Davis.
Keller wants to beat a retreat from the salacious charges that have reduced his newspaper to the same status as a supermarket tabloid. Without that charge, however, no story exists. And with that reality, Clark Hoyt has no desire to march into battle at Keller's side.
UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis is "gobsmacked" at Keller's refusal to see the journalistic malpractice. Jarvis suspects that it's just spin. Doesn't that also tell us something about the credibility of the New York Times under the management of Keller and Pinch Sulzberger -- that they find it necessary and appropriate to "spin" their readers, rather than report the truth?
Where Is The Love?
A day after insinuating that John McCain had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, all of the romance appears to have disappeared from the New York Times. Faster than one can say Roberta Flack, the flak taken by the Gray Lady has apparently resulted in a Soviet-style purge of the sexual allegations from their story. Recall this in paragraph 2 of the original article:
A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.
Tom Maguire notes that now, Eastasia has never been at war with Oceania -- er, the story was never about sex. In her Friday follow-up, Elisabeth Bumiller cast the story in this manner:
Senator John McCain on Thursday disputed an account in The New York Times that top advisers confronted him during his first presidential run with concerns about his ties to a female lobbyist.
After leading with the allegations of sexual misconduct on Thursday, the Times waters it down within 24 hours to "concerns" about "ties" to a female lobbyist. A day after spreading unsubstantiated gossip, they've backpedaled to the "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" method of journalism. Readers could fill in the blanks after two paragraphs, though, when Bumiller could report that McCain denied ever having an affair with Iseman.
Today, we see the completion of the Times' efforts to rewrite history. Bumiller again follows up on the story, only this time, we don't get any indication that the Times ever accused McCain of a sexual affair:
Senator John McCain declared the battle over on Friday morning, but by then his lieutenants believed he had already won the war.Conservative radio talk show hosts who had long reviled Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate from Arizona, had rallied to his defense. Bloggers on the right said that this could be the start of a new relationship. Most telling, Mr. McCain’s campaign announced Friday afternoon that it had just recorded its single-best 24 hours in online fund-raising, although it declined to provide numbers.
Both sides traced the senator’s sudden fortunes to an unusual source, The New York Times, which on Wednesday night published on its Web site an article about Mr. McCain’s close ties to a female lobbyist who did business before the senator’s committee. That evening, two of the senator’s top advisers, Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt, flew to an emergency strategy session in Toledo, Ohio, where Mr. McCain was campaigning.
By Thursday morning, when the article appeared in the print editions of The Times, the McCain campaign had begun an aggressive attack against the newspaper, calling the article a smear campaign worthy of The National Enquirer. It was a symphony to the ears of Mr. McCain’s conservative critics.
First, let's take a moment to applaud Bumiller for some impressive sleight-of-hand here. She managed to make the New York Times the victim of "an aggressive attack" by McCain over a smear -- without explaining what the smear actually was! The Times piece originally led with an accusation of a sexual affair for which they offered exactly zero evidence. Calling it a smear worthy of the National Enquirer isn't an aggressive attack, it's a factual description.
The Times knows it, too -- otherwise they wouldn't have taken such pains to remove that element from their later reporting.
Beyond that, though, the chronology is in error. People read the article and began showering the New York Times in a hailstorm of criticism before anyone heard from the McCain campaign. No one needed his staff to read this article and realize it was an unsubstantiated attack piece. Even the Times' subsidiary, the Boston Globe, refused to run it, as did their client newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, neither of which are likely McCain allies.
The overarching theme of the Times is that they are a newspaper that lies about its subjects, then lies about its own coverage, and then blames their victim for getting caught.
Another Refusenik, Closer To Home
Earlier today, I linked to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and its editor's essay about the journalistic defects in the New York Times hit piece on John McCain. David McCumber chose not to run the Times' article in the Seattle P-I despite having the rights to it on syndication. Andrew Malcom at the Los Angeles Times reports that another paper also killed the story -- despite being owned by the New York Times:
But one interesting aspect of this combined political and professional controversy went widely unnoticed. The Boston Globe, which is wholly owned by the New York Times, chose not to publish the article produced by its parent company's reporters.Instead, the Globe published a version of the same story written by the competing Washington Post staff. That version focused almost exclusively on the pervasive presence of lobbyists in McCain's campaign and did not mention the sexual relationship that the Times article hinted at but did not describe or document and which the senator and lobbyist have denied.
On Thursday the Globe's website, Boston.com, did provide a link to the Times story on the Times' website. But such a stark editorial decision by a major newspaper raises suspicions that even the Globe's editors, New York Times Co. employees all, had their own concerns about the content of their parent company's story.
Rainey asked the Globe's editor, Martin Baron, about that decision. His eloquent reply: "No comment."
When journalists hear such rhetorical avoidance from public figures and politicians, they usually take it as confirmation of their suspicions.
That's a rather telling denunciation, isn't it?
Times Doesn't Pass The Smell Test: Seattle P-I (Update: Location, Location, Location)
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will never get mistaken as a conservative publication. It routinely editorializes in support of liberal causes and candidates, and it has come in for plenty of criticism for its decisions on publication decisions. They also routinely publish stories from their subscription to the New York Times syndication product. Today, however, David McCumber explains why he took a pass on the Times' hit piece on John McCain:
Obviously, the reporters, Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton, are not working for me. I have no way, other than their excellent reputations, of specifically evaluating their sourcing. That job fell to Bill Keller, the editor of The New York Times, who had held the story, citing concerns about whether the reporters had "nailed it," long enough to fatally fracture the newspaper's relationship with Thompson. She left today to go back to work for The Washington Post.Admitting that Keller was in a better position to vet the sourcing and facts than I am as, basically, a reader, let's assume that every source is solid and every fact attributed in the story to an anonymous source is true. You're still dealing with a possible appearance of impropriety, eight years ago, that is certainly unproven and probably unprovable.
Where is the solid evidence of this lobbyist improperly influencing (or bedding) McCain? I didn't see it in the half-dozen times I read the story. In paragraphs fifty-eight through sixty-one of the sixty-five-paragraph story, the Times points out two matters in which McCain took actions favorable to the lobbyist's clients -- that were also clearly consistent with his previously stated positions.
That's pretty thin beer. ....
This story seems to me not to pass the smell test. It makes the innuendo of impropriety, even corruption, without backing it up. I was taught that before you run something in the newspaper that could ruin somebody's reputation, you'd better have your facts very straight indeed.
"Nailed" would be one way to describe that.
Even the Times' allies have run for cover on this story. The Times ran a story that actually didn't allege anything except that two disgruntled former staffers claim that they thought McCain might be too close to Iseman. That's it. There's no there there, to quote Dorothy Parker. (via Michelle Malkin)
UPDATE: Hey, at least the Times carried McCain's denial in today's edition .... on page A20. Run the smear on the front page in a two-column box; run the response in the back of the news section. Sounds like the kind of journalism that makes Tom Shipley proud!
How The Times Helped McCain
UPDATE: Today's AOL Hot Seat poll question comes from this post:
I have more links at the bottom from my posts yesterday on this topic. Original post follows ...
========
The New York Times may have done the impossible for the John McCain campaign and for Republicans in general. As predicted yesterday when their strange and threadbare allegations hit print, the attack united conservatives behind McCain. It also may have been an act of seppuku for the Times, as its claim objectivity and credibility have been discredited. The Los Angeles Times surveys the damage:
Conservative commentators, including some who previously chastised McCain for not hewing closely to their principles, leaped to the candidate's defense.Radio personality Laura Ingraham, like other critics, noted that the newspaper had been researching the story for several months and accused the Times of delaying publication to do maximum damage.
"You wait until it's pretty much beyond a doubt that he's going to be the Republican nominee," Ingraham said on her morning radio program, "and then you let it drop -- drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That's what the New York Times thinks."
The most popular host in talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, described the story as standard fare for the paper he accuses of coddling the left.
"You're surprised that Page Six-type gossip is on the front page of the New York Times?" said Limbaugh in reference to the gossip column of the tabloid New York Post. Limbaugh, who previously has ripped McCain as a fake conservative, said: "Where have you been? How in the world can anybody be surprised?"
Bear in mind that both radio hosts had pressed hard before Super Tuesday to keep McCain from winning the nomination. They have no particular love for the Arizona Senator, and had kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism over his record. If the New York Times had actually produced a substantiated scandal involving McCain, they may have been the first to proclaim I told you so! from the tops of their transmitting stations.
Instead, the Times ran a piece of gossipy nonsense that doesn't even have the courage to allege what it only implies. Two self-described "disillusioned" former staffers who won't go on the record alleged -- what? -- that McCain had an affair? No. That McCain did favors for a romantic paramour? No. The Times reported that these two staffers somehow got past Mark Salter and John Weaver to stage a confrontation with McCain over their concerns that McCain might have possibly started to get close to thinking about a romance with Vicki Iseman.
For this, the Times offers no corroboration. They report on a confrontation between John Weaver and Vicki Iseman, but neglect to report that Weaver explained to them that he had heard Iseman brag about her connections to McCain and the Commerce Committee, not about any alleged affair. That didn't make it into the Times' report. Neither did the fact that McCain often voted against the interests of Iseman's clients, and that votes in favor of them matched McCain's often stated policy positions held long before Iseman became a lobbyist.
Bill Keller's crew threw in a rehash of two old scandals to pad out the piece, one legitimate but over 20 years old, and the other discredited when the Times first brought it up in 2000. McCain has acknowledged his role in the Keating 5 scandal repeatedly in the time since, so it's not as if this broke any new ground. And in the second scandal, even Clinton administration figure Lanny Davis claims it baseless, as Hot Air noted yesterday.
So what do we have? We have salacious but completely unsubstantiated gossip, combined with a rehash of at least one old Times smear, placed on the front page of what used to be the premiere newspaper in America. And what exactly does that do for the Times' credibility for the rest of this electoral cycle? They can't run anything on McCain now without it being seen in the context of what the Times itself calls a "war" between the Times and McCain. Keller and company declared war on McCain yesterday, and it fired a bazooka of effluvium as its opening salvo. They've marginalized themselves for the next nine months.
Earlier posts on the subject:
UPDATE II: Bump to top.
First We Smear You, Then Any Response Is War
The story of the New York Times hit piece on John McCain keeps getting stranger and stranger. First the paper puts out a story that uses two disgruntled former "associates" of McCain to allege that they wondered whether he had an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist. Not that he actually had an inappropriate relationship, but merely that they wondered about it. They also allege that they staged an intervention with McCain about it, one that somehow bypassed the top staffers on his campaign, and for this the newspaper offers no proof and no corroboration whatsoever.
John McCain then holds a very polite and rather subdued press conference to deny all of the Times' unsubstantiated gossip. How does the New York Times report this? With unbelievable hysteria:
Later in the day, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers leveled harsh criticism at The New York Times in what appeared to be a deliberate campaign strategy to wage a war with the newspaper. Mr. McCain is deeply distrusted by conservatives on a number of issues, not least because of his rapport with the news media, but he could find common ground with them in attacking a newspaper that many conservatives revile as a left-wing publication.“It was something that you would see in the National Enquirer, not in The New York Times,” said Steve Schmidt, a former counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney who is now a top campaign adviser to Mr. McCain.
Oh,please! First, the Times published a scurrilous and poorly-sourced story that even gossip rags would have rejected, and they have the nerve to accuse McCain of declaring war? Has Bill Keller lost his mind?
This has to be one of the worst days in New York Times history, and that's saying a hell of a lot. Not only do they lack any editorial wisdom, now they run shrieking at the first sign of pushback. This self-pitying emission from the Times' tailpipe would be worthy of The Onion.
Hey, Bill. John McCain knows how to wage war. When he decides to do that, you'll know it. (via Power Line)
UPDATE: Tom Maguire takes a trip in the Wayback Machine, and discovers that most of this story is recycled from discredited reports in 2000.
The Times Already Into Stonewall Mode? (Update: A Few Points Left Out)
When a newspaper breaks a major story, the editors and the reporters usually make a media blitz to promote it. The New York Times has apparently decided to go into the bunker instead. Patrick Hynes hosts a weekly radio show called Meet the New Press (and also works for the McCain campaign), and he invited Jim Rutenberg to appear to debate their slimy attack on John McCain. Rutenberg said no, and don't bother to ask anyone else either:
At 6:51 AM this morning, I e-mailed Jim Rutenberg– whom I know and have interacted with in the past–to invite him onto my radio program “Meet the New Press” on Saturday morning to discuss the sourcing of his New York Times hit piece on my client John McCain.At 7:24 AM Rutenberg declined my invitation in an e-mail and indicated—without my even asking—that no one else at the Times was likely to come on, either.
It seems very odd to me that after having “broken” (broken, indeed) a big story about a major national figure, a story that is capable of impacting the 2008 presidential election, no one at the Times has any interest in discussing the story any further, especially considering so many have expressed such deep skepticism about its sourcing and the value of its content.
Patrick keeps the invitation open for them at his blog. I'll go Patrick one better. I am on the air today three times -- at 10 am ET with Rockin' Politics (call in number: 646-478-4556), 1 pm ET at the AOL Hot Seat show (call-in number: 347-205-9555), and on Heading Right Radio (call-in number: 646-652-4889). I'll also be on the air tomorrow with Heading Right Radio at the same time, and at 1 pm CT on Saturday afternoon in the Twin Cities at AM1280 The Patriot (call-in number: 651-289-4488). I'll be happy to talk to any of the named "journalists" on the McCain article on any of those shows.
Will they appear? Absolutely not. Smear artists go to ground once their masterpieces get published. I don't expect these to be any different.
UPDATE: The McCain campaign released a statement that outlines the facts that they gave the New York Times, but somehow failed to appear in their story:
No representative of Glencairn or Alcalde and Fay, met with Senator McCain in 1998 to discuss the issue of local marketing agreements (LMAs). On July 20, 1999, Senator McCain met with Eddie Edwards, the head of Glencairn, regarding LMAs and minority media ownership issues. This meeting was several months after Senator McCain had weighed in at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding its expected December 1998 decision on media ownership rules. There were no other meetings in 1999 between any representative of Alcalde and Fay and Senator McCain regarding the issue of LMAs.Senator McCain’s Commerce Committee staff recalls meeting at least once with representatives of Alcalde and Fay concerning the issue of LMAs. The staff also recalls meeting with many other representatives of media companies, as well as groups advocating for consumer and public interests, regarding the issue of LMAs during the time the FCC was considering the issue.
As to the December 1998 letters and the February 1999 letter, those letters were not written in support of any one party or in favor of a particular interest. Those letters were simply written by Senator McCain as the Chairman of the committee that oversees the FCC to express his opinion that the agency should not act in a manner contradictory to Congressional intent. In both his December 1, 1998 letter and his December 7, 1998 letter, Senator McCain makes clear that Section 202(h) of the 1996 Telecommunications Act unambiguously directs the FCC to review its media ownership rules every two years with an “eye to lessening them, not increasing them.” Additionally, the letters quote from the 1996 Telecommunications Act and its report language, as well as language from the 1997 Budget Reconciliation Act. The letters do not express an opinion on the merits of LMAs, but strongly encourages the FCC to recognize the “clear language” in the statute.
There's lots more at Politico. One might have supposed that they would check dates on meetings and letters before implying some kind of malfeasance, but that of course would constitute real journalism.
Chris Matthews' Next Apology Coming In 5, 4, 3, 2 .... (Update & Bump For Video)
UPDATE: I posted about this earlier, but Eyeblast has the video clip. Eyeblast is a new contender in the viral-video sweepstakes and is definitely worth a close look for right-of-center videobloggers. Here's the clip:
And so with that final "Screw you!" from Matthews, the original post follows ....
==========
Chris Matthews has spent the primary cycle alternately opining and apologizing for his remarks about Hillary Clinton. It looks like he may have either tired of the cycle, or wants another round of YouTubed capitulation to make the blogospheric rounds. Sam Stein at the Huffington Post notes that Matthews erupted on Joe Scarborough's morning show at MS-NBC, calling Hillary's media-response team "knee-cappers":
Chris Matthews fired a salvo at the Clinton campaign this morning after both he and his MSNBC colleague were privately rebuked for recent comments deemed misogynistic or inappropriate.Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the Hardball host went off on the Clinton press shop, calling them "knee cappers" who were "lousy" and delve in the business of "intimidation."
"What she has to do is get rid of the kneecapers that work for her, these press people whose main job seems to be punishing Obama or going after the press, to building a positive case for her," said Matthews. "Her campaign slogan right now is don't get your hopes up. That won't work in America. You can't diminish Obama and hope that you will rise from the ashes."
Chris Matthews just now noticed that the Clintons play, er, "Hardball"? It seems somewhat ironic that the man who hosts a show by that name complains that the Clintons throw elbows when pushing for power. The late realization also paints him as more than a little clueless.
Question for CapQ readers: how long before we see Matthews' inevitable apology for his implications that the Clintons use loan-shark collection techniques against their political opponents? And will he blame the lack of universal health care again for his "frustrations" and criticism? Here's Matthews' last apology, for those who have forgotten it:
Is MS-NBC Biased? Are You Kidding?
After Chris Matthews dismissed Hillary Clinton's political qualifications as limited to her husband's infidelity, her supporters roared until squeezing a very public apology from the MS-NBC talk-show host. Now David Shuster, another MS-NBC on-air personality, will cool his heels for an undetermined length of time for accusing Hillary of "pimping out" her daughter politically, and Hillary may refuse any more debates on the so-called network. Howard Kurtz has the story:
In case there was any doubt, using a prostitution metaphor for the daughter of a presidential candidate is not a good career move.MSNBC suspended correspondent David Shuster yesterday for an undetermined period for making a disparaging on-air remark about Chelsea Clinton. Meanwhile, officials in her mother's campaign raised the possibility of punishing the news channel by boycotting future debates.
While filling in as a host Thursday, Shuster was discussing the 27-year-old's role in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign with two guests when he asked: "Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"
Howard Wolfson, the campaign's communications director, called Shuster's remark "disgusting," "beneath contempt" and "the kind of thing that should never be said on a national news network." Wolfson appeared to suggest that Clinton is reconsidering an agreement this week to participate in an MSNBC debate Feb. 26 in Cleveland, saying: "I at this point can't envision doing another debate on that network." ...
Wolfson noted that MSNBC's Chris Matthews expressed regret last month for suggesting that Hillary Clinton's political success can be traced to sympathy stemming from her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. "At some point you have to question whether there is a pattern at this particular network," Wolfson said.
What? MS-NBC biased? Oh heavens, could that possibly be? Before the Left gets particularly outraged by that particular idea, let's recall that this is the network that airs Keith Olbermann, who saw Peter Finch's performance in Network and didn't realize it was satire. Their supposed news anchor spends every night ranting about conservatives and Republicans, daily issuing them the title of "The Worst Person In The World", which ignores people like Richard Ramirez, Ali Khameini, Osama bin Laden, the Castro brothers, and so on.
And yet, Republican presidential candidates have regularly appeared on MS-NBC, despite the almost relentless bias against them on the cable channel. They haven't even demanded Mr.Meltdown recuse himself from the proceedings. Apparently, they don't feel as though the pettiness and rancid commentary at MS-NBC can knock them off their stride. Hillary feels differently -- shouldn't that say something about her candidacy?
For the shock, shock! of suddenly discovering the bias at MS-NBC, Wolfson gets the Captain Louis Renault Award. I'd give him the Peter Finch Award as well, but Olbermann wins that as a lifetime achievement award.
As for David Shuster, he deserves a short time in the penalty box for using a prostitution term to describe anyone on a news show. It's not just offensive -- which it is -- but it's intellectually lazy and a lame attempt to sound "down wit' it", something of which we don't need any more from television. The phrase doesn't even really apply to what Shuster meant. Hillary asked Chelsea to call superdelegates, which she did, but apparently didn't want to talk to the press. How exactly does that make Hillary the Pimp Mommy, anyway? Forcing her to talk to the press would have qualified in a way, but then Shuster wouldn't have had anything about which to whine on national TV, either.
Fox Doublecrosses Hillary, McCain
Yesterday morning, I watched with some disbelief as Fox News Sunday managed to get John McCain and Hillary Clinton together for a brief three-way chat with Chris Wallace. Nothing much occurred, but I wondered what would have made either candidate agree to a cheery bit of Senatorial comity 48 hours before the Super Tuesday primaries. According to Howard Kurtz, they didn't:
Advisers to Hillary Clinton and John McCain felt misled yesterday when "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace prodded the candidates into talking to each other after they had agreed to be interviewed separately.While McCain was being interviewed in Washington, Clinton aides grew suspicious when producers asked her to remain in the interview chair in St. Louis for 15 minutes--ostensibly so she could hear his comments--and refused to turn off her mike so she could have a private conversation. That enabled Wallace to tell McCain he was about to interview the former first lady and "well, actually, she's right there right now. Senators, do you want to say anything to each other?"
No harm was done--both candidates said they looked forward to a "respectful debate" if they face off in November--but the McCain side was particularly unhappy.
I'll bet they were. Part of the conservative complaint against McCain is his deference to Democrats while treating conservatives much more harshly. That got put on full display yesterday, as the two exchanged not just pleasantries but assurances that a general-election contest between the two would be "respectful". Republicans may want someone less inclined to put the gloves on against Hillary than taking them off against fellow Republicans.
Both candidates got taken by surprise, but Hillary hasn't got Democrats wondering if the Clintons can fight hard enough against Republicans.
Fox and Wallace owe both candidates an apology.
Do Blogs Matter In Presidential Politics?
Ron Klain wonders what happens when bloggers speak truth without power in his New York Times blogpost. Klain focuses on the Democratic race, where blogger favorites Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd (whom he doesn't mention) all sank without much of a fight:
The ultimate measure of this shift of influence [towards the blogs] came this summer, when virtually every Democratic candidate for president attended the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, and skipped the annual convention of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Nashville.But notwithstanding this stunning success, this week’s withdrawal by John Edwards, coming a week after the departure of Dennis Kucinich, means that both of the preferred presidential candidates of the liberal blogosphere are now out of the race. Instead, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two candidates who have drawn some of the sharpest criticism on progressive blogs, are the only ones who will make it to Super Tuesday. A similar thing happened in 2004, when Howard Dean and Wes Clark, the two candidates most strongly backed by blogs, were beaten by John Kerry, who wasn’t a blog favorite.
The blogosphere has had impressive electoral success in Senate and House races, especially in 2006. But at the presidential level, while the blogosphere has been effective in changing the political debate and the party’s direction, it has been less successful in helping its preferred candidates to victory. Why?
I'd challenge Klain on a number of his assumptions. First, I see no evidence that the blogosphere has had "impressive electoral success" anywhere. The high-water mark came in 2006, when Ned Lamont beat Joe Lieberman in the primary, only to get thumped in the general election by the same opponent running an independent campaign. Where are the wins involving candidates that weren't already backed by party establishment? And while Markos Moulitsas deserves a great deal of credit for the Yearly Kos convention, it is a political truth that politicians will attend the opening of a wallet anywhere it happens.
Klain doesn't mention Republicans in this post, but it applies to conservative bloggers as well. Fred Thompson had tremendous support in the Rightosphere, but that made little difference in his ultimate fate in the primaries. No one has on-line support like Ron Paul, and so far that has translated to nothing more than single-digit support in the primaries. Huckabee had a burst of blog support as well, but has lost momentum since his win in Iowa.
The blogosphere has influence, of course, but mainly on policy and not on candidate campaigns. They also can help raise money, but not usually in the kind of amounts that give them king-making power, a gap that Lamont's flop in November 2006 aptly demonstrated. Even with the 10-1 advantage in fundraising between the progressive bloggers and conservative bloggers, the actual amounts came to a pittance in the overall totals among the Congressional candidates.
Why do bloggers succeed on policy -- say, with porkbusting, immigration, and other issues -- and not with candidacies? The answer is actually very apparent. Blogs do best at dicussing ideas, delving into detail and utilizing rhetoric to motivate and to persuade. The candidates have to sell themselves. Blogs don't do much as surrogates in those efforts, and as history shows, have a very poor track record in elevating any but the most already-elevated candidates.
Blogs aren't irrelevant in elections. However, they do best in enlightening people on policy, which secondarily may boost candidates who champion them.
Captain's Quarters features an authoritative blogroll, listing many websites that feature the top political thinking on the Internet. In order to make the list easier to navigate, it has been divided into a number of sections.
Click on the section title to expand the list.