Kerry misfire exposes media bias, Hillary hypocrisy
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As much as I think this country is ready for a female President (Pelosi '07, anyone?), that woman should not be Hillary Clinton.
She may be a fine Senator from New York, but Hillary has come down on the wrong side of too many issues -- and stayed there even after it was no longer politically useful.
Clinton has been for the Iraq war since the beginning, and continues to side with Bush on issues of executive power, perhaps because she wishes to exercise some of that herself in a few years.
She has a bad combination of traits: She positions based on polling, but then sticks with those positions lest she be labeled a flip-flopper.
At least when Dubya sticks to a bad political decision, you know it's because his corporate handlers ... lobbyists ... advisors have told him to.
When John Kerry mangled an anti-Bush joke last month, Hillary piled on, despite pre-provided speech text that showed he had just dropped a word.
Let me digress on this for a minute. Politicians often give a copy of their prepared remarks to media before an event. Coverage of the fake outrage over Kerry's remarks proves conservative bias. If stories about the kerfluffle mentioned the exact text as prepared -- rather than just saying he'd flubbed the joke -- it was always deep in an article. Most didn't give the exact text, knowing that it would be obvious that the whole issue was willful political spin.
A November 1 Boston Globe article had obviously been edited to push the intended wording of the remark past the jump. It's even past the jump in the online version, 15 paragraphs into the story, after repeating the flubbed version twice and quoting several falsely indignant Republicans. The fact that their supposed outrage is counter to the facts based on the text of the speech that was available BEFORE he gave it was never directly pointed out.
When politicians deny the truth, it's not enough to present the truth as just another opinion. Journalists need to point it out. The Conservative echo-chamber squealing about the so-called "liberal media" has the media so scared that they can't even present a fact without presenting "the other side."
Tellingly, the home-edition newspaper-published version (I wish I could find it, but I only have vague notes I took on it at the time), had the quote in the 19th paragraph, in a jump from the front page, in a second news section. (This would be technically called "buried in the asscrack of the paper," I believe.)
Those missing four paragraphs held a reference to the explanation that sounded strange enough that I re-read the first few grafs several times. Only when I hit the 19th paragraph did I see the problem. It's one I'd committed as an editor or reporter several times: You write a story and try to get the most crucial facts up top. Then you reference those facts in a "second-reference" manner in the article. When the first statement is moved, some re-writing needs to be done. However, at this point, you've read the article a dozen times and you don't notice the error.
I've ordered a back issue from the Globe, but it'll be the street edition, which often corrects errors like these, and which is probably the source for the edited version we see online. When I get the paper, I'll back these assertions up with a scan.
In an NPR "On The Media" segment about the Kerry "Freak Show" coverage, Washington Post national politics editor John Harris said that, on the first day, he put the story inside and downplayed it. But on the second day, he had to go with the flow of the right-wing echo chamber.
"The second day, President Bush was talking about it [LAUGHS]; Vice President Cheney was talking about it. Everyone was talking about it. I really was in no position to resist that," Harris said.
Later, he added, "I cannot, by proclamation, create my own reality and say that this was not, in fact, a dominant reality of the closing days of the campaign."
Nope. Distorting reality is the Republicans' job.
Anyway, back to Hillary. When she jumped onto the Kerry dogpile, it was obvious politics. She took advantage of the Republican spin to derail any thoughts Kerry might have had of entering the 2008 Presidential race. This is cynical and shameful. Ariana Huffington has a great take on it.
'08: A Future History
Hillary Clinton will raise a lot of money for her presidential campaign because she is popular among some very rich, corporate Democrats. And her DLC-approved conservative stances will help her sweep the conservative MidWest and Western states that hold the early primaries.
Her nomination will be seen as a fait accompli, and no one else will be able to raise money.
Then, if I am right, she'll lose to Mitt Romney in the general election. Romney is a relative unknown now, but he is building a serious grassroots organization that taps into Mormons around the country as its base. The local organizations are what win primaries, and Romney will have hundreds of thousands of clean-cut RMs shilling for him. And these guys spent two years each knocking on doors trying to give away copies of a book supposedly transcribed from Golden Plates by a New York con artist in the 1840s. (No offense, Harry.) Selling a handsome semi-moderate Christian Republican candidate will be cake.
And if Mormon-packed, Utah-proximate Nevada pulls off its bid for first-in-the-country caucuses, Romney will have momentum similar to Hillary's.
The only thing we can hope is that someone else jumps ahead of the Democratic pack soon and holds the spot.
She may be a fine Senator from New York, but Hillary has come down on the wrong side of too many issues -- and stayed there even after it was no longer politically useful.
Clinton has been for the Iraq war since the beginning, and continues to side with Bush on issues of executive power, perhaps because she wishes to exercise some of that herself in a few years.
She has a bad combination of traits: She positions based on polling, but then sticks with those positions lest she be labeled a flip-flopper.
At least when Dubya sticks to a bad political decision, you know it's because his corporate handlers ... lobbyists ... advisors have told him to.
When John Kerry mangled an anti-Bush joke last month, Hillary piled on, despite pre-provided speech text that showed he had just dropped a word.
Let me digress on this for a minute. Politicians often give a copy of their prepared remarks to media before an event. Coverage of the fake outrage over Kerry's remarks proves conservative bias. If stories about the kerfluffle mentioned the exact text as prepared -- rather than just saying he'd flubbed the joke -- it was always deep in an article. Most didn't give the exact text, knowing that it would be obvious that the whole issue was willful political spin.
A November 1 Boston Globe article had obviously been edited to push the intended wording of the remark past the jump. It's even past the jump in the online version, 15 paragraphs into the story, after repeating the flubbed version twice and quoting several falsely indignant Republicans. The fact that their supposed outrage is counter to the facts based on the text of the speech that was available BEFORE he gave it was never directly pointed out.
When politicians deny the truth, it's not enough to present the truth as just another opinion. Journalists need to point it out. The Conservative echo-chamber squealing about the so-called "liberal media" has the media so scared that they can't even present a fact without presenting "the other side."
Tellingly, the home-edition newspaper-published version (I wish I could find it, but I only have vague notes I took on it at the time), had the quote in the 19th paragraph, in a jump from the front page, in a second news section. (This would be technically called "buried in the asscrack of the paper," I believe.)
Those missing four paragraphs held a reference to the explanation that sounded strange enough that I re-read the first few grafs several times. Only when I hit the 19th paragraph did I see the problem. It's one I'd committed as an editor or reporter several times: You write a story and try to get the most crucial facts up top. Then you reference those facts in a "second-reference" manner in the article. When the first statement is moved, some re-writing needs to be done. However, at this point, you've read the article a dozen times and you don't notice the error.
I've ordered a back issue from the Globe, but it'll be the street edition, which often corrects errors like these, and which is probably the source for the edited version we see online. When I get the paper, I'll back these assertions up with a scan.
In an NPR "On The Media" segment about the Kerry "Freak Show" coverage, Washington Post national politics editor John Harris said that, on the first day, he put the story inside and downplayed it. But on the second day, he had to go with the flow of the right-wing echo chamber.
"The second day, President Bush was talking about it [LAUGHS]; Vice President Cheney was talking about it. Everyone was talking about it. I really was in no position to resist that," Harris said.
Later, he added, "I cannot, by proclamation, create my own reality and say that this was not, in fact, a dominant reality of the closing days of the campaign."
Nope. Distorting reality is the Republicans' job.
Anyway, back to Hillary. When she jumped onto the Kerry dogpile, it was obvious politics. She took advantage of the Republican spin to derail any thoughts Kerry might have had of entering the 2008 Presidential race. This is cynical and shameful. Ariana Huffington has a great take on it.
'08: A Future History
Hillary Clinton will raise a lot of money for her presidential campaign because she is popular among some very rich, corporate Democrats. And her DLC-approved conservative stances will help her sweep the conservative MidWest and Western states that hold the early primaries.
Her nomination will be seen as a fait accompli, and no one else will be able to raise money.
Then, if I am right, she'll lose to Mitt Romney in the general election. Romney is a relative unknown now, but he is building a serious grassroots organization that taps into Mormons around the country as its base. The local organizations are what win primaries, and Romney will have hundreds of thousands of clean-cut RMs shilling for him. And these guys spent two years each knocking on doors trying to give away copies of a book supposedly transcribed from Golden Plates by a New York con artist in the 1840s. (No offense, Harry.) Selling a handsome semi-moderate Christian Republican candidate will be cake.
And if Mormon-packed, Utah-proximate Nevada pulls off its bid for first-in-the-country caucuses, Romney will have momentum similar to Hillary's.
The only thing we can hope is that someone else jumps ahead of the Democratic pack soon and holds the spot.
