Certain Geese Never Get Sauce

December 23, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, News media | Leave a Comment 

Old conventional wisdom: New York Times could imply that Sen. McCain had an affair even though there was no proof. New CW: Times won’t report on alleged affair between its publisher and a possible future U.S. senator.

DSPQ

December 5, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | 3 Comments 

The web woven by the Ohio State employees who checked out Joe the Plumber’s files the day after John McCain mentioned him in the October 15th presidential debate grows ever more tangled.

So far, it involves at least three officials of the Department of Job and Family Services’ Office Child Support — including Assistant Deputy Director Carri Brown (who ordered the search of Joe’s computer files by claiming that he had contacted the agency wanting to know know how much he owed), and Deputy Director Doug Thompson (who then orchestrated an attempted cover up.)

As punishment, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland suspended Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley, Ms. Brown and Mr. Thompson from their jobs for a month without pay.  Ms. Jones-Kelley defended the records searches as “well-meaning” but misinterpreted.  Similarly punished was Helen Niekamp, the hapless clerk who had only followed her bosses’ orders by running the check on a name she didn’t recognize (“Joe” had not yet been widely identified as Samuel Wurzelbacher).

Indeed, the story had been all but successfully swept under the carpet until Ms. Niekamp started challenging the unfairness of her treatment.

A week later, Thompson came to her office with a different explanation — that he, Jones-Kelley and assistant director Fred Williams had requested the check.

“Doug told me that the person Carri had asked me to look up was Joe the Plumber — the one who was talked about in the national news. He said he needed my help explaining something,” Niekamp said.

“Doug then told me I must write an e-mail to our agency’s information-security officer to explain why the file had been accessed. He turned my computer screen so he could see it and dictated word for word what he wanted me to write. …

“He then told me that we needed to make sure that we answer questions about what happened the same way, so that our versions were not different from each other. Before he said that, he reminded me that I was an unclassified employee — which, as you may know, is someone who can be fired without cause.”

I don’t know what the proper penalty/punishment for this kind of conduct should be.  But let’s pretend —if only because it’s fun to pretend— that the the State House was in Republican hands and it was Barack Obama who had used the Plumber Ploy in the debate.  How complacent would the media and the pundits have been if Republican bureaucrats had been checking out the State-held computer records of a private citizen?  

DSPQ

December 5, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ, History | Leave a Comment 

In his column today, Victor Davis Hanson gives a Classical pedigree to the Double Standard Paranoia Quotient.

He adopts the technique used by the Roman moralist Plutarch — making a point by comparing and contrasting the lives of two individuals (in his case, Greeks and Romans: Pericles and Fabius Maximus, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, etc.)

Mr. Davis uses more familiar contemporary examples: Richard Fuld and Robert Rubin, Ted Stevens and Charles Rangel, Alberto Gonzales and Eric Holder, Chris Dodd and Trent Lott.

Comparative chapters and verses of (at the very least) questionable conduct are detailed, and in each case the Republican’s feet are held sternly to the fire while the Democrat’s wrist is lightly slapped.

Mr. Davis concludes:

I could go on and on with these Plutarachean examples of Parallel Lives but you get the picture. Here, the contrast is not the respective virtues of Greece and Rome. Nor is there any regret whatsoever that liberals of good faith thankfully scrutinize the bad judgment and even criminal activity of wayward conservatives. The problem instead is why we continuously consider liberal transgressions as misdemeanors and their conservative counterparts as felonies. 

If Plutarch once believed that action, not intention matters (otherwise, as Aristotle noted, we could all be moral in our sleep), we moderns believe the reverse — that proper thinking can often excuse improper acts.

Why so? Perhaps we suspect that a Rubin or Dodd want to do more good things for the poor than do a Fuld or Lott, and so we should interpret their transgressions as atypical lapses rather than characteristic behavior. 

Perhaps we think a Attorney-General designate Holder is properly cognizant of our long liberal efforts to force the system to change and therefore deserves some exemption for ethical blindness on the job. Again in contrast, Attorney-General emeritus Gonzales is unduly cynical in not appreciating that progressive thinking is responsible for his job, and therefore he must be held accountable immediately and for the rest of his professional life for supposed character flaws. 

Perhaps we think a life-long crusading African-American like Rangel merely fudges a bit here and there in the twilight of a long exemplary career seeking to ensure racial harmony and parity for his nation, and therefore is absent-minded rather than felonious and hypocritical. Yet the sordid behavior of his white male conservative counterparts provides valuable elucidation about their depravity and bigotry — and is proper grounds for their eventual departures not merely from posts of influence, but from the Congress altogether.

Perhaps — as we saw from the asymmetrical media treatment of the two candidates during the recent campaign — in matters of power and politics today, intention, symbolism, and rhetoric are everything; facts essentially nothing. 

Or maybe less cynically — in the minds of self-appointed liberal moralists concerned about the greater good — exalted ends at times necessarily entail regrettable means.

Another Item For Obama’s In-Box: The Culture War

November 22, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, Obama administration, Richard Nixon, Vietnam, Watergate | 2 Comments 

William Ayers:

I’m not making a blanket apology because, actually, I think what we did was measured in response to things that were going on in the rest of the world. How do you respond to thousands of people who were being murdered in your name?

The quote’s from his book tour, as reported by the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page. Ayers says that planting bombs that could’ve killed innocent people and planning bombings that probably would have done so were appropriate responses to U.S. government actions in Indochina. It’s the same argument made by Osama bin Laden and those who bombed abortion clinics and killed abortion doctors — the argument terrorists always make.

You may say that bin Laden did a lot more damage than Ayers. If so, then the self-justifying anti-abortion terrorist is the one with sheer numbers on his side — 45 million since 1973, assuming one processes that as lost lives. Big assumption, I know. But just how many Mozarts, fathers, mothers, sports coaches were never born? How many cancer researchers and cellists, stamp collectors and scout leaders?

Neither bin Laden nor a physician-murderer probably would probably have as easy a time as Ayers is having on his book tour. But it’s not because of the arithmetic. It’s because of the Zeitgeist.

NPR’s Terry Gross was, according to this account, cool and probing. When she asked Ayers for an apology, he gave an answer not unlike the one above. She also asked if being in the Weather Underground was a youthful indiscretion. With all due respect to Gross, it was a silly question. Many if not most political extremists and terrorists are young. Suicide bombers are almost all young. Of course Ayers has become less reckless. He probably has mutual funds and people who take care of his book royalties. He isn’t even tough enough to handle a Fox News reporter without calling the police.

The better question is why he gets a respectful hearing when almost all other unapologetic terrorists wouldn’t, notwithstanding their ages or latter-day accomplishments. I can’t think of anything beyond this answer from last April:

Though it was, as Sen. Obama has said, detestable that the Weathermen set bombs and planned to murder innocent people in police stations and at dances, many people couldn’t and evidently still can’t bring themselves to be as angry at Ayers as they would at someone who planned to murder people in abortion clinics. For all of us, it takes exquisite discernment and self-awareness to be completely objective in our moral judgments about the means and tactics used to achieve any outcomes we passionately desire. So if you ask how Obama can get away with an association with a terrorist Weatherman, the answer is that within the generation that fought in or and opposed the Vietnam war and whose political and cultural temperament was molded by it, there are those who believe Ayers is evil and others who are tempted by the idea that his extremism was justifiable.

Indeed it would be interesting if Obama would say, the next time he’s asked about Ayers, “You say he’s a terrorist? Perhaps you’d like to show me some evidence, especially since he was never charged with it.” See, there’s the whole “innocent until proven guilty” concept — which also applies to a certain President who resigned his office prior to impeachment, thus shortening the nation’s trauma but depriving himself of the right to offer a detailed, comprehensive defense against charges that were dramatically amplified by his opponents’ anger over his Vietnam policies. Serving him in one way or another for nearly 30 years, I’ve learned that passion over Vietnam often drives his harshest critics. Plenty have written to The New Nixon saying that he doesn’t deserve a blog, or a library, or a friendly biography, or a kind word. How could you associate with that war criminal — how you could defend him? Sound familiar, Messrs. Obama, Ayers, and Hannity?

I used to think that it would take years for Americans of a certain age to settle their argument with one another about Vietnam. I’m beginning to think that we’re going to take it to our graves.

The PE has promised to help us past this. He’s spoken of the weird plots hatched on college campuses back in the sixties. All power to him. We await the speech.

DSPQ

November 8, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

Deborah Howell, the Washington Post’s ombusdman, has been making a list and checking it twice and, in tomorrow’s paper, she reports on what she found.  The headline tells the story: “An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage”.  Who’d have thunk it?

Among the conclusions:

The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts’ views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues.

The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces (58) about McCain than there were about Obama (32), and Obama got the editorial board’s endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.

Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain.

Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.

…Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

No doubt some slack should be cut because the horse race aspects of this campaign were particularly exciting  (not least during the highly contested primaries), and because the historic nature of the Obama candidacy was a story in and of itself.  And Ms. Howell makes the case for cutting said slack.

But the media’s shameless and shameful abdication of its hitherto much vaunted prerogative and responsibility of fearless and favorless coverage will end up being one of the most significant outcomes of the 2008 election.

DSPQ

October 24, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | 1 Comment 

Pat Buchanan highlights the remarkable slack cut Senator Biden over his remarkable statement about the dependable foreign testing of President Obama within the early months of his prospective Administration.

Was it just the latest in the already long line of the garrulous Senator’s gaffes? Or in this case did he actually know what he was talking about?

If it was only a gaffe, then the media’s eagerness to blow off the kind of thing that, had Senator McCain or Governor Palin said it, would have been examined and deconstructed 24/7, would only have triggered the usual DSPQ in the usual quarters.

But if the Senator made the almost unforgivable (and unimaginable) mistake of telling the truth in public during a political campaign, surely what he said deserves —indeed, requires— some serious consideration. And one would have thought that inquiring minds would want to know exactly which is the case and what the hell is going on. But one would have been wrong.

Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetings that a great crisis is coming early in the term of President Obama:

“Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. … Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said … we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

A “generated crisis”? By whom? Moscow? Beijing? Tehran?

This is an astonishing statement from a chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has access to the same intelligence as George Bush. Joe was warning of a crisis like the Berlin Wall of July 1961, where JFK called for a tripling of the draft and ordered a call-up of reserves, or the missile crisis where U.S. pilots like John McCain were minutes away from bombing nuclear missile sites in Cuba and killing the Russians manning them.

Is Russia about to move on the Crimea? Is Israel about to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites? What is Joe talking about?

If one assumes Joe is a serious man, we have a right to know.

Instead, what we got was Obama’s airy dismissal of Joe’s words as a “rhetorical flourish” and a media – rather than demanding that Joe hold a press conference – acting as Obama surrogates parroting the talking points that Joe was just saying that new presidents always face tests.

Had John McCain made that hair-raising statement, he would have been accused of fear mongering about a new 9/11. The media would have run with the story rather than have smothered it.

DSPQ

October 22, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | Leave a Comment 

In his NRO column today, Jonah Goldberg revisits the meaning of Joe the Plumber and the combination of Obamaluv and snobbery that guides the media in its coverage and treatment of the Democratic ticket.

Obama often articulates a vision of government inspired by the biblical injunction to be our brother’s keeper. Few would dispute the moral message, but many disagree that such religious imperatives are best translated into tax or economic policy.

So we’ve listened to Joe Biden question the patriotism – and, at times, piety – of those who don’t share Obama’s economic vision. We’ve heard Obama himself say that we should agree to higher taxes in the name of “neighborliness,” and that he’d raise the capital-gains tax – even if it demonstrably lowered revenues – “for the purposes of fairness.” He will cut checks to millions who pay no income tax at all and call it a tax cut.

In short, Obama’s explanation to Joe the Plumber that we need to “spread the wealth around” is a sincere expression of his worldview, with roots stretching back to his church and his days as a community organizer.

Millions of Americans don’t share this vision. They don’t see the economy as a pie, whereby your slice can only get bigger if someone else’s gets smaller. They don’t begrudge the wealthy their wealth, but only ask to get the same opportunities.

People like Tito Munoz look at America and see an open path to their own American dream. It would be nice if the media at least tried to understand this point.

Instead, they attacked and belittled a citizen who asked a candidate a question. They think he’s stupid or a liar for not understanding that a promised check from a President Obama is more valuable than some pipe dream about future success.

It’s funny. When PBS’s Gwen Ifill had a straightforward conflict of interest – her forthcoming book hinges on an Obama presidency – that should have prevented her from moderating the VP debate, her fellow journalists tittered at the critics. All that matters, Ifill & Co. insisted, are the answers, not the questioner.

But if Joe the Plumber gets revealing but embarrassing answers out of the media’s preferred candidate, suddenly the questioner matters more than the answer. And he must be punished.

Whoa! Yo! Whoa! Whoa!

October 22, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | 1 Comment 

In her column in today’s New York Post, Kristen Powers considers the lack of media interest in Senator Biden’s staggering blunder when he actually told the truth gaffe regarding

Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate prompted a small wave of warnings about Biden’s propensity for gaffes. But no one imagined even in a worse-case scenario such a spectacular bomb as telling donors Sunday to “gird your loins” because a young president Obama will be tested by an international crisis just like young President John Kennedy was.

Scary? You betcha! But somehow, not front-page news.

Again the media showed their incredible bias by giving scattered coverage of Biden’s statements.

So what gives?

The stock answer is: “It’s just Biden being Biden.” We all know how smart he is about foreign policy, so it’s not the same as when Sarah Palin says something that seems off.

Yet, when Biden asserted incorrectly in the vice-presidential debate that the United States “drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon,” nobody in the US media shrieked. (It was, however, covered with derision in the Middle East.) Or when he confused his history by claiming FDR calmed the nation during the Depression by going on TV, the press didn’t take it as evidence that he’s clueless.

And Biden is the foreign-policy gravitas on the Democratic ticket, so his comments are actually even more disconcerting.

What scant coverage this story has received has been limited to the disturbing but generic quote (softened by the JFK reference) about a new president being tested.  Ms. Powers looks deeper:

The outakes of his Sunday remarks don’t begin to capture the magnitude of what he said. After warning the crowd that there would be some sort of international incident – Biden could think of four or five scenarios – he told the donors: “We’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

What does that mean? Obama’s election would provoke an international incident because of his inexperience and even Obama’s biggest supporters won’t be reassured by his response?

Then there were Biden’s predictions on the economy: “I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? . . . Why is this thing so tough? . . . I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point, because you’re going to have to reinforce us.

“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision.’ ”

Biden is teling us that, at a time when Americans need to feel confidence in their government, they will be going “Oh my God.” Not a great message.

Needless to say, if Sarah Palin said this about a McCain administration, the media world would be exploding.

So what is at work here?  Is the media’s unconditional love for Barack Obama so great that it extends to his far less lovable running mate?  Partly, but not entirely, according to Ms. Powers.  There’s an emotion even deeper than love at work here: snobbery.

Part of the problem is their “Obama love,” but we’re also seeing the media elite’s belief – prejudice – that anyone with an R behind their name is dumb. So, if they say something dumb, they must be dumb. A Democrat, like Biden, can make wildly inaccurate or outrageous comments and they are ignored because the TV and press insiders feel they “know who he really is.”

On the stump recently, Sen. Biden declared he had “three words” for what the nation needs: “J-O-B-S.”

Lucky for him, his name isn’t Dan Quayle, or that would have followed him for the rest of his career.

Cisneros’s Profitable Dreams Have Cost Us Plenty

October 19, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, Democratic Party, Economic issues, News media | 2 Comments 

Sunday’s New York Times article about former Clinton official Henry Cisneros, driven from office in a sex scandal, doesn’t start like an expose:

A grandson of Mexican immigrants and a former mayor of [San Antonio], Henry G. Cisneros has spent years trying to make the dream of homeownership come true for low-income families.

How sweet. Once readers tiptoed through the tulips, they learned that Cisneros, who copped a plea in 1999 to avoid standing trial on 19 felony counts, made a bundle as a Countrywide and KB Homes director after playing a key role in loosening lending requirements for lower-income homeowners. This would seem to place him at the center of the crisis that will harm millions of workers and investors around the world before it runs its course.

Yet this bizarre exercise in kinder, gentler investigative journalism was illustrated in the national edition with a sympathetic color portrait of the former Clinton housing secretary. It’s so good, I bet he orders a print for the waiting room of his real estate development office. The article’s reporters, David Streitfeld and Gretchen Morgenson, can’t help waxing empathetic, even affectionate about the long-faced walking scandal machine and co-creator of billions in toxic mortage assets:

Despite his qualms, he encouraged the unprepared to buy homes — part of a broad national trend with dire economic consequences. He reflects often on his role in the debacle, he says, which has changed homeownership from something that secured a place in the middle class to something that is ejecting people from it. “I’ve been waiting for someone to put all the blame at my doorstep,” he says lightly, but with a bit of worry, too.

How big-hearted of the Times! Why, he was just doing the best he could for the people. Who can blame him for earning a few million along the way from the reckless policies he helped put in place?

Meanwhile, over on the editorial page, same day, Maureen Dowd is breathing fire about the usual suspects at AIG and Lehman:

I…felt a little thrill go up my leg, as Chris Matthews would put it, when I heard that the Lehman Brothers C.E.O., Richard Fuld, got punched in the company gym after it was announced that the firm was going under.

I can’t wait to see the tumbrels rumble up and down Wall Street picking up the heedless and greedy financial aristocracy that plundered and sundered free-market capitalism…

Let’s hope that if Barack Obama becomes president, the first thing he does is keep his promise to make the junketeers come to Washington (preferably by bus or carpooling) and write the U.S. Treasury a check, after which he will fire them on the spot.

Heads must roll.

If Obama becomes President? To its credit, cagily but unmistakably Dowd’s own paper has reported that a prominent Democrat seems to have have as much to do with the crisis as any other living American. Where’s Dowd’s and the Times‘ outrage about that? The glaring double standard aside, celebrating violence, as she has done in this column, is disgusting. The Times owes its readers, not to mention Mr. Fuld, an apology.

Oh Lordy Day: Has The Botox Reached His Brain?

October 14, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Lifestyle, News media | Leave a Comment 

The Washington Post finally surfaced the widespread blogosphere speculation that Senator Biden’s newly unfurrowed brow is a result of an encounter with a vial of Botox.   Maybe that beautifying botulin can also help explain the increasing numbers of gaffes and gaucheries that have been plaguing the always gaffe-prone Delaware politician.  

Here’s a bit of Toby Harnden’s American blog for the Daily Telegraph:

Joe Biden is enjoying himself so much on the campaign trail that occasionally he gets to thinking he’s about to become president. “In a Biden…an Obama-Biden administration,” he said during an event at an American Legion hall here in Rochester, New Hampshire this morning, catching himself just in time.

“We know, we know,” he responded jovially as the crowd realised what he’d said. “It’s hard to get used to. We got his thing the right way.” He pointed at a group of men who were barracking him good-naturedly. “These are my old buddies over here from the shipyard.”

Last month at an event in Fort Myers, Florida, he referred to the “Biden administration” before correcting the phrase and adding as he laughed and crossed himself: “Believe me, that wasn’t a Freudian slip. Oh Lordy day, I tell ya.”

The veteran Delaware senator may have an autocue and a set of notes in front of him but he tends to ignore them. “Let me begin by saying Happy Columbus Day,” he said at the start of the Rochester event. “I may be Irish but I was smart enough to marry Italian.”

Only Senator Biden and his dermatologist know for sure, but here are two videos that I shall label “BB” and “AB”.  

BB:

AB:

Wonkette has a predictably snarky take (and for this subject surely snarky is suitable):

There is something very charming about how cheaply and how obviously Joe Biden indulges his personal vanities. Surely he knows plastic surgeons and Hair Club type people who could do this stuff quietly and, you know, correctly, but down home Joe from Scranton takes the train home every day! So instead he says, “Oh noes I am losing my hair! I’ll just take these other hairs an’ plug ‘em into my head, in rows, and nobody will know the difference! Here, gimme that glue gun!” and also more recently, “Holy cow my forehead’s a-wrinklin’! Squirt a big heap of that paralytic virus in there and we’ll show America what a real monster looks like!” Now nobody can vote for Barack Obama or Joe Biden, because Joe Biden is a Botox addict.

Even assuming it’s true (it’s true), does this mean really anything?  The answer, of course, is: no.  Truth be told, there’s a lot of this afoot (or aface) these days.  And, considering our appearance and style driven society and politics, who’s to say it’s a bad idea?

But I can’t help thinking that if a similarly prominent Republican candidate suddenly turned up wrinkle free overnight, the media would be all over it as indicative of the individual’s superficiality and emblematic of the Party’s penchant for appearance over substance.

Temperament vs. Character — And Podunk

October 9, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Writing about Ayers, Wright, and Rezko, Charles Krauthammer draws the distinction:

Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright’s pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.

Krauthammer also raises the DSPQ piece:

If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber — even a repentant one — he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk.

Obama, Ayers, And DSPQ

October 4, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, DSPQ, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

The Grey Lady sighs indulgently and publishes the William Ayers story that Sen. Obama’s critics have been clamoring for. Among its not-especially-breathless findings — actually, its finding, period:

A review of records of the [Annenberg Challenge] schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

In case you missed it, “[Obama] played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers” was the investigative journalism bit, the result of the Times’s Woodward-and-Bernstein pavement-pounding. Early reports suggest that the Obama campaign will survive the battering.

The Ayers story is about Obama’s 1) judgment: Why hang out with a guy like that at all? and 2) comparative obscurity: His scant record leads to suspicion in some circles that he has a hidden agenda that can be discerned by examining his relationships — which really doesn’t work, since the average reasonably interesting public person has a variety of acquaintances and even friendships across political and culture lines; as well as about 3) DSPQ: In the Times story, Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman nails it:

If John McCain had a long association with a guy who’d bombed abortion clinics, I don’t think people would say, “That’s ancient history.”

No, they wouldn’t. Nor would it be appropriate for them to. They shouldn’t when it comes to radical antiwar bombers, either. So welcome to DSPQland — and now get over it. Ayers-mongering on the right is like Palin-bashing on the left: All about rallying the base. Time to move to Centerville.

Obama Now Says U.S. Is Winning

September 27, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Iraq War, News media, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

A big but overlooked story from last night’s debate is that Sen. Obama appeared to say for the first time that the U.S. was winning in Iraq. His prior position was that the surge had merely and predictably (though he didn’t predict it at the time) improved the security situation.

Reading the oh-so-20th century national print edition of the New York Times that someone had left behind in Starbucks this afternoon, I saw a reference to Obama’s statement, but the current on-line version of the story omits it. I felt the earlier version of the Times news coverage made Obama sound generally less effective than today’s iteration of the story, but maybe that’s just my DSPQ.

My live blog notes say:

[8]:45 — Obama “doesn’t understand the difference between a strategy and a tactic.” I don’t think McCain is especially vulnerable on this question. The “let us win” anecdote is good. “Sen. Obama refuses to acknowledge that we’re winning in Iraq.” Obama: “That’s not true.” (So we are winning, Sen. Obama?) McCain is scoring here. Jim should ask him if he’s now acknowledging that we’re winning.

DSPQ

September 26, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

Over at the American Spectator, “The Prowler” has ferreted out a good story about the kind of little thing that says a lot:

CBS New anchor Katie Couric ordered staff to drop all references to “Governor” or “Gov.” from her interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. When a staff member pointed out that in other venues, Couric and CBS News had referred to Governor Palin’s opponent, Joe Biden, using his title of “Senator” or the abbreviation, Couric, according to a CBS News editorial aide, sought approval from CBS News management to drop the “Governor” reference during her broadcast interview with Palin that began on Wednesday night.

“It’s not true,” said another CBS News source. “We treat everyone the same.”

But, in fact, that’s not the case: as late as September 22, CBS News and Couric — even on the CBS website — used Biden’s honorific. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of a Couric interview with “Sen.” Biden:

    Katie Couric: How is it preparing for the debates?

   Sen. Joe Biden: Well, it’s kind of hard to prepare because I don’t know what she thinks.      There’s been no — I don’t know a lot about her, so I have to assume for purposes of the debate that she agrees with John on everything.

Now compare that the transcript of the “Palin” interview:

    Couric: Why do you say that? Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama?

    Palin: He’s got the track record of the leadership qualities and the pragmatism that’s needed at a crisis time like this.

In fact, at no point during the broadcast interview does Couric refer to the GOP vice presidential nominee as “Governor.”

DSPQ

September 25, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

I just received this email from a friend regarding my recent post about Senator Biden’s coal gaffe. Apparently the free ride that Senator Biden (who was, by the way, born in Scranton although he goes home almost every night to Wilmington) has been getting from the mainstream media regarding his already big and still growing blooper reel also extends to local newspapers — even local newspapers representing areas where the story would be of interest and relevance.

I’m surprised that the incident (which was all over the Web yesterday) didn’t seem to have legs outside the blogsphere. I grew up in coal-rich NE PA. Not a peep about it in the three major locals up there. Could be incredibly damaging in NE and Western PA where people are banking on the fact that the government is eventually going to buy into their process of converting coal to low-grade oil.

Such an important story for the states that are sitting on large coal reserves. Not capitalizing on those reserves is a wasted opportunity for both the economies of those communities, and for the US goal of reducing dependance on foreign fuel. One of my friends is an executive for a company that owns many coals mines in NE PA and he laments that the technology is there to convert the coal to oil and natural gas but there is too much red tape to make it feasible. Biden’s gaffe was especially awful because he disparaged coal production and spread misinformation. No native Scrantonian would ever suggest that the coal industry is bad for the US but okay for China. My daddy would have hit the roof if he heard that. 

 

DSPQ: Obama And Ayers

September 24, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Peter Kirsanow on the Obama-William Ayers connection:

It appears that Ayers took a keen interest in Obama at a time when Obama was nothing more than, as Stanley [Kurtz] puts it, “a young and inexperienced lawyer.” Why? There are tens of thousands of young and inexperienced lawyers in Chicago. What did Ayers see in (or hear from) Obama that caused the former to take such an interest in him?

Stanley shows that there’s a reasonable probability that Ayers plucked Obama from obscurity to chair the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (“CAC”). Then, after working together on the CAC and directing millions to radical organizations, Ayers hosted Obama’s political coming out party. That certainly looks more like a mentor-protégé relationship than a tenuous relationship between two guys who happen to live in the same neighborhood.

I say again: If Sen. McCain had ties such as this with an unrepentant abortion clinic bomber, the pressure from the MSM (and the Democrats) would be unrelenting — and appropriately so.

DSPQ: Democrats Call Atwater Plays, Too

September 23, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, Democratic Party, Hackosphere, News media | Leave a Comment 

Eleanor Randolph in the New York Times on the legacy of Lee Atwater:

A supposed slip of the tongue that in fact gets some truly nasty tidbit on the record — that tactic is straight from the Atwater manual. As are nasty blog items, quickly denied by candidates who know full well that their supporters are behind them.

Randolph’s piece is all about Republican abuses. She doesn’t mention a single Democratic indulgence in dirty politics. And yet what about the nasty left-blog’s lies about the Palin family, repeated by the respected Andrew Sullivan, which began to lap into the MSM and thereby forced the Palins’ 17-year-old daughter to go public with her pregnancy? If that kind of thing first appeared in the Atwater playbook, it looks like the Democrats stole a copy or two.

Here’s an indirect consequence of the pro-Obama on-line media’s obsessive focus on the Palins’ private lives. Should we blame this on the late Lee Atwater, too?:

DSPQ

September 17, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | Leave a Comment 

Andrew Breitbart responds to Matt Damon’s recently widely-publicized (not least thanks to Matt Drudge for whom fatuous celebrity political pronouncements are raw meat) putdown of Sarah Palin; while he’s at it, he roasts a couple of other sacred cows — including the documentary about 9/11 that Disney is deep-sixing lest any Clinton be offended. (In the spirit of this post, and in consideration of Mr. Damon’s highly refined sensibilities, I hasten to add that my use of the phrases “raw meat” and “sacred cows” in the preceding sentence are not intended to offend vegetarians or individuals of any religious heritage. Or anyone else, for the matter of that.)

Matt Damon is scared. Last week his e-mail runneth over with nasty Sarah Palin rumors. And before he could get his facts straight, the “Bourne” film series star and Barack Obama supporter spread false fears in a hysterical video that immediately went viral on the Internet.

“I want to know if she thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago or if she banned books or tried to ban books,” Mr. Damon raged to the Associated Press. “I mean – you know, we can’t – we can’t have that.”

Mrs. Palin has neither pushed for creationism in Alaska schools nor moved to ban a single book in Wasilla. Yet the “Ocean’s 14″ ensemble is currently unable to get through another smarmy scene for fear that a John McCain presidency will lead to an evangelical Christian theocracy and catastrophic artistic oppression.

The sad fact is that actual artistic oppression – book banning in its many modern forms – is a matter of course in the entertainment industry, especially when the underlying product is declared politically incorrect or runs contrary to the interests of Hollywood’s political altar, the Democratic Party.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations runs rings around Hollywood’s pious First Amendment absolutists.

“I hope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims or Arabs,” director Phil Alden Robinson wrote after changing the script from Muslim terrorists to Austrian neo-Nazis in the Tom Clancy thriller, “The Sum of all Fears.” “And I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination.”

While Mr. Clancy put up an admirable fight, actor Ben Affleck acquiesced, cashed his multimillion-dollar check and fought the dreaded Austrians, whose flagging Teutonic self-confidence again took a hit. Thanks to Hollywood artistic appeasement, Arab youth in totalitarian Muslim countries indoctrinated in anti-Western thought dodged another esteem bullet.

DSPQ

September 16, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

It’s reassuring, but not particularly comforting, to learn that one’s impressions are, in fact, correct. According to a new survey just released:

While the spotlight has shifted toward the Republicans over the past few weeks, when comparing mainstream and social media coverage of both candidates around the time of their respective conventions, Obama still came out ahead.

Dow Jones Insight tracked coverage of the candidates on the four scheduled days of each convention, plus the preview day before and the wrap-up day afterward — or August 24-29 for the Democrats and August 31-September 5 for the Republicans — and found that the Democratic convention time period saw 91,395 total mentions of both candidates, 14% more coverage than the 80,250 total mentions in the days surrounding the Republican convention. Since the Republican convention was shortened by a day due to Hurricane Gustav, the higher overall total for the Democratic convention is understandable. However when comparing each candidate’s percentage of total mentions, Obama had a more dominant share of the conversation during his convention than McCain had during his.

– Obama had 54,624 mentions, or a 60% share, during the Democratic convention time period tracked, compared to McCain’s 36,771 mentions, or 40%, in the same timeframe.

– In the days tracked surrounding the Republican convention, McCain received 45,448 mentions, for a 57% share, compared to Obama’s 34,802 mentions, or 43%

– When combining mentions from both time periods, Obama received 52% of the total to McCain’s 48%

And as if any further evidence were needed to explain my determination, on the first day on which I am in power (a day which, for all our sakes, had best come very, very soon), to withdraw any public funding from the NPR news department, consider this afternoon’s All Things Considered.

Business correspondent Scott Horsley reported on Barack Obama’s speech in Golden, Colorado.  In some kind of on-air mind-meld, Mr. Horsley’s enthusiasm for Senator Obama’s record almost outstripped the Senator’s own:

More than two years ago, Obama sponsored legislation to outlaw risky or fraudulent mortgage abuses. McCain, he said, did nothing.

Six months ago, Obama outlined plans for what he called a 21st century framework of financial regulation, at a time when McCain was still saying the government should do little to help irresponsible lenders or borrowers.

This week, as the stock market plunged, McCain did call for an overhaul and updating of financial regulation. But Obama notes that McCain told the Wall Street Journal in March, “I’m always for less regulation,” and that he’s “fundamentally a deregulator.”

“John McCain cannot be trusted to re-establish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: He has shown time and again that he does not believe in it,” Obama said.

McCain’s traditional support for deregulation is in line with Republican orthodoxy, and over the years, some Democrats have also pushed for the government to play a smaller role in the economy. But Obama believes that in the current economic climate, public attitudes have shifted to support more regulation, not less.

The prose alone can’t convey the energetic nuance of Mr. Horsley’s delivery; that can be experienced here.

Curiously, Mr. Horsley’s closing sentence —”McCain may be sensing the same change in attitude, leading the self-described de-regulator to change his tone” — which had nothing to do with the story he was reporting (a separate report on Senator McCain was filed by different correspondents) is omitted from the transcript. I’m not enough of a conspiratorialist nutcase (at least not yet) to think this means anything; I’m just saying….

I know your response to this is probably: (a) Frank why do you listen, and/or (b) Frank, if you continue to listen, why do you continue to be surprised?   I have no good answer for either (a) or (b).

DSPQ

September 15, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | 1 Comment 

Disney stockholders should be especially interested in this Page Six item in today’s New York Post:

THE suits at Disney-owned ABC are too chicken to re-air or release on DVD their $40 million docudrama that accused Bill Clinton of squandering many chances to capture Osama bin Laden before the Twin Towers attacks.

That’s the charge of John Ziegler, director of a new ABC-bashing documentary titled “Blocking ‘The Path to 9/11.’ ” It focuses on why ABC delayed airing and severely re-edited its ambitious miniseries “The Path to 9/11″ in 2006 after a furious Clinton and his cronies strong-armed the network.

Ziegler alleges that ABC’s grand plan was to re-air the show, which starred Harvey Keitel and Donnie Wahlberg, every year around 9/11 but dumped the idea in 2007, fearing that it would hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations – and will now never air it again. He charges that Disney chief Robert Iger told shareholders that it was “simply a business decision” not to issue a DVD – an “odd declaration” because a home video would help recoup the company’s $40 million investment.

“Disney caved and committed perhaps the most blatant, underreported and significant act of censorship in modern American history,” says Ziegler. “What Disney actually did here was to take a dive on their own movie . . . They preferred the scenario of unilateral disarmament, not to mention throwing away $40 million, to rebutting and embarrassing the Clintons.

“Numerous entertainment organizations . . . pretend to defend free speech but have been shockingly silent on this issue, apparently for fear of appearing to protect ‘conservatives,’ ” he adds, charging that it’s “disgracing the memories of those who died on 9/11 and setting ourselves up for making the same mistakes again.”

Reps for Disney and ABC had no comment, but one insider told us, “It’s still a major hot potato for them.

“

DSPQ

September 14, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, Media, News media | 1 Comment 

Jill Greenberg, the photographer chosen to take John McCain’s portrait for the cover of the October issue of The Atlantic magazine, wrote on her blog how she deliberately took unflattering pictures. (The blog now seems to have disappeared from her website. Go figure.)

In fact she is known for creating controversial and unappealing images, which are all out upfront on her blog, which is called “The Manipulator” — which alone might have been a clue to whomever was doing the “vetting” of this gig for Team McCain. The link is here.

The story, with extensive quotes from “The Manipulator” is in today’s New York Post. (Because nothing is ever lost on the internet, it shouldn’t be too long before the blogosphere is awash in the unedited “Manipulator”.)

Greenberg, known for her heavily retouched pics of apes and babies, boasted to Photo District News that she submitted photos of the Arizona senator to the mag while barely airbrushing them.

“I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad,” she boasted.

Greenberg also crowed that she had tricked McCain into standing over a strobe light placed on the floor – turning the septuagenarian’s face into a horror show of shadows.

Asking McCain to “please come over here” for a final shot, Greenberg pretended to be using a standard modeling light.

The resulting photos depict McCain as devilish, with bulging brows and washed-out skin.

“He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg said, adding that none of his entourage picked up on the light switch either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she said.

The Atlantic opted not to use the distorted McCain shot on its cover, selecting instead a more straightforward portrait.

“We stand by the picture we are running on our cover,” said Atlantic editor James Bennet. “We feel it’s a respectful portrait. We hope we’ll be judged by that picture.”

But Bennet was appalled by Greenberg saying she tried to portray McCain in an unflattering way.

“We feel totally blind-sided,” he said. “Her behavior is outrageous. Incredibly unprofessional.”

And the finished product?  While it retains some of the “from the crypt” quality Ms. Greenberg set out to capture, one might decide that, at least, it’s from a marginally more user-friendly part of the crypt.

Let’s just say it’s unlikely Senator McCain will be asking for the rights so he can use the photo to replace the rather differently lit and differently angled one on his MySpace page. Judge for yourself:

DSPQ

September 13, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | 3 Comments 

Blogger Nancy Kallitechnis compared the questions Charlie Gibson asked when he interviewed Barack Obama (on June 4th) and Sarah Palin (on Thursday).

Obama interview:

• How does it feel to break a glass ceiling?
• How does it feel to “win”?
• How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling?
• Who will be your VP?
• Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?
• Will you accept public finance?
• What issues is your campaign about?
• Will you visit Iraq?
• Will you debate McCain at a town hall?
• What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?

Palin interview:

• Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking?
  Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders?
• Aren’t you conceited to be seeking this high level job?
• Questions about foreign policy
• -territorial integrity of Georgia
• -allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO
• -NATO treaty
• -Iranian nuclear threat
• -what to do if Israel attacks Iran
• -Al Qaeda motivations
• -the Bush Doctrine
• -attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan
• Is America fighting a holy war? [misquoted Palin]

DSPQ

September 6, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

(Fill in the blank depending on whom you believe) thousand subscribers to  Us Weekly have canceled their subscriptions in protest of the magazine’s lurid “Babies, Lies, and Scandals” cover story about Sarah Palin.

Page Six today has the details.

DSPQ

September 4, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

These were the headlines on the front page of the Washington Post last Friday, after Barack Obama’s Denver oration:

Obama, Accepting Nomination, Draws Sharp Contrast Contrast With McCain — 84,000 pack stadium to hear candidate close convention with policy specifics and pointed criticism of the Republicans

A Remarkable Event (bold in original) — For the Descendants of King’s Dream, a New Day Dawns

Witnesses To A Historic Moment (bold in original) — At the Very Top of Invesco Field, Feeling More Than a Mile High

The Message That the Party Wanted to Hear

And these were this morning’s headlines about Sarah Palin’s address last night:

Palin Comes Out Fighting — VP Candidate Dismisses Obama’s Experience While Extolling Her Own

Striking Back at Critics, One by One

In a More Diverse America, A Mostly White Convention

 Powerline points this out and draws the only possible conclusion:

In short:

Mean-spirited, boastful Republican candidate delivers ungracious address to out-of-touch crowd

UPDATE: In fairness to the Post, though, Chris Cillizza calls Palin’s speech a triumph and a potent debut. Palin, he says, “stepped up and delivered.” Unfortunately, Cillizza’s assessment appears online, not on the paper’s front page.

 

DSPQ

September 3, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

Mark Hemingway narrates some of the self-deluding fatuities paraded out during a USC Annenberg School of Communications-Politico-sponsored panel on “Politics and the Media: Bridging the Divide in the 2008 Election”.

The participants included Nina Easton (Fortune), Catalina Camia (USA Today), Roger Simon and Jim VendeHei (The Politico), and Bush-McCain media adviser Mark McKinnon.

The discussion turned to the disparity between the Sarah Palin rumor feeding frenzy and the pinkie-out punctillio observed over the John Edwards allegations.

“Why not just put [the Edwards accusations] out there?,” Simon asked rhetorically. “There are human beings involved in this, the story turned out to be true so you could say, ‘Well, the mainstream media should have reported it long ago.’ But there are scores of rumors out there, scores of stories that turn out not to be true — should the mainstream report every rumor that someone has raised?”

The answer to Simon’s conundrum is painfully obvious. The media should never report “rumors.” The media’s job is to investigate rumors and report the truth. Mainstream media outlets never even seriously investigated the basis of the Enquirer’s legitimate story — despite the tabloid’s record for breaking major stories, as it did with regularity during the O.J. trial.

The other justifications for the media’s falling down on the job with regard to the Edwards story could scarcely be believed. As VandeHei put it, “I remember the sort of collective response was, ‘Ah, he [Edwards] can’t be that dumb.’” But as dumb as it was for Edwards to have the affair, it might well have been even dumber for the media to treat Edwards’ denials of the affair as credible. Strictly as an issue of character, Edwards should have been treated with a heaping dollop of media suspicion. Prior to the accusations of the affair surfacing last year, Bob Shrum — famed Democratic electoral strategist and one of the architects of the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 — wrote an article in Time magazine accusing Edwards of lying to John Kerry and exploiting the death of his teenage son in an attempt to further his political career.

DSPQ

September 2, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, News media | Leave a Comment 

Yesterday The New York Times had three front page stories about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.  Bloomberg News, in its giddy excitement misread another Times/Palin story and reported that Sarah Palin had been arrested 22 years ago for DUI.  (The story, against stated Bloomberg policy, was quietly changed without any correction notice.)

In the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes writes about the mainstream media’s feeding frenzy for Palin gossip. He cites some egregious chapters and verses and points out the shameless hypocrisy involved.

It’s ironic, of course, that the same establishment news organizations consumed by such tabloid issues not long ago refused to investigate reports that John Edwards was having an affair and had a child out of wedlock. Why? The story was originally broken by the National Enquirer and deemed too tawdry to touch. And, perhaps as important, Edwards was running for the Democratic nomination for president, with an agenda favored by the liberal media establishment.

DSPQ

September 2, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ | Leave a Comment 

I must be a glutton for punishment because I’ve just spent a couple of hours listening to the radio and ambling around the blogosphere, where it’s All Palin All The Time and the blood lust is almost pornographically palpable.

Of course Senator McCain’s Veep nomination, sailing in as it did from out of right field, is legitimately the biggest story of the moment and deserves the most intense coverage and scrutiny.  

In journalistic terms, perhaps the most important thing about the Palin story is that it’s a new story.
Instead of the usual reportorial business of trying to find shiny new angles for tarnished old facts, Sarah Palin presents each reporter —from Bob Woodward to the humblest stringer— with an ostensibly equal opportunity to break new ground, uncover new stories, and garner new glories. Exposing a major scandal would guarantee a promotion; bringing her down would lock down a Pulitzer. (I see Holly Hunter in the major motion picture based on that story.)

In media terms, the Palin story is like Alaska itself: vast, uncharted, virgin (ok maybe that’s a poor choice of words but you see what I’m saying), challenging, exciting, and invigorating.  But it’s also risky and dangerous when you venture into the wild, because it’s possible to go too far too fast and say or write something that’s incorrect or that sounds sexist and that turns around and bites you like a grizzly.

All that granted and all that said,  I still think Jim Geraghty has the best line of the day at NRO’s Campaign Spot:

In 72 hours, the media has subjected Bristol Palin to more scrutiny than they’ve given to Barack Obama in two years.

Mr. Geraghty qualifies it in his next sentence —”Perhaps that’s a mild exaggeration.  But pretty darn mild”— and I consider both his point and his qualification extremely well taken.

DSPQ

August 31, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, DSPQ, TV News, TV News Personalities | Comments Off 

Take a look at the video of Campbell Brown’s highly partisan hectoring intemperate inappropriate unprofessional weird bizarro lively interview with McCain Political Director Mike Duhaime on CNN after Sarah Palin was named for the GOP ticket’s veep slot.  

In this interview Ms. Brown achieves levels of animation that would be envied at Disney.  I suppose one explanation could be that she’s simply frightened out of her mind by that ominous exploding graphic just over her shoulder.   Or, as a native Louisianan and daughter of a former Democratic State Senator and public official, perhaps she’s worried sick about Gustav.  

What else could explain locutions like “just give me a reality check here,” “…can you concede that point and just be honest with me on that?” and “I mean, doesn’t naming Governor Palin as his running mate really undermine your entire argument against Senator Obama?” 

DUHAIME:. Campbell, I realize you’re very upset about this, obviously.  This is somebody who…

BROWN: I’m by no means upset about it. But I’m asking you to try to be honest with here [sic] — let’s cut through the bull and give me an honest answer. 

Mr. Duhaime is a real pro who does his job and takes not even a scintilla of crap.  Would Ms. Brown have dared to pull all those faces if Mr. Duhaime had been sitting across from her at the desk?

But maybe it’s just me.  Take a look and see what you think.  

Of course, Ms. Brown, who cut her network teeth as co-anchor of NBC’s Weekend Today show has never been known for her restraint.  Her reputation in this regard has already achieved sufficient critical mass to be parodied by Tracey Ullman on her Showtime series Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union:

 

Bombers, Bombers, And Bombers

August 21, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

A new ad by an outfit called the American Issues Project has produced an ad linking Sen. Obama to ex-Weather Underground leader William Ayers. Here’s Ben Smith’s article. Controversial this evening: The ad says that while the Sept. 11 bombers failed to strike the U.S. Capitol, Ayers succeeded. Some say that this links Obama with Islamic terrorism, but it doesn’t. It links him with Ayers, which to prim political purists is bad enough.

I don’t like the Ayers ad. But here’s the DSPQ piece (Dr. Gannon’s Double Standard Paranoia Quotient): If Sen. McCain had knowingly maintained an institutional association, such as serving together on a non-profit board, with an unrepentant abortion clinic bomber, he’d be attacked unrelentingly and deservedly. By the same token, those who wonder why their possible future President didn’t shun Ayers are entitled to their views. Whether voters really care or not, it’s a legitimate if tangential issue.

Melting In Hawaii

August 14, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under DSPQ, Democratic Party, Election 2008, News media, Republican Party, Russia | 2 Comments 

Since the non-MSM is so brazenly, cheerfully partisan, the New York Times can be a relief these days. Still, a critical Times story on Sen. McCain reads like what it is, while the rare Obama critique has the feel of a dutch uncle talk urging a friend to shape up. (Perhaps that’s just my DSPQ showing.)

Today’s relatively rare example of the latter is headlined, “McCain Displays Credentials as Obama Relaxes.” Here’s the art — not Schmidt’s Sausage House und Restaurant in Columbus, where McCain ventured as an ironic gesture during his opponent’s Berlin idyll, but the Democrat completely sidelined as he enjoyed a snow cone in Hawaii with his delightful children:

And here’s the Times memo to the Obama brain trust:

Only once, at the beginning of the week, did Mr. Obama discuss the fighting in public, when he emerged from his beachfront rental home to condemn Russia’s escalation, in a way that seemed timed for the evening television news. He took no questions whose answers might demonstrate command of the issue.

Mr. McCain and his surrogates, however, have discussed the situation nearly every day on the campaign trail, often taking a hard line against Russia to the point of his declaring the other day, “We are all Georgians.”

It is as if the candidates’ images have been reversed within a matter of a few weeks. When Mr. Obama was overseas last month, Mr. McCain’s foreign policy bona fides seemed diminished, if only because he could not attract the news media attention received by Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Now, Mr. Obama’s voice seems muted at a time when much of the world has been worriedly watching the conflict….

For his part, Mr. McCain has fielded questions daily, batting back criticism that his tough stance is reminiscent of the language of the cold war. On the other hand, the fluency with which Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, discusses Georgia, citing the history of the region and the number of times he has visited, lends an aura of commander in chief.

McCain’s “we are all Georgians” anthem sounds enough like JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” that it might be taken as a subtle needle of Obama, who was criticized for saying in his Berlin speech that the Wall fell as a result of the world’s peoples working together (instead of what really happened, which was that free people defeated communism).

Like his snow cone, Obama’s vacation bump has melted a bit. He’s down to a 4.2-point lead in the RCP average.

DSPQ Alert

July 23, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under DSPQ, News media | Leave a Comment 

Last night on Slate, Editor at Large Jack Shafer wrote a story with the sub head: “A Double Standard Is At Work”.

The subject was the National Enquirer’s story about John Edwards being caught visiting his alleged mistress and love child at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Monday Night.

Whether or not the central allegations are true, the mechanics of the encounter are pure Feydeau:

Edwards went out of the hotel briefly with Rielle, they were observed by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER and then went back to her room, where he stayed until attempting to sneak out of the hotel unseen at 2:40 a.m. (PST). But when he emerged alone from an elevator into the hotel basement he was greeted by several reporters from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

Senior NATIONAL ENQUIRER Reporter Alexander Hitchen asked Edwards why he was visiting Rielle and whether he was ready to confirm that he was the father of her baby.

Shocked to see a reporter, and without saying anything, Edwards ran up the stairs leading from the hotel basement to the lobby. But, spotting a photographer, he doubled back into the basement. As he emerged from the stairwell, reporter Butterfield questioned him about his hookup with Rielle.

Edwards did not answer and then ran into a nearby restroom. He stayed inside for about 15 minutes, refusing to answer questions from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER about what he was doing in the hotel. A group of hotel seccurity men eventually escorted him from the men’s room, while preventing the NATIONAL ENQUIRER reporters from following him out of the hotel.

Said reporter Hitchen: “After we confronted him about seeing Rielle, Edwards looked like a deer caught in headlights!

“He was clearly surprised that we had caught him at this very late hour inside the hotel.

“Some guests up at this late hour watched the spectacle in amusement from a staircase nearby.”

While much —perhaps most— of the interest in this sad and sordid story will be prurient, Mr. Shafer makes some cogent points about why it is important in and of itself, and why the media silence regarding it is disturbing.

After comparing the media discretion in re Senator Edwards’ hotel imbroglio to the media festival surrounding Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig’s airport contretemps, Mr. Shafer writes:

Edwards, as far as we know, is guilty of nothing beyond running away from tabloid reporters in a Beverly Hills hotel stairway in the wee a.m. after visiting a female friend in her room. Also, all of the Enquirer’s published “evidence” of an Edwards affair comes from unnamed sources. And I should mention that an Edwards political operative, Andrew Young, claims that he is the father of Hunter’s child. (Young is married with children of his own.)

Yet, if the press craves consistency, it owes its readers some sort of assessment of Edwards. Is he, like Craig, a public hypocrite? Edwards is still very much a public figure. As Drudge notes today on his site, as recently as June the Associated Press reported that he was a vice presidential short-lister.

If Edwards had no affair and fathered no love child, it should be easy to erase the hypocrisy charge, and the press owes him that, pronto. If we give Edwards the benefit of the doubt, which he deserves, visiting the woman who recently gave birth to the out-of-wedlock child of a married campaign aide is completely OK. But meeting her at a Beverly Hills hotel in the early hours of the morning and running from tabloid reporters when approached and hiding in a hotel bathroom for 15 minutes, as the Enquirer reports Edwards did, is not completely OK. Not if he wants to avoid the hypocrite label.

So why hasn’t the press commented on the story yet? Is it because it broke too late yesterday afternoon, and news organizations want to investigate it for themselves before writing about it? Or are they observing a double standard that says homo-hypocrisy is indefensible but that hetero-hypocrisy deserves an automatic bye?

That’s my sense. Consider how the press treated Jesse Jackson when he admitted to having fathered a daughter outside of his marriage. The baby arrived in 1999, but Jackson didn’t go public about it until 2001, after the National Enquirer scheduled its story about the little girl and her mother. Jackson, who loves preaching to others about their morality, suffered less than two seconds of opprobrium from the press after his admission.

To Mr. Shafer’s perceived hetero-homo gag rule, I would add the idea that in medialand, Republicans, whether gay or straight, are by definition hypocrites and as such deserve exposure and ridicule.

But maybe that’s just my DSPQ.

DSPQ Alert

July 22, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ | Leave a Comment 

My DSPQ —Double Standard Paranoia Quotient— has been activated by the article in today’s New York Times about Queens Congressman and New York Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner.

The 43-year-old swinging bachelor lawmaker hasn’t exactly been a stranger to the gossip columns — as much for his ways of maintaining dating anonymity as for his penchant for dating prominent women.

But this Times story is not about Mr. Weiner’s temperament; it’s about his temper.

Now, I’ve worked for some demanding bosses in my time; and, for those who understand the situation and accept the terms, that can be a very rewarding and fulfilling experience.

But, not to put too fine a point on it, this man sounds monstrous.

Intense and mercurial are one thing; or, literally, two things. But here we’re talking petulant, intrusive, insulting, demeaning, foul-mouthed, and, apparently, borderline violent (“I was told all the horror stories — the telephone throwing, etc.”).

However, the Times‘ David W. Chen sees (as do, admittedly, the several ex-Weiner staffers who have found good jobs in the Democratic establishment and are willing to be quoted by name) the glass as at least half full (even as it is a glass from which they are relieved no longer to have to drink).

Mr. Weiner, who learned much of what he knows while working for Senator Chuck Schumer (one anonymous employee quips “People joke that two years of Chuck equals one year of Anthony”), emerges as a tough but lovable tyrant who demands no more of others than he does of himself. As he self-deprecatingly comments, “When you grow up in Brooklyn, you know, sometimes arguing is the sport.”

And that may very well be true. Politics ain’t beanbag and Capital Hill ain’t for the fainthearted. The pressures are great and the stakes are high and the competition is unimaginable.

But my DSPQ is quivering and telling me that, if the subject of this article were Republican Congressman Anthony Weiner, the bottom line would be very different indeed.

And so, on July 23, as I read this advance defusing of the Weiner temper stories —and the Times already has a tradition of defanging the dependably liberal Mr. Weiner— I’m waiting for the full barrage of the McCain temper stories to break. (After the initial flurry of them triggered by a Washington Post article last spring, the media’s current operative mode is “humorous”.)

I’m not saying that Mr. Weiner wouldn’t make a good Mayor. And I am saying that New York needs to be taken sternly in hand by anyone who plans to lead it.

I’m just saying…..

Who Was Behind McCain’s Homecoming, Really?

June 25, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ, Vietnam | 2 Comments 

Pro-Obama pundits’ latest exercise in DSPQ is equating this statement of Sen. McCain’s –

I didn’t really love America until I was deprived of her company.

– with Michelle Obama’s covered-to-death comment:

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.

Climbing into an A-4 Skyhawk 23 times for perilous bombing missions before being shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, McCain showed he loved his country plenty. He used the word “really” to suggest that being beatened, imprisoned, and tortured in a foreign country gives one a unique appreciation of one’s own country. It’s called understatement — look it up.

Michelle Obama’s use of the word “really” functions similarly. Like most of us, she didn’t have the A-4 thing going on, but she is entitled to the same access as McCain to a rhetorical effect which communicates that something special came along to crystallize her love of country, even if it did happen to be her husband’s political success.

And which prior Presidents does McCain really love? Like most Republicans, he frequently invokes Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, in a video released earlier this year on the 35th anniversary of his return from captivity in North Vietnam, McCain didn’t mention President Nixon, who was in office at the time. It’s easy to imagine cautious mid-level staffers choosing to edit out McCain’s comments about him.

The two were actually reasonably (though maybe not really) close. The photo shows President Nixon greeting McCain upon his return from Hanoi in the spring of 1973. Eight years later, the former President sent condolences following the death of McCain’s father, Admiral John McCain. In a gracious reply, McCain wrote,

I hope you know that my father admired you more than any man in this country.

In the same letter, McCain told RN of his plans to run for the House of Representatives, which Mr. Nixon enthusiastically supported. When McCain was elevated to the Senate in November 1986, and RN wrote to congratulate him, McCain replied,

Mr. President, I hope you know that if it had not been for your courageous actions on Christmas of 1972, I might still be languishing in a cell in Hanoi, and I would certainly not have been able to run for the U.S. Senate.

McCain’s reference was to President Nixon’s decision to bomb North Vietnamese targets in December 1972 after the breakdown of the Paris peace talks. After 11 days of bombing (paused on Christmas Day), the communists returned to the bargaining table, and the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. Under their terms, McCain and the other prisoners of war held in North Vietnam were released a few weeks later.

“DSPQ/Can’t Be All We Say And Do!”

June 24, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Cold War, DSPQ, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Abundant thanks to Frank Gannon for naming, and acronyming, the beast.

I was lamenting just last night how much time I spend mired in my own DSPQ pathology. This was right after I wrote about how the liberals who idealize Sen. Obama’s small-amount givers might well despise a conservative’s. When it comes to campaign finance, it’s not just how much they give. It’s who they are and what they want, yadda yadda yadda.

But who’s that whispering in my ear?: So what?, deal with it, move on! There’s no question that President Nixon spent long hours computing the mammoth and no doubt infinitely frustrating DSPQs of the Vietnam era. Yet no matter how much DSPQ steam he let off in taped White House conversations, his legacy of principled, creative pragmatism is far more than that. I remember him during his post-Presidential years writing to young people interested in politics that if all they did was bemoan media bias, they wouldn’t get anywhere. He warned them that the double standard would always be flying. Republicans and conservatives had to take it for granted and govern anyway — and govern he did.

DSPQ Overload

June 24, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, DSPQ | 1 Comment 

Whenever the media is concerned, Republicans have to set a high threshhold for their DSPQ. The alternative would be a state of all but constant frustration and indignation.

(I thought you’d never ask. It stands for Double Standard Paranoia Quotient.)

But even with one’s DSPQ at the highest setting, the recent favoritism subset of the Countrywide Financial scandal involving Senators Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd activates all the lights and sirens.

What makes this one particularly egregious is that these two Senators, who have decided to base their bold-faced public explanations on their financial naivete, are, respectively, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Banking Committee. Senator Conrad wrote a letter of explanation/exculpation to The Wall Street Journal that included this priceless detail:

I called a close friend of mine who knew a lot about mortgages for advice. My friend happened to be with the head of Countrywide Financial when I called and put him on the line.

That lucky coincidence netted Chairman Conrad a nice little windfall of profits on the eight-unit rental property he was purchasing. How lucky for the naive North Dakotan that the friend at hand kept company with Countrywide instead of Louisiana Swampland Inc. or Brooklyn Bridge Holdings LLC.

Rich Lowry’s column today pretty much covers all the bases. And the story is mainly being kept alive by the usual right wing suspects: The Wall Street Journal, conservative columnists and radio hosts, and the blogosphere.

Please pardon my paranoia, but read Mr. Lowry and just imagine the universal media uproar if either of the Chairmen involved were Republicans.