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.

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