The Media Keeps Getting it Wrong or Lying on Purpose

Guests in the weekly Gang-up: Karen Tumulty, reporter, "Time" magazine; Clarence Page, syndicated columnist, "Chicago Tribune"; Tod Lindberg, editor of "Policy Review" and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the supposedly token conservative, I guess.

Congratulations on the extra hour for international affairs!

Mrs. Diane Rehm is a beautiful, caring and most sensitive person and it shows in her manners and concerns. Today she was showing her real sense of indignation about Rush Limbaugh's reported reaction to a partisan political ad by actor Michael J. Fox. Unfortunately, she also showed her liberal bias as she misrepresented only about 99% of the story regarding Mr. Fox and Mr. Limbaugh.

Mr. Fox has admitted in writing and in interviews that he stops taking his medication on purpose whenever he wants to highlight the effects of his disease. What Mr. Limbaugh has criticized is the creation of the unassailable victim, a tactic used by the Democratic Party to politicize any cause without allowing the possibility of criticism of the spokesperson. It is shameful that Mr. Fox and the Democrats have chosen to politicize in a partisan manner a tragic illness like Parkinson's. Many Parkinson's sufferers agreed with Mr. Limbaugh.

Mrs. Rehm statements that Limbaugh's comments lack intelligent fundaments are without fundaments themselves since I wonder if Mrs. Rehm honestly took the time to hear the whole debate on Limbaugh's Show and how the mainstream media has absolutely, and without any semblance of objectivity, to a fair analytical mind, purposefully distorted and misrepresented what Mr. Limbaugh actually said and how he said it.

But Mrs. Rehm's reaction is precisely what the tactic of the unassailable victim seeks to create. The unassailable victim can launch into the partisan political arena from the parapet of a supposed neutral cause or position, throw his verbal grenades and verbal Molotov’s and runs and hides behind his revered and victim status. And of course, nobody can criticize their behavior because the critic then becomes a cruel, insensitive brute.

Mr. Fox is a political activist who came out during the last election for Mr. Kerry and now has lent his credibility using his illness for partisan purposes on a campaign that knowingly distorts the proposal in question and lends itself to create false hopes about the cure of a disease pending on political outcomes. The intentions of the ad are clear. They want to reinforce the template that Republicans and conservatives do not care about Parkinson’s sufferers just like they don’t care about clean drinking water and breathable air.

Out of context, yes, Mr. Limbaugh's comments are grotesque and unfair, but no more and no less than those that have been made about Mr. Limbaugh's deafness or drug addiction which in liberal circles automatically should grant him not only a prime badge of victim but even a badge of courage. But as we have seen lately with being gay, liberals can freely choose when an illness or a sexual preference can be used for political purposes as something to behold or as something to deride.

A Republican African American candidate for the senate, Mr. Michael Steele gets called "slavish", gets thrown Oreo cookies at him and the silent outrage from liberals is deafening. The jokes and actual celebrations about Mr. Limbaugh's becoming deaf were never criticized by liberals including the DR Show. No one needs to defend Mr. Limbaugh, he can do that himself. But what I have defended and called for in these and other pages is for liberals to look closer at their own self-righteousness and sanctimony before they are so quick at pointing fingers.

Last night with Katie Couric Mr. Fox said that finding a cure for his disease should be a partisan effort. I agree. Ironically, the person who should now lead a double effort against Parkinson's is Mr. Fox himself. First, he should disassociate his image and efforts from partisan political ads, and then he should try to reconsider again those of us who left his side when he decided to politicize his affliction.


http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=9eeae5c9-c9ff-4eab-8ef1-907ae94b1326

The Canonization of Obama and the Disappearance Act of Pelosi


Guests this week were: David Gregory, epitome of White House Press Corps objectivity and civility of NBC News, Andrew Sullivan, senior editor, "The New Republic," and columnist, "Time" and E.J. Dionne, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, Washington Post columnist; enough said in that case.

After three weeks of back to back academic conferences on Latin America and History, if I hear the words "hegemony", "colonial", "gender", "imagined" and "narrative" one more time, my head will spin around like the girl in The Exorcist and the walls of my office will be decorated in pea soup green! But thanks to the DR Show archives I was able to catch up and move from current academic clichés of otherwise useful concepts to the at least reliable 3-1 ratio of panelists on my favorite radio show.

Yes, last week’s Gang-up lightly mentioned the name Harry Reid in connection with a list of simmering scandals in D.C. but that was it. The question of why the media is not giving the Reid questionable dealings the same amount of time as given to the Foley scandal was not addressed. This week was practically non-existent.

Moving on to other topics:

Eerily reminiscent of Time’s cover of O.J. Simpson minus the intentional darkening of that photo, we are witnessing a process of canonization not only via photo editing of Sen. Obama but through a P.R. blitz in the rest of the media. As O.J. Simpson was made to look darker and sinister by the Photo Shop artists at Time, Mr. Obama appeared glowing, almost surrounded by a halo in a Time cover a week ago. It looks like if he were running for President next week he would win over Hillary, at least if only the media voted.

Like lately about Fidel, we have neither heard about Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s all but disappearance from public. Apparently she is alive and not really missing since there are no indications that police reports of a missing person have been filed by her family or staff. Apparently she did appear on “60 Minutes” last night but in this world of liberal paranoia we are not sure if that was really her. Yet according to The New York Times in a recent interview with The Associated Press, she was asked which suite of offices she would use as speaker, and they report she said with a laugh, “I’ll have any suite I want.” That sounds like the real Mrs. Pelosi, so yes, most likely she is alive.

We are looking forward to the inauguration of the two-hour weekly Gang-up, especially as it dedicates the second hour to international affairs, my forte. However, we wonder who will be in that panel, maybe a member of Al Jazzera, one from Granma and one from Le Monde?

What ever happened to the “appearance of impropriety"?


The always gracious and elegant Diane Rehm was back this week. Her guests were:

Jim Angle, FOX News Channel
Jerry Seib, Wall Street Journal
Margaret Carlson, writes a weekly column for Bloomberg News and is the Washington editor of The Week magazine.

Although I was under pressure to meet a Saturday deadline to post these comments on Friday, I did, nevertheless heard the show enough to know that we are still talking about the gay bashing Fowley "scandal" and overlooking another real, and at least more serious scandal brewing. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada who is never too quick to demand investigations, resignations, and all other manners of inquisitions over the slightest “appearance of impropriety", may have in his eyes a bigger log than the ones he so rejoicingly like to point of others.

Although relegated to their editorial pages and not to the front page headlines some major newspapers have editorialized about the obvious double-standard of ethics of Mr. Reid. No calls for resignation yet, but the fact that those liberal newspapers can no longer sweep under the rug the blatant "appearance of impropriety" of Mr. Reid real estate dealings is indicative that, as Democrats like to point out, the "seriousness of the allegations" alone demand an investigation.

Of course, do not expect major frontline coverage in the newspapers, or leading stories in the alphabet soup networks, much less demands for investigations from the so ethically concerned Democrats, and even less from NPR. The weekly Gang-up, for example, did not even scratched the surface on this one.

But this is not the first time Mr. Reid has been caught between a rock and a hard place of ethics. Yet, he has always been able to explain things away and the media has let him get away with it, contrary to what has happened to Republicans for less offenses or questions. This time Mr. Reid is already offering to "pay a fine" if he must. Will the media, including NPR let him get away with it again? What ever happened to the “appearance of impropriety"?

The other piece of news which did get extensive coverage was the "study" by Johns Hopkins University published in The Lancet which claims 655,000 deaths in Iraq as result of the 2003 American intervention! Of course, the implicati0on is that those deaths were caused by the intervention and not by the religious war initiated by fanatical Muslims. Although the figures and the methodology are so obviously risible, what is truly troubling is the extent to which even the scientific and academic world have become so politicized that they risk their reputations for the benefit of a temporary cheap shot weeks away from an American election.

But the numbers in this report and not its scientific validity is what matters and is telling about the intentions behind its publication and commission. A spokesperson for the study interviewed by the BBC on October 11, said the he recognized that this study was politically explosive. "It signifies or raises the question about our current foreign policy"..."it raises the moral question of the war", he declared. Apparently recognizing these staments as odd regarding a "medical study" he further attempted to explain that this was not a politically motivated study and that the best scientists can do "is offer reliable data".

The problem is how can you rely on this study as being of reliable data when its moralist conclusions are obviously the motivating factor in its methodology and intentions?

Strange bedfellows!

October 6, 2006 Weekly Gang-up

THE GAY BASHING DEMOCRATS

Guest host: Susan Page, USA Today

Panel Guests Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of "The Washington Times." He is author of "The West's Last Chance." David Corn, Washington editor of "The Nation" and a Fox News Channel contributor. He's the author of several books, most recently, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War." Frank Sesno, special correspondent, CNN.

Well another classical weekly gang-up of 3 liberals vs. 1 conservative.

It is well established that Mr. Corn has it for the Bush team including, of course, the very man on top. But Mr. Corn is condemned before history's future readers of his writings to be an example of someone always ready not to let the facts get in the way of a reasoned argument. He could be more persuasive if he were able to match his "facts" in a way that can prove intentionality but since he can't, all he has left is conclusions like "they don't care," "they don't want to listen."

No matter how the record shows that not only Republicans but also Democrats, and not only U.S. intelligence but major intelligence agencies of other countries and the U.N. were all full of real concerns about Saddam Hussein's intentions and capabilities of developing WMDs in a post-9/11 world, all that Mr. Corn can say is that the UN was only concerned about Saddam not reporting for unaccounted WMD material.

Then let's go to the latest brouhaha. Now, I'm really confused. I thought that there was nothing wrong with being gay. But from Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid Democrats, including Mr. Corn, have become the best spokespersons for the Boys Scouts of America position prohibiting active gay men from being Scout Masters. All of a sudden Rep. Foley is not most likely a victim of gay taunting by insensitve and homophobic teenage pranksters but in the words of Sen. Reid a "predator". Go figure. Oh, I forgot, he is a Republican.

As understandable as it may be in the still recent wake of clergy abuse scandal, Mr. Blankley and the Washington Times may have, nevertheless, jumped the gun in asking for Mr. Hastert's resignation. But Republicans and conservatives are so lacking in street smarts that they remind me of a scene in The Untouchables. The old crusty cop played by Sean Connery advises the inexperienced Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner), "If you want to get Capone this is how you get Capone. If he brings a knife you bring a gun. If he hurts one of your men you send one his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way."

The Republicans missed the boat. The democrats come out with a small weapon, really a small and not untypical Washington scandal more typical of Democrats than of Republicans and the Republicans go running in every direction. Instead, they should come back with the bigger gun of gay bashing which is what this whole "scandal" has become. At least that is what the Democrats have turned it into.

Instead, of using the gay issue as Mr. Corn does, as a black mail tool, Republicans should come out swinging to demonstrate at every turn not only the double-standard applied to Democrats scandals but mostly applied to the issue of being gay. Looking at how this "scandal" is being unraveled, this is not an issue of child molestation since the "victim" is of legal age in D.C. (It is curious to note that since D.C. falls under the jurisdiction of Congress it is so convenient to have so low a bar for age of consent). If Republicans loose on this they have only themselves to blame. Like in another scene in The Untouchables, they "bring a knife to a gun fight." That's the Republican way.