[Speed Gibson,
Wednesday November 3, 2004 at 2:05pm]
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Wednesday's Star Tribune lead editorial says that the 2004 presidential election was "... an epic of the good, the bad and the ugly." They can't let it go.
What was bad about the Swift Vets is that the MSM ignored them. What was ugly was that they kept referring to them as discredited, though nothing credible was ever published to that effect. One could say it's a little late to be bringing these old matters up. But when a candidate for President - the Commander-in-Chief - keeps going back for those same matters, trust but verify. I don't recall such outrage when Anita Hill brought her old, unsubstantiated charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill was a hero. The Swift Vets are bad and ugly.
By the way, what about 60 Minutes' forgery case? And the New York Times' missing explosives that never were? The ABC News memo saying it's OK to pull for Kerry?
To a lesser extent? What the Swift Vets charged is true and well-documented. Moore's movie is a lie from front to back, and given we're at war, with troops deployed, and taking casualties, a damned lie.
George W. Bush wasn't a moderate? A significant number of Republicans will take issue with this, given the education bill, the Medicare drug bill, and the large deficits. But this notion that it's Bush's fault that McCain-Feingold didn't work, that the Democrats had no choice but to cheat on at least the spirit of the law, is juvenile at best.
There's a few other chuckles, and a couple of shots at the Blogosphere. But the overall context, that the Star Tribune is just watching and reporting on all this from on high won't do. Most of their coverage was good this year, but some of it was bad. Above all, they were certainly a party to some of the ugliness they decry.
There was quite a lot of bad and ugly, typified by the Swift Boat Vets for Truth and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's effort to broadcast a smear as "news."
What was bad about the Swift Vets is that the MSM ignored them. What was ugly was that they kept referring to them as discredited, though nothing credible was ever published to that effect. One could say it's a little late to be bringing these old matters up. But when a candidate for President - the Commander-in-Chief - keeps going back for those same matters, trust but verify. I don't recall such outrage when Anita Hill brought her old, unsubstantiated charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill was a hero. The Swift Vets are bad and ugly.
By the way, what about 60 Minutes' forgery case? And the New York Times' missing explosives that never were? The ABC News memo saying it's OK to pull for Kerry?
To a lesser extent, Michael Moore was guilty of the same thing with his conspiracy theories in the film "Fahrenheit 9/11."
To a lesser extent? What the Swift Vets charged is true and well-documented. Moore's movie is a lie from front to back, and given we're at war, with troops deployed, and taking casualties, a damned lie.
In 2000, Bush campaigned as a moderately conservative Republican, then governed from much farther to the right ... [polarizing] an already divided nation. Hence tons of money poured into the anti-Bush campaign, much of it from non-traditional sources such as the independent 527 groups and wealthy contributors like George Soros.
George W. Bush wasn't a moderate? A significant number of Republicans will take issue with this, given the education bill, the Medicare drug bill, and the large deficits. But this notion that it's Bush's fault that McCain-Feingold didn't work, that the Democrats had no choice but to cheat on at least the spirit of the law, is juvenile at best.
There's a few other chuckles, and a couple of shots at the Blogosphere. But the overall context, that the Star Tribune is just watching and reporting on all this from on high won't do. Most of their coverage was good this year, but some of it was bad. Above all, they were certainly a party to some of the ugliness they decry.