The NY Times continues spinning, without even flinching.
Media
Hitchens On Moore
Go read the whole thing, in all of its savage glory, as Hitchens destroys Michael Moore:
I leave you with this tasty morsel:
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.
Enough, Already
The title of Dana Milbank’s piece today says it all: “9/11 Panel May Hurt Bush Reelection Campaign.”
It is listed as ‘News Analysis,’ so as usual, Milbank can getaway with any lie or distortion he wants, making this newsitorial seem like legitimate hard news, but serving only as agitprop for the DNC. The second paragraph made me scream (apparently it had the same effect on the folks at the Belgravia Dispatch):
After the commission staff released its findings Wednesday that there was no “collaborative relationship” between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda — challenging an assertion Bush and Vice President Cheney have made for the past two years — Bush declared again that there was, in fact, a relationship.
This, folks, is how to get it done. Spend months distorting the commission’s findings, then wryly point out that your distortions might just be used against the President. Why don;t you just join the Kerry campaign, Dana? Although if you asked, I am betting they like you just where you are.
Time for a new google bomb:
Cease and Desist
I am hereby calling on the media to cease and desist all inane stories such as this idiotic Wilgorne piece. Some tidbits:
He is a diligent greeter, never speeding through a hotel kitchen without handshakes. He is chronically and unapologetically late
Brokaw’s Interview
I saw this interview, and I had no idea it had been edited like this. I am not sure why Brokaw/NBC would remove all of those pieces, because id did make Bus less coherent, and it did seem to distort the over-all feel of the interview.
Then again, maybe I do know why they edited it the way they did.
*** Update ***
Even my pinko-communist co-worker thinks this was a travesty. In his words, “it is one thing to show part of a speech, but to interview someone and leave out half the answer is ridiculous.”
Bush, The Economy, and The Media
From Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball:
Here’s where President Bush and his campaign have a legitimate beef. The economy has clearly started to roar. New jobs are being created by the hundreds of thousands each month, almost every economic statistic is improving beautifully, and interest rates remain at historically low levels. Yet a large majority of the American public thinks the economy ranges from bad to terrible–far worse than they saw it a couple months ago. Some might say that this is just a reflection of the electorate’s bad mood, induced by the prisoner abuse scandal. That may be part of it, but the national news media–especially the major TV networks–bear great responsibility. Since the economy started its sharp climb upward, the only economic stories consistently covered have been the price increases in gasoline and milk.
Doesn’t President Bush deserve some credit for economic success, having passed his central economic package/tax cut in 2001? Wouldn’t he be taking it on the chin if the story were the reverse? It was, and he did, for three years of his term. Ah, but the media say, “bad news is news; good news isn’t news,” to explain away the lack of positive coverage. Go back to 1996, as the Crystal Ball did prior to writing this e-mail, when another President facing a shaky reelection got a lift from the economy just in time. You’ll find that Bill Clinton secured Big Media’s praise in story after story, talk show after talk show, for his “courageous” 1993 economic package/tax increase–which was frequently and directly tied by reporters to the economic upturn of ’96. Can the media understand why so many conservatives see an anti-Republican double standard at work, especially on the network TV evening news programs? (The Crystal Ball fully acknowledges that neither the Clinton package of ’93 nor the Bush package of ’01 may have had anything to do with economic recovery in ’96 and ’04. But viewers and readers have a right to expect consistency and fairness, regardless of the media’s partisan and ideological leanings.)
Of course we are just imagining it.
A Neat Trick
The only possible way to make Michael Eisner look alright in my eyes is the jaded hacks at the NY Times:
To the Editor:
You accuse the Walt Disney Company of cowardice and censorship because of its decision a year ago not to distribute Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11” (editorial, May 6). In fact, the cowardly thing would have been to be intimidated into distributing the film. We did not block its distribution. There are many avenues for Mr. Moore to pursue to get his film distributed.
Your accusations of stifling free expression are misplaced. The First Amendment does not say that The New York Times must print every article presented to it or that the Walt Disney Company must distribute every movie. If a government entity had blocked Mr. Moore’s film from being released, that would have violated the First Amendment, and we would have quickly signed up to join any protest.
In the case of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” we chose a path that was right for the company and its stakeholders.
The creation of intellectual product rises and falls on similar judgments by creative people and executives across America. We would hope that The Times would recognize that the Walt Disney Company has the same right of freedom of expression that it is advocating for Mr. Moore.
MICHAEL D. EISNER
Chief Exec., Walt Disney Company
Burbank, Calif., May 7, 2004
It appears like they are almost actively trying to get stories wrong.