[Brilliant]

"A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was ..."the Democratic Party's future.""

Hopefully so.

You might actually say "past, present, and future..."

[FormerACLUmember]

And the very same media frauds are now telling us what a wonderful person Lt. Governor Patterson is.

Patterson, the putative next Governor, is a raving ultra-lefist lunatic.

[Rummyfan]

On the substance, his court record speaks for itself. Most of Mr. Spitzer's high-profile charges have gone up in smoke. A New York state judge threw out his case against tax firm H&R Block. He lost his prosecution against Bank of America broker Ted Sihpol (whom Mr. Spitzer threatened to arrest in front of his child and pregnant wife). Mr. Spitzer was stopped by a federal judge from prying confidential information out of mortgage companies. Another New York judge blocked the heart of his suit against Mr. Grasso. Mr. Greenberg continues to fight his civil charges. The press was foursquare behind Mr. Spitzer in all these cases, and in a better world they'd share some of his humiliation.

I knew he was power-mad and unscrupulous, but I had no idea just how much so....

[maica]

Good point. Even this week the enabling media are not using the words “democrat” and “Spitzer” anywhere in the same articles.

NBC, ABC, etc also avoid the word “democrat” during their coverage of Spitzer. Media Research and newsbusters.org have the details.

www.mrc.org

For Second Night, ABC and NBC Refuse
to Utter Spitzer’s Party ID

Just as occurred Monday night, viewers of Tuesday’s ABC and NBC evening newscasts never heard the word “Democrat” applied to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, nor did they even put a “(D)” on screen by his name as ABC did briefly Monday. CBS didn’t announce his party either on Tuesday night, but Katie Couric had done so Monday night. The ABC and NBC newscasts, however, did put “(R)” on screen over soundbites from Republicans and NBC’s Mike Taibbi twice referred to the reaction from “Republican” politicians.

******

Today Spends 4 Hours Ignoring the ‘D’
Next to Spitzer’s Name

With four hours of air time to fill, NBC’s Today show devoted a whopping 11 segments on Tuesday to the Eliot Spitzer scandal but not once did any of the show’s anchors, reporters, guests, talking heads or even on-screen graphics mention the fact that Spitzer is a Democrat.

*****

CBS’s Early Show Makes No Mention of
Spitzer Being a Democrat

[ClearCase_guy]

I would also observe that the media keeps emphasizing the prostitution angle. There's a common sentiment that maybe his marriage wasn't so hot, so what's a poor guy to do? I mean, it's all about sex, right? Shouldn't it be between a man and his wife?

We've heard this before, of course.

In addition, I'm still hearing the media say that a federal investigation of a prostitution ring led them to Spitzer. This is wrong. Spitzer was transferring money is questionable ways. Possibly he was stealing the money from the state. His transfers tripped some circuits, the banks tipped the IRS, the IRS followed his money, and they found that he was paying prostitutes.

It shouldn't be about the sex. It should be about the money.

[LottieDah]

I was watching a local cable news program the other night (NY1 on Time Warner). The commentator asked one of the three reporters whether anyone knew if Spitzer had a habit of frequenting prostitutes. All three said no, but one smirked while doing so. He knew and kept quiet about it. If Spitzer had a (R) after his name, they would have been shouting it out from the rooftops.

[societygirl]

I remember when these LW idiots said that TEDDY KENNEDY was the Democrats future, lol. They were not concerned that a girl died, only that the Democrat party was losing their “only hope.” Well the Dems have ALWAYS been a culture of loose sex, violence, and especially, death.

[cake_crumb]

" 'You play hard, you play rough, and hopefully you don't get caught,' said Mr. Spitzer."

Spoken like a fine, honest, upstanding, arrow-straight citizen...

[cake_crumb]

Oh, he was practically guaranteed to become president when his turn came up.

[justiceseeker93]

Spitzer took notice of all the crimes the Clintons did that escaped media scrutiny, and figured that he could emulate them, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale (as far as we know). No question the MSM has a double standard in the leeway it generally gives ‘Rat politicians as opposed to Republicans.

[kevinm13]

String the bastard up and run him out of town. Hopefully on a rail straight to Attica.

[palmer]

The corporation bashers here (Spitzer’s allies) need to read this.

[BfloGuy]

I watched in disbelief for two years as the momentum to elect Eliot grew. The WSJ was the only paper reporting on his abuses of power and campaign finance violations. The rest of the media in New York State just went along with the moral-crusader theme.

Its one of the best illustrations I've ever seen of how dangerous and downright stupid our mainstream press has become. Everyone now is acting all shocked, shocked I tell you, as the papers finally begin to report what was known all along -- Eliot has always been a crook.

[Milhous]

Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer government power, rather than a skeptic of it.

There, fixed it. In the words of Steve Boriss:

1. The role of the press - Jefferson's vision for the role of the press was completely integrated with his vision for the country. He believed that each of us is born with God-given rights that must not be taken away - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The potential thief he had in mind was government. Accordingly, he thought that the single most important role for newspapers was to serve as a "fence" to prevent government from encroaching on individual rights.

But modern journalism has hopped this fence by tending to side with the government establishment, often protecting it from people and corporations. Jon Ham notes that newspapers typically feature government as an enlightened class and make use of a "standard journalism template that the private sector has questionable motives, i.e., profit, whereas the public sector’s motives are pure, i.e., altruistic." PBS' Bill Moyers now tours the country lashing out against the dangers of too much corporate control over the news media, while singing the virtues of government-controlled NPR and PBS. This anti-corporate attitude has its roots in Marxist, not Jeffersonian thought. As ABC's John Stossel points out, corporations do not have nearly the same power as government entities, which are "coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force."

[Grampa Dave]

There once was a Govn’r named Spitzer, Who couldn’t control his own spritzer. He used his account for Kristen to mount, Got caught and it’s too late to diss her.

Eliot remember to say, "I never had sex with that ho, er woman!"

"Eliot -- PHONE HO"

Thanks for the memories #9

There once was a Govn’r named Spitzer, Who couldn’t control his own spritzer. He used his account for Kristen to mount, Got caught and it’s too late to diss her.

Eliot remember to say, "I never had sex with that ho, er woman!"

"Eliot -- PHONE HO"

Thanks for the memories #9

[Veto!]

Perhaps by this time next year someone will write the same article with Obama inserted instead of Spitzer. Horrible thought, but the media is surely complicit in any and all stupidities, mistakes, and downright evil thoughts and deeds Barak Hussein gets caught in.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials. That duty is even more vital concerning government positions that are subject to few other checks and balances. Chief among those is the prosecutor, who can use his awesome state power to punish, even destroy, private citizens.

That is the function of a free press. Contrary to the presumptuous claims of Big Journalism, however, Big Journalism is neither the whole of "the press" nor is it free. It is not free, in the sense that you or I cannot enter the field by the mere act of acquiring the requisite technology. The reason is that we are expressly forbidden by the government to engage in broadcast journalism without a license to broadcast, and - more generally - we are not part of the Associated Press, and we do not subscribe to the fatuous conceit that all journalists are objective.

Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan -- all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.

. . . the media never acknowledged . . . [that on] his first day in public office . . . Mr. Spitzer became the big guy, the titan.

Precisely. The fawning coverage of Eliot Spitzer, not despite but because of Spitzer's actual record of abusing power, is a picture of the actual nature of Big Journalism. The only difference between Spitzer and Michael Nifong is that Nifong was a mere wannabe in comparison to Spitzer. Accordingly Nifong was vulnerable to higher state governmental authorities, in a state which is not nearly as dominated by "liberal" politics as New York is - and therefore it was possible for Nifong to be caught without the help of Big Journalism.

The fact that such help from Big Journalism was not forthcoming for the victims either of Nifong or of Spitzer puts the lie to the conceit that journalism is objective (a conceit which traces back only to the advent of the telegraph and the monopolistic Associated Press). Wikipedia describes the classic dystopian short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. In that dark story, there is a town which conducts a lottery once a year - the "winner" of which is stoned to death by everyone else in town.

That happens in America. But in real life, an Eliot Spitzer of a Michael Nifong typically functions as the arbitrary selector of victims to be destroyed - and Big Journalism functions as the villagers with stones inflicting much of the arbitrary abuse.

[The Energizer]

I don’t forget the voters, who elected him. They are responsible, too.