"No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

New York Daily News ^ | 1/12/04 | Lloyd Grove

[Stone Mountain]

W & aides broadcast media hate

He didn't free the slaves.

He didn't rid the world of Hitler.

He didn't even - like his father - preside over the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

Yet George W. Bush tells New Yorker writer Ken Auletta: "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

With stunners like that, no wonder he spends so little time with journalists.

The President's eyebrow-raising assertion comes during some Oval Office chitchat after Auletta - writing about the testy relations between the Bush White House and the news media - sits in on an interview with a British newspaper reporter.

In the latest New Yorker, Auletta reports that Bush and his minions have little use for the Fourth Estate.

Political guru Karl Rove claims that the job of journalists is "not necessarily to report the news. It's to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay attention to their magazine, newspaper or television more."

And Chief of Staff Andy Card scoffs: "[The media] don't represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election."

Card argues that it's not the responsibility of top White House policymakers to provide reporters with facts.

"It's not our job to be sources. The taxpayers don't pay us to leak!" Card tells Auletta. "Our job is not to make your job easy."

Predictably, the reporters who cover Bush aren't happy. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank complains: "My biggest frustration is that this White House has chosen an approach ...to engage us as little as possible." And the New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller grouses: "Too often they treat us with contempt."

Free the White House press corps!

[Jhensy]

The President's eyebrow-raising assertion comes during some Oval Office chitchat after Auletta - writing about the testy relations between the Bush White House and the news media - sits in on an interview with a British newspaper reporter.

You can bet the house that left-wing hack Ken Auletta has once again got nothing and is using some overheard British interviewer's conversation to get pub for his latest hit piece. And that Mort Zuckerman's Daily News will be happy to incestuously provide whatever help is necessary for their former writer of 16 years.

[carton253]

I thought you were leaving! LOL!

[TommyDale]

Uhhh...My post #28 was made about 24 hours prior to my "leaving". Anyway, too many nice Freepers talked me into staying around.

[Rummyfan]

"No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

I bet the people of Afghanistan and Iraq would agree!

[RightWhale]

I would have bet $50 that the headline was a quote from Clinton.

I guessed Dubya. The most obvious reason is that human rights is a relatively new concept. Newer than civil rights. It began with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which, BTW, is not entirely acceptable to many of the newer countries since it was written by their former owners.

[LexBaird]

I can see where you're coming from, but I think I'd put the human rights contributions of Washington and Jefferson and co. above anything done by modern statesmen.

The very concept of inalienable rights stems from such dead white men.

[carton253]

Good... I would have hated to see you go!

[RightWhale]

Sure. But I'm making distinctions. There is a great muddling of concepts that makes discourse difficult, perhaps impossible. On this forum, Constitutional rights are the main issue, and those rights are presumed inherent in being human or civil citizens. Then along came civil rights, mostly a voting rights issue, and then came human rights. Human rights as it stands now includes things such as the right to shelter, medical care, education, the things that a city might provide to a civil populace through various mechanisms including private sector or public sector capitalism. These human rights have a price tag. The Constitutional rights come free. There is a difference. Civil rights are also free, and are a political program to extend Constitutional rights to all, so civil rights are also naturally free and inherently different from human rights.

Human rights come with attached fiscal note.

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Sorry for the muddled phrasing, I hope you can see some of the idea anyway.

[onedoug]

It's being trumpeted in today's (1/20) NY Times.