[GeronL]

Before I read this..... can WE stage a controversy??? Sounds like fun!

[Paleo Conservative]

Neither is it anything new, of course, when a small group of people with excellent public relations skills and a political axe to grind are able to manipulate an unskeptical media.

That should be "'unskeptical' media". It's not like they're innocent bystanders.

[prognostigaator]

Arab Americans are now upset over the latest Bush ads...

Discussed at length on Hannity & Colmes and on Colmes radio talk show re: the sinister looking threatening male.....

[muawiyah]

So what went wrong here? Why the fuss over Bush's ads? How is it that so many journalists were willing to be led by the nose to write blatantly misleading stories, when the truth was so easy to ascertain? The simple answer is, well, they were being lazy and partisan. Plus, the straight story--"Peace Activists, Kerry Co-chair Criticize Bush Ads"--is a yawner.

The real answer is that the "newsies" tend to be stupid in the extreme. You really don't find your top scholars majoring in jurnalism ~ the propaganda to the contrary, you never did. There may be some exceptions, but for the most part these guys are easily led around by the nose.

[expatpat]

He overlooked the fact that maybe the GOP wanted a controversy. Just as Gibson's box-office receipts were enhanced by all the furor, so are the ads getting more exposure than they otherwise would have had.

[John Jorsett]

Michael Medved had Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute on today. Zogby's upset with a Bush ad that supposedly shows a Middle Eastern-type face (in reality the actor is of Italian extraction) when it mentions the war on terror. What Medved pried out of Zogby was that his "outrage" didn't get started until some reporter called and asked him to react. In other words, the media are going around trolling to find (or generate) negative comments about Bush ads.

[Jeff Chandler]

This criticism caught the Bush campaign by surprise.

What, were these people born yesterday?! The most effective way of predicting the behavior of sociopaths is to reflect upon their previous behavior (I have used this method in my own life).

How can the Bush campaign be so naive? I'll bet there are hundreds of Freepers who could have predicted the rat's moves ahead of time. They could have saved themselves a lot of grief by just contacting Rush Limbaugh and asking him. Sheesh, it's not rocket surgery.

[doug from upland]

Now this is great reporting. As we knew right away, it was a media setup, and they went along for the ride willingly. The lefties were hoping that some initial bad publicity would get the GOP to back down like Bush did in 1992 with Clinton. Nope, Dubya will stay the course on this.

[Bonaparte]

Deceptive reporting by the NYT and its cohorts in the liberal media? Say it ain't so! I am so shocked!

[Reactionary]

Strange, the leftist piglets certainly didn't mind Clinton politicizing the Oklahoma City attacks, now did they?

No. They have no principles; they only care about power.

[Hon]

Devine's boss, John Kerry, told the New York Times, "There are plenty of ways to convey the threat of terror without usurping what I think is a very sensitive memory in the American consciousness." Paul Begala, the CNN pundit and former Clinton adviser, put it bluntly: "The president's use of footage from September 11 in a partisan political commercial has provoked outrage from victims' families and from firefighters who say their brothers and sisters did not sacrifice and suffer for a cheap, cheesy, campaign ad."

Please read:

Kerry Used Vietnam Wall As Backdrop For 1984 Campaign Ad

[jmstein7]

BUMP!

[NormsRevenge]

Bump

[nathanbedford]

Will someone let me know when I can panic without a lot of freepers accusing me of defeatism? How long has it been since Bush began slipping in the polls? Has the Rove team with four years to prepare done anything right?

Gollywompers, the Rats and their allies in the media have convinced a majority of the independents that Bush should not have used the images in the 9/11 ads. Gee whiz, the democrats and their media allies milked the AWOL non-story for weeks while the White House dithered. Holy cow, Kerry is out with a counter ad about taxes accusing Bush of being a liar and Bush is losing the talking head war. Gosh, most of the country thinks Bush lied about WMDs and precious few are aware that Kerry made statements revealing that he thought they were there too.

The entire reaction seems to be to wax indignant about the injustice of it all. Remember when Freepers were reassuring one another that things would be clarified when Bush’s ads showed Kerry’s record? That was about the time of Bush's fiasco on Meet The Press. Well, it isn’t happening. There is no coordination, no anticipation, and no follow through. The President is left unsupported to get creamed on every issue.

In sixty days this campaign can be over and right now Bush looks utterly inept.

[neverdem]

BTTT

The article could have been titled "CALLING ALL USEFUL IDIOTS".

[kabar]

If Bush backs down on using 9/11 in his campaign ads, the leftists win. Bush needs a "war room" to respond immediately to these attacks so that don't have an opportunity to infect the entire media. A prompt response could have nipped a lot of this in the bud.

Bush needs to use the clip of the firefighter and him at Ground Zero using the bullhorn to say that those responsible for 9/11 will soon be hearing from America. The GOP should not let the Dems frame the issue and intimidate them about using images of 9/11. Hell, he should even use the carrier image.