O'Reilly Factor - Left-wing "reporters" met with John Kerry in Al Franken's apartment

03.22.04

[kcvl]

In an effort to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. The gathering could not properly be called a meeting or a luncheon. It was a trial. The journalists served as prosecuting attorneys, jury and judge. The crowd I joined in Franken’s living room was comprised of:

Al Franken and his wife Franni;
Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker;
David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker;
Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine;
Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek;
Jeff Greenfield, senior correspondent and analyst for CNN;
Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times;
Eric Alterman, author and columnist for MSNBC and the Nation;
Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist/author of ‘Maus’;
Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post;
Fred Kaplan, columnist for Slate;
Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate and author;
Jonathan Alter, senior editor and columnist for Newsweek;
Philip Gourevitch, columnist for the New Yorker;
Calvin Trillin, freelance writer and author;
Edward Jay Epstein, investigative reporter and author;
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who needs no introduction.

We sat in a circle around Kerry and grilled him for two long hours. In an age of retail politicians who avoid substance the way vampires avoid sunlight, in an age when the sitting President flounders like a gaffed fish whenever he must speak to reporters without a script, Kerry’s decision to open himself to the slings and arrows of this group was bold and impressive. He was fresh from two remarkable speeches – one lambasting the PATRIOT Act, another outlining his foreign policy ideals while eviscerating the Bush record – and had his game face on. He needed it, because Eric Alterman lit into him immediately on the all-important issue of his vote for the Iraq War Resolution. The prosecution had begun.

[Blue Scourge]

Kerry’s decision to open himself to the slings and arrows of this group was bold and impressive

Not very impressive when you realize that those slings are loaded with nerf balls and the arrows are all foam.

[kcvl]

Thanks!

Calvin Trillin journalist, enthusiastic eater and funny food writer

[kcvl]

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. New Deal historian and intellectual-in-residence at Camelot

[Tamzee]

I remember when this first happened and I noticed the thread posted on DU.... I thought this was so perverse and blatant that I saved the thread and link, but didn't think to send it to anyone.

BTW, William Pitt is not only a progressive "journalist", his father is Redding Pitt, a Clinton placement to U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama who resigned when Bush was elected and he is now Alabama Democrat Party Chairman.

Here is the original thread right after this big meeting at Franken's apartment... if you go to the original link at DU, you can see Pitt's comments as he answers further questions about this meeting.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=854985

Forum Name General Discussion Forum
Topic subject The Trial of John Kerry (rough report of Franken luncheon)
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=854985
854985, The Trial of John Kerry (rough report of Franken luncheon)
Posted by WilliamPitt on Mon Dec-08-03 11:58 PM

One of these days, this will be a textbook case for political science professors to use as a teaching tool.

Here is a Democratic candidate for the Oval Office in a year when the liberal base of the party is almost completely unified in its disgust for the sitting Republican President. The candidate, a Senator, has a 20-year liberal voting record to admire: He is peerless on the environment, a staunch defender of a woman’s right to choose, completely reliable across the whole spectrum of gay rights issues, totally solid on education, an advocate for campaign finance reform and health care reform, and will fight to the death to keep Social Security fully funded and reliable. It is the liberal base of the party that turns out to vote in the primaries, so the candidate’s record gives him an immediate advantage.

Add to the scenario a campaign season dominated by foreign policy issues. The candidate is a Vietnam veteran who wears Purple Hearts next to a Bronze and Silver Star, giving him a ‘real deal’ quality compared to the sitting President, who used family influence to avoid that conflict. The candidate served for several years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, affording him the justifiable claim that he is a seasoned professional when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world.

This experience is tempered by wisdom and hard knowledge; the disgust and horror experienced by the candidate during Vietnam had an almost mythic quality, and led him to become a prominent voice against the war upon his return home, so much so that he earned a spot on Nixon’s infamous “Enemies List.” His service in combat, coupled with his principled stand against the Vietnam war and his time on the Foreign Relations Committee, has forged a whole man. This serves him well in the primaries with fence-sitters, and with people who might think Democrats are “soft on national defense.”

This is the point at which the professor will lean against his podium and ask his class to theorize on how well such a candidate would do in a crowded field in the run-up to the primaries. Would he run away with the nomination? Dominate the conversation? Be way ahead in many states and tightly competitive in others? Of course, the class will respond. The professor, with a puckish grin, will instruct the class to turn to page 214 of their textbooks, and read the history of John Kerry’s Presidential run in the fall and winter of 2003.

John Kerry’s liberal record in the Senate is remarkable in its depth and consistency. His public stand against the Vietnam war, augmented by his status as a decorated veteran of that conflict, made history. His attacks on the Reagan administration, his fight to expose the Iran-Contra/BCCI scandal, are among the main reasons the public became schooled on those travesties. His time on the Foreign Relations Committee places him head and shoulders above the other Democratic candidates in terms of real-world foreign policy experience.

Kerry is a proven fighter on the campaign trail. His defense of his Senate seat against William Weld in 1996 was perhaps the most remarkable campaign in a generation; both candidates fought like tigers to win, both ended the race with approval ratings above 60% despite weeks of to-the-knife political combat, and Kerry was in it to the last hour until the victory was finally his.

Yet today, John Kerry teeters on the edge of total irrelevancy in the race for the White House. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean holds a double-digit lead over Kerry in New Hampshire, and is leading or surging elsewhere. Kerry’s campaign suffered a blowout several weeks ago when he fired his campaign manager, an act that led to the resignations of several other prominent staffers. While this may have ultimately been a healthy bloodletting, it caused the national press to write stories about “The Ailing Kerry Campaign,” obscuring any and all policy discussions that would have served his run.

On Monday night, the Associated Press reported the huge news that Al Gore had decided to publicly endorse Howard Dean. Was Gore’s endorsement a repudiation of the DLC? Is he publicly distancing himself from the powerful Clinton-controlled wing of the party? Or does Gore just think Howard Dean is the best man for the job? Slice those issues whichever way you please, but at the end of the day it was yet another brick in the ever-growing wall standing between Kerry and the nomination.

How did this happen? Kerry has all the components of a flat-out frontrunner. When did the wheels come off?

Ask virtually anyone who accounts themselves a member of that liberal Democratic base, and they’ll answer in a heartbeat. The wheels came off on October 11, 2002, the day John Kerry voted ‘Yes’ on George W. Bush’s Iraq War Resolution. The occupation of Iraq, the mounting American casualties, the skyrocketing cost of the conflict, and the still-missing weapons of mass destruction have become a significant liability to Bush. Amazingly enough, however, the Iraq situation has been far more damaging to Kerry than to Bush.

The same liberal base that flocks to the polls during the primaries took to the streets in vast, unprecedented numbers last fall and winter to oppose the push towards war in Iraq. Any politician who voted for the resolution was of no account to these people, worse than useless, an enabler of Bush’s extremist agenda, and not at all to be trusted. Dean’s passionate yet nuanced positions against the war drew legions of fiery supporters to his campaign, despite the fact that he is far less liberal than Kerry. The fact that Kerry had served in Vietnam, and then become an anti-war activist, was an added twist of the knife for those working against the invasion of Iraq, a betrayal of his own history and his people. For Kerry, keeper of that extraordinary liberal record, this one vote amounted to a couple of torpedoes below the water line of his campaign. He has been sinking, sinking, sinking ever since.

There are but a few weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Time has grown short. In an effort to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. The gathering could not properly be called a meeting or a luncheon. It was a trial. The journalists served as prosecuting attorneys, jury and judge. The crowd in Franken’s living room was comprised of:

Me;
Al Franken and his wife Franni;
Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker;
David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker;
Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine;
Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek;
Jeff Greenfield, senior correspondent and analyst for CNN;
Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times;
Eric Alterman, author and columnist for MSNBC and the Nation;
Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist/author of ‘Maus’;
Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post;
Fred Kaplan, columnist for Slate;
Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate and author;
Jonathan Alter, senior editor and columnist for Newsweek;
Philip Gourevitch, columnist for the New Yorker;
Calvin Trillin, freelance writer and author;
Edward Jay Epstein, investigative reporter and author;
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who needs no introduction.

We sat in a circle around Kerry and grilled him for two long hours. In an age of retail politicians who avoid substance the way vampires avoid sunlight, in an age when the sitting President flounders like a gaffed fish whenever he must speak to reporters without a script, Kerry’s decision to open himself to the slings and arrows of this group was bold and impressive. He was fresh from two remarkable speeches – one lambasting the PATRIOT Act, another outlining his foreign policy ideals while eviscerating the Bush record – and had his game face on. He needed it, because Eric Alterman lit into him immediately on the all-important issue of his vote for the Iraq War Resolution. The prosecution had begun.

“Senator,” said Alterman, “I think you may be the most qualified candidate in the race, and perhaps also the one who best represents my own values. But there was one overriding issue facing this nation during the past four years, and Howard Dean was there when it counted, and you weren’t. A lot of people feel that moment entitles him to their vote, even if you have a more progressive record and would be a stronger candidate in November. How are you going to win back those people who you lost with your vote for this awful war?”

There it was. Your record is the best, Mr. Kerry. But you voted for the war, Mr. Kerry. Howard Dean was right, Mr. Kerry, and you were not. Your campaign has been wounded, perhaps mortally, because of this. Explain yourself, and while you’re at it, explain how you are going to win back enough Dean voters to keep you from becoming a footnote in this race.

For over a year now, Kerry has struggled to respond to that question. His answers have seemed vague, overly nuanced and evasive. On Thursday, seated before the sharpest knives in the journalistic drawer and facing the unconcealed outrage of Alterman, the Senator from Massachusetts explained why he did what he did.

“This was the hardest vote I have ever had to cast in my entire career,” Kerry said. “I voted for the resolution to get the inspectors in there, period. Remember, for seven and a half years we were destroying weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, we found more stuff there than we thought we would. After that came those four years when there was no intelligence available about what was happening over there. I believed we needed to get the weapons inspectors back in. I believed Bush needed this resolution in order to get the U.N. to put the inspectors back in there. The only way to get the inspectors back in was to present Bush with the ability to threaten force legitimately. That’s what I voted for.”

“The way Powell, Eagleberger, Scowcroft, and the others were talking at the time,” continued Kerry, “I felt confident that Bush would work with the international community. I took the President at his word. We were told that any course would lead through the United Nations, and that war would be an absolute last resort. Many people I am close with, both Democrats and Republicans, who are also close to Bush told me unequivocally that no decisions had been made about the course of action. Bush hadn’t yet been hijacked by Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and that whole crew. Did I think Bush was going to charge unilaterally into war? No. Did I think he would make such an incredible mess of the situation? No. Am I angry about it? You’re God damned right I am. I chose to believe the President of the United States. That was a terrible mistake.”

History defends this explanation. The Bush administration brought Resolution 1441 to the United Nations in early November of 2002 regarding Iraq, less than a month after the Senate vote. The words “weapons inspectors” were prominent in the resolution, and were almost certainly the reason the resolution was approved unanimously by the Security Council. Hindsight reveals that Bush’s people likely believed the Hussein regime would reject the resolution because of those inspectors. When Iraq opened itself to the inspectors, accepting the terms of 1441 completely, the administration was caught flat-footed, and immediately began denigrating the inspectors while simultaneously piling combat troops up on the Iraq border. The promises made to Kerry and the Senate that the administration would work with the U.N., would give the inspectors time to complete their work, that war would be an action of last resort, were broken.

Kerry completed his answer by leaning in close to Alterman, eyes blazing, and said, “Eric, if you truly believe that if I had been President, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me.”

Alterman, for one, was sold. In his MSNBC blog report on the meeting, he wrote, “It was all on the record and yet, it was remarkably open, honest and unscripted. Let’s be blunt. Kerry was terrific. Once again, he demonstrated a thoughtfulness, knowledge base and value system that gives him everything, in my not-so-humble-opinion, he could need to be not just a good, but a great president.”

The most revealing moment of the entire event came as it was breaking up. Kerry was slowly working towards the door when he was collared by Art Spiegelman. Though Kerry towered over him, Spiegelman appeared to grow with the intensity of his passion. “Senator,” he said, “the best thing you could do is to is to just come out and say that you were wrong to trust Bush. Say that you though he would keep his promises, but that you gave him more credit than he deserved. Say that you’re sorry, and then turn the debate towards what is best for the country in 2004.”

Kerry nodded, bowed his head, and said, “You’re right. I was wrong to trust him. I’m sorry I did.” And then he was gone.

None of this solves the immediate problem for Kerry. The eventual nomination of Howard Dean takes on more and more each day an aura of inevitability. Kerry is still trailing Dean in key primary states, and Al Gore isn’t going to take back his endorsement. In order to regain any momentum and take the nomination, he will have to convince Dean supporters, more than anyone else, to switch to his camp. With all the time that has passed, and with Dean’s campaign picking up such momentum, this seems highly unlikely.

That is the road John Kerry is on right now. His performance in Franken’s living room last Thursday, the tenor of his recent speeches, and his gladiator memories of that 1996 Senate race, all indicate one simple thing. If John Kerry is going down, he is going down swinging.

[kcvl]

Of lies and men

Part comedian, part investigative reporter, Al Franken is a thorn in the flesh of rightwing America. He tells Oliver Burkeman about media lies, Dick Cheney's sex life, and seeing Fox News laughed out of court

Friday October 3, 2003
The Guardian

Al Franken does a convincing impression of being a well-balanced and friendly guy as he relaxes at the grand dinner table of his apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, reaching down occasionally to scratch the stomach of his enormous black labrador, Kirby, while his wife, Franni, taps at a computer in the kitchen.

Apparently, though, he is really a shrill and unstable parasite who often appears intoxicated or deranged, and whose views lack any insight or depth. That, at any rate, was the picture painted in court documents last month by Fox News, the hard-right American cable channel owned by Rupert Murdoch, as part of its effort to sue Franken for trademark infringement over the title of his new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. "Fair and balanced," improbably enough, is a slogan much used by the exuberantly biased Fox, which claimed that Franken - originally famous in the US as a performer on the comedy show Saturday Night Live - would "blur and tarnish" its reputation.

"You know how when people say someone was literally laughed out of court, they usually mean they were figuratively laughed out of court?" says Franken, 52, mixing evident satisfaction with a chuckle that sounds more like bewilderment. "They were literally laughed out of court."

Franken understands how to grab headlines - one of his earlier books, about the talk-radio controversialist Rush Limbaugh, carried the headline-grabbing title of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. And yet even Franken could not have concocted a better marketing stunt than the Fox lawsuit. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, a high-octane attack on dishonesty in both the rightwing media and the Bush administration, shot to the top of the New York Times's non-fiction bestseller list, where it remains.

Now it is being published in Britain, allowing UK readers to learn, for example, what happened when Franken wandered over to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy US defence secretary, to express his view that the technological brilliance of the American military was primarily a result of the policies of Bill Clinton.

"Hi, Dr Wolfowitz," Franken said. "Hey, the Clinton military did a great job in Iraq, didn't it?" Wolfowitz, the man most involved in developing the new US doctrine of pre-emptive attack, evidently summoned his full arsenal of well-informed counter-arguments in order to compose his comeback. "Fuck you," he said. ("I'll get into all of this," Franken writes, "in a later chapter, entitled Yeah? Well, Fuck You.")

Among Franken's favourite targets is Ann Coulter, a ubiquitous face on the rightwing talkshow circuit, famous for her tirades against the supposedly ultra-liberal New York Times. (She apparently told one reporter that her "only regret" about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was that "he did not go into the New York Times building".) Franken calls her recent bestseller, Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right, "a fascinating exercise in dishonesty, hypocrisy, and irony of the unintentional sort."

More...

[Ann Archy]

Kerry must be anti-Christian cause there's about a 90% Jewish Press contingency at that meeting!!!

Al Franken has a WIFE????? Give that woman a HALO!

[Ann Archy]

You are good!

[kcvl]

Thanks for that! I see Al's friends are making sure that he gets plenty of media coverage...



March 22. See Al. Al will be making several late night stops. They are:

Letterman - March 23, CBS
Daily Show - March 25, Comedy Central
Late Night - April 1, NBC, Comedy Central repeat on 4/2.

March 22. News Stories. As you may have seen, Al is the cover story of the NY Times Magazine. Newsweek has a small feature on Al. Go read them.

March 18. Kerry's Secret Weapon. Rush and Malloy of the NY Daily News speculate Al could have been Kerry's secret weapon.

March 15. Movie. According to IMDB, Al has a small part (Reporter) in the Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep remake of the Manchurian Candidate.

March 15. From Al. Al debates The National Review's Rich Lowry at SpinSanity.org.

March 14. Cite. An oped on Bill O'Reilly in the Henderson Daily Dispatch, NC cites Al's work in his book.

March 11. Radio. A whole lotta articles about the new radio launch. Chicago Tribune quotes Al as saying, "There's a right-wing echo chamber. I want to create a countervailing echo chamber" and notes that the station expects to lose money as part of its business model: "We have raised tens of millions of dollars," Walsh said. "[But] we do expect to lose money for a meaningful period of time--years, not months."

Newsday, NYTimes and WashPost have other write-ups as well.

SF Chronicle takes more of a look at the business side of the station: can they be financially successful?

By the way, Fox appears to have learned its lesson. In response, they're saying: "Our country was based on the principle of free speech. We wish them well.'' Shucks.

In case you were wondering, the NY Post has a short article on the launch. From GOP consultant Kellyanne Conway, we find why there aren't many conservative comedians: "I guess the name 'hot air radio' is already taken." You see, it's a play on the 'XXX XXXXXXX Radio'(No free advertising here) network name, because 'hot air' is often a reference not to a volume of fast-moving particles, but empty rhetoric, and 'hot air' and 'air' are so similar in construction. Taha!

[Ann Archy]

The author is William Pitt and William Pitt is a Friend of Scott Ritter who takes money from Saddam friend to make a pro-Saddam movie???

[hoot2]

"Franni Frankin???? Seriously? "

even funnier....
she used to be "franni farkle"
n lived next door to "ferd burfel"...

[Southack]

Notice that he convened an all-white group of Democratic Party elites to decide who they want most Black Democrats to vote for...

"to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. ... The crowd I joined in Franken’s living room was comprised of: Al Franken and his wife Franni;
Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker;
David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker;
Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine;
Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek;
Jeff Greenfield, senior correspondent and analyst for CNN;
Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times;
Eric Alterman, author and columnist for MSNBC and the Nation;
Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist/author of ‘Maus’;
Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post;
Fred Kaplan, columnist for Slate;
Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate and author;
Jonathan Alter, senior editor and columnist for Newsweek;
Philip Gourevitch, columnist for the New Yorker;
Calvin Trillin, freelance writer and author;
Edward Jay Epstein, investigative reporter and author;
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who needs no introduction.
We sat in a circle around Kerry..."

[kcvl]

If all of these people were at Al Franken's apartment, there is NO QUESTION about what they were doing there - COACHING John F'n Kerry! Just remember NO LIBERAL MEDIA.../SARCASM!


http://alfrankenweb.com/

[kcvl]

Yes, THAT William Pitt.

[bray]

Imagine if the Rats had a Hostile Press?? Talk about PravdABDNC!!!

Pray for W and The TRuth

[watchin]

O'Reilly exposed it tonight. He made the comparison to Bush meeting with Fox News and the WSJ - and how the media would scream about it. He openly accused them of coaching Kerry - asking him questions, listening to his responses, and suggesting improvements. O'Reilly even suggested half-jokingly that we find out how much Kerry paid these guys for the interrogation.

[IGOTMINE]

Wasn't this sort of thing an "encounter group" technique used by communists as a brainwashing method? One person sits in the center and takes abuse on their shortcomings until he is enlightened. I think I read about it in one of PJ O'Rourke's books.

[lilylangtree]

Very interesting.

[kcvl]

Here is the transcript (this is all there is, at this time) that I promised everyone (with additional segment on George Carlin, of the hate America left)... http://billoreilly.com



Personal Story Segment:

The Death of Journalistic Ethics
There has been a subtle shift in opinion journalism in America in the past few years.

Now, we have people working for newspapers and magazines who are devoted to getting certain polticians -- namely the left -- elected to office.

While Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing talk show cadre are entertainers -- and describe themselves as such -- these people are embedded in the elite media and are not supposed to be political activists.

In a stunning admission in Sunday's New York Times, the following people attended a meeting with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in New York City:

Frank Rich of The New York Times
Richard Cohen of The Washington Post
Jonathan Alter of Newsweek
Howard Fineman of Newsweek
Jim Kelly of Time Magazine
Jeff Greenfield of CNN
Eric Alterman of The Nation

Can you imagine if the President of FOX News Channel and the Editor of the Wall Street Journal met with President Bush in some apartment -- there would be outrage.

Segment Guest: Richard Hanley, Director of the Graduate School of Communications at Quinnipiac University



Factor Follow-up Segment:

A Civil War on the Political Left?
The Democratic Party is now split between people who sincerely want effective change under the present system - and people who want to destroy the system because they believe our country is evil.

Comedian George Carlin one of the latter. On the HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher," Carlin recently said this about the 9/11 attachs: "This country has been pushing the world around and exploiting the people of the world for a long, long time -- and sometime, you have to pay the piper."

Segment Guest: Paul Waldman, Editor-in-Chief of Gadflyer and author of the book, "Fraud: the Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and What the Media Didn't Tell You"

[Darlin']

Yep, thats right.

[wardaddy]

Are you sure it wasn't a Bar Mitzvah?

I swear everyone there was Jewish except Kelly and maybe Trillen.

How odd. So much for that ol Leftwing Jewish Media Conspiracy...lol

Truly, I'm not sure what to think....JINOs for the most part I know already.

I guess Fineman is the only one who suprises me....I thought he was sort of "fair" sometimes.

Now before anybody freaks out at my Emporer's New Clothes utterance, let's not fool ourselves. If it were Dubya meeting with very hard right Christian Conservative imaginable at someone's deer camp (like mine) we'd all be talking about that too.

Fair is Fair.