Posted on 08/14/2004 12:15:49 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
The genie is out of the bottle. The best efforts of the mainstream media to blockade the story of Kerry’s lies about Cambodia, and the charges by the vast majority of men who served with him in the Swift Boat operations, have failed. Glenn Reynolds prints a telling letter from a reader who requests anonymity. Read the entire entry, but here are the key sentences:
...last night I was talking to a friend who is a hardcore liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a first cousin of a very well-known Democratic Senator. He was very upset about the Kerry-Swift Vet-Cambodia controversy. He blamed Kerry for the whole thing, saying he had set himself up for this problem by making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Two things struck me about this. First, this is a guy who gets all of his news from the biggies - the NYT, NPR, and CNN - and yet he knew all about the story. That means the Big Media filter isn't preventing the story from reaching people. Second, he had concluded that Kerry deserves the criticism and is lacking in credibility. This is a guy who, if there were any yes-but talking points in defense of Kerry, surely would have stuck to them. This says to me that if Big Media is in the tank for Kerry, they may actually have hurt him by not covering this story. They've abdicated coverage of a story that is negative to Kerry to the Blogosphere, thus resulting in more damage to their favored candidate than if they'd reported on the story, but with an eye toward knocking it down. They can pretend the story isn't there, but they can't make blogs go away.
Glenn adds:
...they're damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they're ignoring it.Just so. Credibility, once lost, is difficult to re-establish. Ask Bill Clinton.
In April, I used the metaphor of a driver stuck in snow, who presses the accelerator, and finds the spinning wheels only melting more snow, making traction all the more difficult. The current efforts of the press to define Kerry’s lies as a non-event are destroying their own traction. The media eruption over far less serious charges about Bush’s National Guard service is too fresh in the recesses of most peoples’ minds. And, of course, Bush didn’t choose to run for re-election on the basis of his honorable, even brave service as a jet jockey, a highly dangerous occupation.
But it is summer now. So let me switch metaphors. The establishment press is facing its Gottedamerung – the twilight of the gods. For decades, god-like figures handed down their version of the truth from corporate Valhallas like the New York Times and CBS News. The public credulously accepted their writ on what is important and what is not important.
But god-like pretensions are dangerous, indeed, often fatal. Especially when combined with mono-maniacal convictions on the need for their point of view to prevail. Post-modernity, a concept beloved of the bien pensants, cuts two ways. The public is skeptical of anyone who pretends to be an authoritative gatekeeper of knowledge. Kerry, who has never cut much of a figure as a genuine, warm, empathetic human being, is an ideal target for citizen skepticism.
The establishment press is coming across as every bit as pompous and conniving as the man who married two centi-millionaire heiresses.
They are, in fact, destroying themselves. Their industry is in serious trouble. Circulation scandals have hit major newspaper publishers, while the scandal-free press can take little comfort in their declining readership. Network TV news is a shadow of its former self, and its future is very limited. CNN’s monopoly is shattered, and it boasts a poor fraction of the viewership of Fox News, the only cable news outlet fully covering Kerrygate with the same seriousness accorded Bush’s National Guard service questions.
The blogosphere is the camel whose nose, and now a good part of its neck, is under the tent. Leadership in coverage of the self-destruction of the Kerry Campaign is in the hands of Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt (guru to many of us), Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, Just One Minute, and many other bloggers.
Nobody had ever heard of Bob Woodward until Watergate. Afterward, he became a powerful brand name, and his and Bernstein's work inspired generations of new journalists. The same phenomenon is taking place today, and journalism will never be the same again. The big difference is that this time around, there is a technological revolution compounding the destructive force operating on the old media. Hurricane Charley has nothing on the winds of change now blowing away the old media practices and economics.
Future historians are going to find this election deeply significant for not just War on Terror policy reasons. This is a transformative election for the structure of political information.
Bush with a total wipe-out of the Liberals....they are so 9/10/01 it is amazing...toasted!!! The Big Question is where is the 2nd political-party? Soon to emerge....once again God Bless America!!
ping!
Finally, the press is focused on President Bush's military record because it is giving so much attention to Kerry's.
David Goldstein
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/qa_forum.html#recent_questions
The MSM is hoisting itself on the Pitards....how absolutely Amazing & stupid...live by a lie, die by a lie!
You're assuming that Kerry thinks more of the democrat party than he does of himself. Kerry ONLY thinks of himself. There was no way in the world that he would have "stepped down" from the nomination when he had it all sewn up. Not a chance.
Clearly, if this person got their news from NPR, the NYT and CNN the big news filter is either largerly overblown or doesn't exist.
I'm going to break a long-standing tradition and actually watch Saturday Night Live for the first time in many years.
I'm hoping that they'll do a "Christmas in Cambodia" skit. If they do, I'll take that as a very good sign that kerry's swirling around the bowl about to go down the toilet. (Well, I can hope, can't I?)
In answer to the question in the title.
I would certainly hope that the media falls flat.
I do not believe the media practices the 1st Amendment to the betterment of our Country!
Our B&N in NY had a huge pile of UNFIT FOR COMMAND. Not on the best seller rack, but amidst an assortment of Bush bash books, of which there are many.
LOL! Good for you!
Let's hope it sticks...
Make it stick!
Send ALL the articles and stories to everyone you know.
I am not so sure of that as you are, but even if Kerry was/is not in on the fix, what would it take to force him out? I for one think that if the New York Times, and ABCBSNBC thought Hillary would have a chance, they would begin playing up 24/7 all of the negatives against Kerry and he would be forced out.
This is epitomized in their selection of Senator Kerry, the most liberal voter in the entire Senate, whose most significant acts of his life were made in the four months that he served in his first job out of college some 3+ decades ago...a man who has taken either both sides of every issue or the most liberal side of every issue, bar none.
Senator Kerry can get away, at least in the press of course, with voting for the Iraq War but then against its funding, but can you imagine what the press would have done if President Bush had been for our National Missile Defense but against its funding?!
So at every turn, the Left gets a free pass for its waffling inconsistency, whereas the Right has to get it correct the first time and stick with that view no matter what. But Social Darwinism has caused unintended consequences. By coddling the Left via forgiving most every gaffe, the press has cultivated a weaker liberal side. And by attacking the Right from every possible angle at all possible times, the liberal press has made the Right stronger.
Most definitely. I think it important to add that polls are of limited utility this time around. The ham-fistedness of the Kerry camp in trying to stifle the ad and attack the Swifties was so blatant that they in fact could not have done more to legitimize the issue. People instinctively despise bullies. James Carville's crazed raving at John O'Neill, Lanny Davis's oily disingenuousness and the threatening letters to TV stations only serve to substantiate the charges made.
Over the past decade in a thousand ways both large and small (with the Clinton follies the foremost example) the democrats have become associated with elitism, corruption and dare I say it, just plain hatred. Again, this is just my opinion, but the 2002 off-year election debacle bears this out. I remember that autumn thinking that surely one does not have to be a conservative to see that democrats live by and for power (the country's safety and prosperity be damned), associate themselves with all manner of unsavory people and practices and believe in nothing but "their monopoly on goodness."
Last year it was the Wellstone rally that served duty as the last straw. The best that can be said for the tightly-scripted convention was that it did not turn into a disaster, but the same, moss-backed populist rhetoric that failed to work for Al Gore is not going to do any better for the Two Johns. Kerry will be wheeled into November on a gurney and I don't care how pretty Edwards is, no ticket can be improved by the addition of a slick ambulance-chaser. This latest eruption of democrat sleaze in NJ is just beginning to bubble and spit and the more the MM tries to sit on it the more suspicions they will raise.
This is simply too deep and quiet a phenomenon to be measureable by polling. I am convinced that even people who furiously defend Kerry and the dems at cocktail parties and by the water cooler will doing otherwise in the privacy of the voting booth. Anyone with sense knows that these are dangerous times and that pulling the lever for the dems will not magically bring back the gay nineties.
That he's going to address the VFW this week is a delicious venue, I think, to defend his lies?
...I think the plan was if the President was wounded by time of the Democratic Convention Kerry would have stepped down, and Hillary would have moved up to save the party.
The Democrats not known for playing by the rules still may be thinking of a switch, but each day Kerry is a little weaker and the President is a little stronger, so I think they are stuck now with the hand they have.
I have to admit it, I would love to see them try and substitute Hilary at this juncture. They would be laughed right off the planet. But I personally believe Hilary always meant to save herself for 2008 (though she kept her options open till the last minute). Kerry does not need her machinations to destroy himself and all she needs to do for now is play the wise, generous leader of the loyal opposition. Bill's great mission from now till the end of his days is to cement his legacy as revered elder statesman (while living the rock star lifestyle offstage, is it not amazing how nothing, absolutely nothing is printed about his behind-the-scenes adventures?); give him thirty years and he'll pull it off.
The "UNSPOKEN" truth about kerry is that he is mentally unstable! I have a friend who is a Psychologist (academic research). He is also a lib (are you surprised?). He voted for klintoon twice, and then voted for gored-head. He and I were talking over a glass, and he started telling me about how kerry is (dangerously) mentally ill. He went into clinical reasons as to why he thought kerry was unstable, as he explained kerry's actions and statements that led him to this conclusion.
Hee! Hee! I remember an article in the now-defunct Spy magazine in the mid-nineties, interviewing a psychiatrist analyzing Kathie Lee Gifford's autobiography. It made for fascinating, frightening reading (esp. Kathie Lee's obsession with poop).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.