Posted on 06/13/2008 8:17:15 PM PDT by pissant
The National Press Club has been inundated with complaints over its decision to stage a press conference by Larry Sinclair, a man of mysterious background who has been peddling sex and drugs claims about Barack Obama for several months.
A member of the clubs staff confided that the office had struggled to cope with calls demanding to know why one of Washingtons premier media platforms had been given over to Sinclair.
The liberal blog firedoglake says it has 7,500 signatures an online petition urging the club to rescind its decision.
According to the website, and other blogs, Sinclair failed a polygraph for the claims he had made about the Democratic nominee.
Many of those objecting to the club can be assumed to be angry Obama supporters. The senator's campaign this week launched a website, Fight the Smears, to debunk claims about his religion, his family and his wife's personality that have circulated widely in emails, on blogs and sometimes been picked up by the mainstream media.
In an emailed statement, Sylvia Smith, the National Press Clubs president, explained that the club had merely rented out a room to Sinclair, and was not sponsoring the event.
By renting a room for an event, we are not promoting or condoning or agreeing with the issues or policy positions or people involved in these events. We believe in the ability of reporters to ask good questions and report news or not as they see fit from events that take place at our location, she said.
The website for the 100-year-old institution, which regards itself as the premier journalism club in the world, boasts that it has played host to kings and queens, prime ministers, premiers, senators, congressmen, cabinet officials, ambassadors among others.
It also states that the clubs chief purpose is to "provide people who gather and disseminate news a center for the advancement of their professional standards and skills, the promotion of free expression, mutual support and social fellowship".
On this occasion it has apparently decided to honour its commitment to free expression over social fellowship.
Now, wea re starting to get somewhere!
I wonder if this will ever see the light of day?
Umm... Could we ban both?? It would increase civility in politics by 100%.
Considering the fact that he has a June 18th presser at the NPC and it alone has given him MSM coverage for the first time, we can only hope. The Obamunists are in a major snit. LOL
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched their campaign against Kerry on May 4, 2004 at the National Press Club. Of course, it was only covered by a couple of journalists and I think the stuffed the story.
http://npc.press.org/calendar/calendar.cfm?whatmonth=5&whatyear=2004
But the momentum of teh Swifties was just too damn overwhelming to ignore. I can’t wait until Larry runs his first ad on TV. LOL
There’s no whitey tape as all the smart conservative bloggers pointed out. Larry Johnson was the guy who insisted that Rove was going to be indicted and therefore is not credible. The best quote that I heard about the whitey non-scandal is that it’s a problem for Clinton’s supporters that they would spread false rumors about the Messiah’s wife and it’s a problem for the Messiah that said rumors were plausible.
ping
95% chance says he did indeed ‘have sex with that man, Mr. Sinclair’.
Yeah, Sinclair’s declarations are a LOT more exciting than the Swiftees detailed and boring documentation of Kerry’s trickery, deceipt, and treason. They will not be able to stuff the story.
Russert, that is.
Why else did the lie detector tests cost $900,000 to administer?
I had never heard of the liberal blog firedoglake — was it really a liberal blog, I wondered. Yes! A search for the F-word in the comments got many hits — it truly is a liberal site. Lots of feeeeeeeeeeelings there.
Well, it met the bar for attacks on Bush anyway.
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