Hey Sid! When did you stop beating your wife??
Posted on 05/11/2003 4:10:05 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX 02/01/99 17:21 UTC XXXXX
MEDIA DECEIVED: WHITE HOUSE AIDE BLUMENTHAL MADE UP QUOTES FOR NY TIMES, SMEARED STARR OFFICE
It has been seven months since NEW YORK TIMES columnist Anthony Lewis printed questions that White House aide Sidney Blumenthal said were posed to him before the Lewinsky grand jury.
Questions, it would later be revealed, that were never asked!
In his June 29, 1998 column -- slugged "Questions that Degrade" -- Lewis wrote:
"Sidney Blumenthal, assistant to the President, made his third appearance before Kenneth Starr's grand jury in Washington last Thursday... Mr. Blumenthal decided to tell me about the experience, as a grand-jury witness may do... Prosecutors asked Mr. Blumenthal to leave the room so they could consult. After five minutes he was called back, and Mr. Wisenberg asked him: 'Does the President's religion include sexual intercourse?'"
But according to transcripts of Blumenthal's grand jury testimony, released four months after the NEW YORK TIMES column ran, that question was never asked by prosecutors!
Lewis continued: "There was another sexual question in last week's grand-jury session, conducted by two new prosecutors. It was, 'Does the President believe that oral sex is sex?' It was just that -- a general question not tied to any particular matter."
No. It was a general question not tied to any particular reality. Another question that prosecutors never asked!
Lewis summarized: "What we have here, I think, is third-rate prosecutors full of hubris and obsessed by sex... It is sneering, smart-aleck stuff, the tone of Clinton-haters on cable television and the Internet."
The NEW YORK TIMES even worked some of the phony questions into its news copy.
"In two recent visits to the grand jury, Mr. Blumenthal said, he was asked, 'Does the President believe that oral sex is sex?' and 'Does the President's religion include sexual intercourse?'" -- JAMES BENNET's "The Titillating, Zigzagging Focus on Sex at 1600" June 30, 1998, Section A; Page 17.
Seven months later, Bennet still has not informed his readers that Blumenthal's statements were false.
And columnist Lewis has never straightened up his mess for the "newspaper of record."
NEW YORK TIMES executive editor Joseph Lelyveld could not be reached for comment.
A Starr associate explains that the Office of the Independent Counsel could not alert the media at the time of the smear due to restrictions covering grand jury secrecy.
But the grand jury foreperson personally lectured Blumenthal during the closing moments of the session last summer:
"We are very concerned about the fact that during your last visit that an inaccurate representation of the events that happened were retold on the steps of the courthouse."
"I appreciate your statement," Blumenthal responded.
"If Ken Starr is interested in the truth, he heard it today," Blumenthal told reporters just moments later.
Sidney Blumenthal, still employed at the White House, is scheduled to be a witness in the Clinton impeachment trial on Wednesday.
Will reporters print his version of the secret Senate questioning?
Or wait for the videotape.
We all know the NYT never prints the truth!
The question is: Is there anything "there" in either one of them that would cause pain?
Hey Sid! When did you stop beating your wife??
No, Doug.
No.
No.
No.
When the Constitution says "no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" it means that the government cannot enforce any standard of truthfulness more stringent than "not crying 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" on journalism.
That is why McCain-Feingold, and the old "Fairness Doctrine," are/were so invidious. They implicitly assign to journalism to status of oracle of objectivity--when, lacking any other standard for judging the significance of current events, journalism defaults to the standard of not getting into flame wars with other people who buy ink by the barrel. Concensus as "objectivity."
The exemplars of that fraudlent conformity have the unmitigated gall to accuse those too courageous to be cowed into conformity "mind-numbed robots" in the thrall of "right wing ideologues."
I received a reply from a most indignant editor saying that the Times would NEVER engage in such reporting and that they endeavored to be sure to print the TRUTH at all times.......
I am still laughing to myself at that BIG FAT LIE.
Truth means nothing to liberals if it doesn't serve their ends. Liberals have always been more than willing to sacrifice truth on the altar of political ideology. That's one thing that separates conservatives from liberals. We recognize the existence of objective truth and have the courage and intellectual honesty to face it, and build our world-view accordingly. Liberals do not, and as such everything becomes relative and subserviant to either poltical philosophy or the cult of persoanlity (as was the case with Clinton). Ideology and personality are the twin gods of liberalism. Truth need not apply...
...and a rapist gets to be President.
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.
