Posted on 07/16/2002 10:53:56 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Bob Woodruff, not the most politically astute bulb at ABC News? A little under three weeks ago Ann Coulter got into a bit of an argument with Katie Couric on the Today show over Coulter’s book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right. While Couric may have been inaccurate in saying that Coulter was wrong to assert that on three mornings Today picked up on the description of former President Reagan as an “airhead,” Couric clearly understood the conservative points Coulter otherwise made in the interview. For details about that June 26 Today interview: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020626.asp#4
On Monday’s Good Morning America, however, MRC analyst Jessica Anderson noticed that Coulter was confronted with an interviewer who didn’t seem to grasp basic conservative polemical points. She was interviewed not about her book, but about the media-fueled scandals around Bush and Cheney, by Bob Woodruff, the anchor of World News Tonight/Saturday, who is filling in this week for Charles Gibson.
When Coulter ran down a bunch of names of corporate figures involved in scandal who are big Democratic supporters, Woodruff seemed clueless to Martha Stewart’s political donation record as he seriously asked Coulter to explain her charge: “Let's talk about Martha Stewart for a second. That's a conspiracy against Martha Stewart?"
At another point, in response to Woodruff’s assertion that Bush should release the Harken Energy records “if in fact there's nothing there,” Coulter quipped, "Well, I don't know, why doesn't the publisher of The New York Times release his SAT scores?” Missing the joke, Woodruff followed up with this non-sequitur: "You've never called on the editors of conservative publications to release any information when you're calling on Bill Clinton, for example, to release information about his past."
In a moment of standard liberal reasoning, Woodruff declared as fact of Bush’s Harken stock sale: "This is very relevant for a President who is now trying to crack down on insider trading."
The complete transcript of the in-studio interview which led the 7:30am half hour on July 15:
Woodruff: "We begin this half hour with a woman who is always provocative, always evocative, and we want to talk to this person who has the number one book in the country right now. We want to focus on the President and Vice President and their stock deals that they have made before coming to the White House with the administration. They are now calling for much tougher penalties for companies and executives who cook their books. And joining us this morning is the conservative political pundit and the author of Slander, Ann Coulter. Welcome to the broadcast."
Coulter: "Thank you."
Woodruff: "Let me just start quickly. Do you believe that this scandal that we are now seeing is politically motivated?"
Coulter: "I think pretty much everything other than the media reporting floods and tornadoes is a political vendetta. All the other news is, so yeah, I mean, the Democrats are trying to use it that way. It plays off something that, I think, is one of the liberal lies about conservatives and that is that conservatives are the party of the powerful and Democrats are the party of the people -- au contraire! I mean, just look at the people involved in this, or the red states and the blue states, or the richest members of the United States Senate."
Woodruff: "Now, in your book, let me just give a quote that you said: 'The New York Times gave up harping about Bush's handling of the war and gave its full attention to attacking Enron.'"
Coulter: "Right."
Woodruff: "At the time your book came out you hadn't seen what had happened afterwards. Given the events now, what we know about Enron and other companies, do you still believe that's the case?"
Coulter: "Oh, yes. Now they're attacking, you know, all of these corporations as if it's the Republican Party that stands for these bigwigs. What, like Martha Stewart, Sam Waksal, you know, Global Crossing? No, I'm sorry. I mean, by and large, corporations-"
Woodruff: "Let's talk about Martha Stewart for a second. That's a conspiracy against Martha Stewart?"
Coulter: "Oh, no, no, no. What I'm saying is that despite, you know, 50 years of contrary evidence, people still seem to associate Republicans as the powerful and Democrats the party of the people. Well, Martha Stewart was one of Bill Clinton's biggest supporters. Corporations generally are whores, you know. They give equally to the Republicans and the Democrats, but I happen to notice that in these scandals, well, an awful lot of them are huge friends of Bill."
Woodruff, displaying circular reasoning: "But see, these scandals have been focusing largely on what particular players in the administration have been doing. President Bush sold 200,000 shares, made $800,000 on stock he sold at Harken Energy."
Coulter: "Right."
Woodruff declared as fact: "This is very relevant for a President who is now trying to crack down on insider trading."
Coulter: "I don't think so. I think it's another one of these phony media scandals, as I describe in my book, through liberals' childlike fascination with the law. They toss about these legal terms like proprietary interest, conflict of interest, but when you actually go to the trouble of figuring out what it's about, there's nothing there, there's nothing there at all. I mean, only liberals could slander through boredom. No one can follow this story, but when you look, there's nothing there. It's just, you know, Bush's name, it's exactly like I said about Enron and the power of repetition: it's just Harken, Harken, Harken, Harken -- it's all anyone knows."
Woodruff: "If in fact there's nothing there, why doesn't he release the entire SEC file as so many, even Orrin Hatch has called on him to release the file."
Coulter, trying to make a bit of a joke: "Well, I don't know, why doesn't the publisher of The New York Times release his SAT scores? There are a lot of things I'd like to see more than this idiotic -- I mean, we know what happened, but if I start describing it, we're going to lose half the viewers. That's what I say about how boring it is. He sells his stock-"
Woodruff followed up with an impossible to comprehend question: "You've never called on the editors of conservative publications to release any information when you're calling on Bill Clinton, for example, to release information about his past."
A befuddled Coulter: "Um, what?"
Woodruff: "Well, I mean, this is the President of the United States."
Coulter: "No, I wasn't."
Woodruff: "He needs to reveal information to the people."
Coulter, referring to Clinton: "We just wanted him to stop committing felonies!"
Woodruff: "But you're saying that The New York Times should release information about what they did?"
Since Woodruff wouldn’t let it go, Coulter took advantage to expound on the SAT point in a serious way: "Oh, right, about his SAT scores. Yeah, that's because I don't attack every political opponent for 50 years going back to, you know, Calvin Coolidge by saying, 'He's stupid, he's stupid, he's stupid.' I mean, if that's going to be The New York Times's primary argument against every Republican presidential candidate, I think we should see their SAT scores. As it turns out, you know, despite all of the media calling Bill Bradley 'cerebral, cerebral, cerebral' for 20 years, it seems like it was his first name. He got a 485 on the SAT scores -- that's cerebral for a Democrat? I mean, these are just terms to slander one side and promote the other. 'Bush is stupid': you know, he went to Yale, got an MBA from Harvard, but Bradley, 485 on the SATs, that's cerebral."
Woodruff: "What about the Vice President, Dick Cheney? He has been completely silent about Halliburton and that is a company that's under investigation and he made a lot of money on the stock, too. Should he reveal the information about his activities with Halliburton?"
Coulter: "What information? I think it's revealed and we are at war here. No, I think he should not comply with something that is just a synthetic media scandal and I think the American people are getting tired of it, just the power of repetition, over and over and over again. And like I said, if the viewers really care, go to the trouble and look it up and you'll see there's nothing to it."
Woodruff: "Well, let me give you a quote from Newsweek here about Dick Cheney. It's from the current CEO of Halliburton David Lesar. He says that Dick Cheney was a hands-on leader and, quote, 'was aware of who owed us money and he helped us collect it.' Isn't that relevant?"
Coulter: "Um, no. I mean, I don't know what that is supposed to prove. People run businesses."
Woodruff: "Don't we want to know what he knew and when he knew it?"
Coulter: "About who owed them money and collecting it? Isn't that just capitalism? Somebody owes you money and you -- there's nothing criminal in what you've described. I mean, this is what I mean about just-"
Woodruff jumped in: "There are allegations of wrongdoing."
Coulter: "Well, there are always allegations of wrongdoing -- they're Republicans! Of course there are allegations. A tone of voice, saying something, you know, and tossing about these legal terms doesn't, is not evidence of a criminal offense. It is not, technically, as yet, criminal to be a Republican in this country."
Woodruff: "Alright, Ann Coulter, thank you very much for joining us. As always, it's good to have you here. Thank you very much."
Coulter: "Thank you."
Woodruff doesn't know anything about Martha Stewart or Global crossing?? Wonder what range HIS SAT scores fell into....negative numbers???
Two STERLING examples of the self-styled "intellectual elite" of this country. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Reporting earthquakes and comet crashes on Jupiter, maybe. But media reporting of floods and tornadoes sometimes turns into insinuations about global warming caused by conservatives.
In the wild world of wingnut liberal-land...would the ability to actually SPEAK the Chinese language be necessary? Bet he can understand and interpret the philosophy of the Chicom GOVERNMENT...fluently.
In 1989, Woodruff worked as a translator for CBS News during the events in China’s Tiananmen Square.
The rest of his bio says he was trained as a lawyer in school but says nothing about having lived in China. So when or where did Woodruff learn Chinese? Or was this an example of resume inflation?
A Rutgers alum
You assume he was a Chinese/English interpreter. Maybe he was a Portugese to English intepreter LIVING in China where the pressure of being good at your job was not quite as high as in, say, Lisbon.
Ann is to Beauty and Brains as
Hillary is to ????? and ?????.
Poor Demoncraps!
Could very well be...or it could be a reference to his record as a good little comrade.
HAHAHAHA
487???? The ivy needs thinning
Hey: 487 but a heck of a jump shot!From http://www.ilstu.edu/~lmbojan/Underachievers.html:
U.S. News 4/3/00"...As the Washington Post revealed last week in expanding on a new biography of Gore by Bill Turque, Gore's grades in his sophomore year at Harvard were lower than any semester Bush spent at Yale. Gore got a D, one C minus, two C pluses, and one B minus. As the Post noted, this was the year Gore spent "shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers, and occasionally smoking marijuana." And the vice president, who now so closely identifies with the high-tech revolution that he momentarily forgot that he didn't invent it, never took a single math course in four years. Not that the Gore campaign is worried about the revelations. "The more people learn about Al Gore," says his spokesman, Chris Lehane, "the more they find they have a lot in common with him." And Gore did have the potential to do better if he had only applied himself: His verbal SAT score was 625 (out of 800) compared with Bush's 566 and Princetonian Bill Bradley's 485. (If you're wondering how your kid can get into Princeton with a 485 SAT score, the answer is that she better have a killer jump shot...)"
LOL...<G>...just...LOLing too much right now to type anything else.
OK....tears now too....well...saves on eye drops
Yep...that's my take.
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