Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Posted on 12/23/2002 11:32:15 PM PST by JohnHuang2
SEATTLE – Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray's commendation of Osama bin Laden's nation-building tactics has generated an Internet and talk-radio firestorm since Friday but has garnered little notice in the mainstream media.
A Lexis-Nexis search turned up just 22 news stories on Murray's remarks. A similar search for stories on the controversy over Trent Lott's comments would not list the items because there were more than 1,000.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. |
The New York Times made no mention of Murray's speech, while the Washington Post gave it only brief notice in the middle of a political roundup column by Brian Faler.
The Post's Faler began with, "Republicans are screaming about comments by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) that charitable works made Osama bin Laden popular in poor countries – and her challenge to the United States to do the same."
WorldNetDaily White House correspondent Les Kinsolving said he called the New York Times national desk to ask why the story had not been covered. Michael McElroy told Kinsolving he had not heard of Murray's remarks, although they were distributed via the Associated Press wire.
McElroy said he would surely bring it to the attention of the editors, but would not promise to call Kinsolving back with their response.
Media analyst Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media says simply that he believes the U.S. mainstream media have their own agenda.
"Unlike Trent Lott's remarks, this is not something that excites them," Irvine told WorldNetDaily. "They don't want to weaken Patty Murray. After all, the people who are running the media, except for a few, are committed to the liberal side, and this is how the liberals get away with it."
But Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., thinks Murray's remarks are not getting attention because they largely were correct.
"The conservative media is trying to find an equal to the Trent Lott mistatements and are trying to build this up into an equivalence," said Felling, whose group describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. "After the Lott brouhaha, a lot of public statements are radioactive and public mistakes moreso. So, I think people are trying to fight fire with fire."
Felling said Murray's only mistake was saying that bin Laden built day-care facilities.
"She overstated the problem," he said.
Murray's remarks
Last Wednesday, at the conclusion of a session with students at Columbia River High School in Vancouver, Wash., Murray said she wanted to bring up a further point to add to their discussion about alternatives to war.
"We've got to ask, why is this man so popular around the world?" she said in reference to bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries that are riddled with poverty?"
Murray said, according to the Vancouver Columbian newspaper, that bin Laden has been "out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that."
The second-term senator then asked the students to ponder: "How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"
WND's first story on Murray was picked up by a pro-bin Laden website called Taliban Online.
The posting includes the first part of the story, which recounts the senator's remarks about bin Laden, then inserts this note: "The rest of the story [tries] to put down Osama with the same old rubbish ... ."
'Bottom-up rebellion'
In an interview with WND, talk radio host and former Republican gubernatorial candidate John Carlson compared the Murray story to the memorial for Sen. Paul Wellstone. That event, just before the November election, turned into a raucous political rally that apparently damaged Democratic candidates at the polls.
"The mainstream news media, if you look at reports that came out immediately, didn't see anything inappropriate in that," Carlson said of the Wellstone memorial. "But if you heard talk radio and saw the Internet – especially C-SPAN, since they showed it – you saw a bottom-up rebellion, a tide of anger beginning to build, and the same thing is happening here" with the Murray story.
"The mainstream media are buying her explanation and are burying the story," Carlson said. "But talk radio and the Internet, which are closer to America at ground level, are blazing with it."
Carlson believes, nevertheless, that Murray's remarks likely will not damage her.
"I think the holidays are going to rescue her," he told WND. "Plus, she is keeping a very low profile, and the Democrats have lost their majority."
The one political fallout he sees is that Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., who is considering running against Murray in 2004, has publicly challenged the senator, calling her remarks "bizarre" and "uninformed."
"That is unusual for George," said Carlson. "It's not his style."
Carlson said that on his KVI radio show he heard from educators around the state who said they have heard Murray make these comments before.
One was a high school teacher from the Navy port of Bremerton, "where soldiers happen to live," Carlson said.
"The kids argued back with Murray," he noted.
Another was a university professor in the Puget Sound area who wrote in to say, "please understand these were not isolated incidents; this is what she also said here," recounted Carlson, who believes the unidentified teacher was from the University of Washington.
"He said he was chagrined that [Murray] didn't know we were sending $3 billion a year to Egypt," recalled Carlson.
'Where was the outrage?'
Roger Hedgecock, filling in for talk radio host Rush Limbaugh yesterday, asked, after noting the story was picked up by only a few media sources, including WND: "Where was the shock? Where was the outrage?"
"Osama bin Laden hasn't been building schools and health-care facilities and infrastructure and roads," Hedgecock said. "He's been building terrorist training camps. He's been exploding bombs and murdering people. He hasn't building an infrastructure."
Hedgecock said he received a call on Friday from a man who has been to Afghanistan six times in the last year and "didn't see anything the Taliban or al-Qaida had done by way of building bridges and roads and schools."
"They've been shutting them down," Hedgecock said. "The only schools that opened up are these madrassas where they teach hatred and killing."
Hedgecock asked, where does Murray "get off characterizing the enemy, the sworn enemy of this country, the man who has declared war on every American, who would kill Patty Murray if he could, where does she get off praising him? This is like saying 'Hitler was a sensitive painter. You've got to be aware of why people like him. He was such a sensitive man. He was a painter.' Now no one would get away with that. How is Patty Murray getting away with this about Osama bin Laden?"
"How come they're completely ignored by the same national media that has the capability of blowing into the stratosphere comments by Trent Lott?" Hedgecock asked.
Struggle for freedom
A letter writer to the Washington Times yesterday, Henry Jacobsen of Fredericksburg, Va., said that he lived and worked in more than 50 countries with various foreign affairs agencies.
"So I was especially appalled by Washington Senator Patty Murray's comments regarding Osama bin Laden," Jacobsen wrote. "Her statements were a slap in the face to countless Peace Corps volunteers, U.S. Embassy employees, and specialists within the U.S. Agency for International Development who have dedicated their lives to a cause President John F. Kennedy called 'the long twilight struggle for freedom.'"
Jacobsen said that, "In her rush to blame America first, Mrs. Murray has forgotten the high price Americans have paid during this long twilight struggle."
"As I write this, I am fighting back tears, recalling the friends and colleagues I've lost over the years to senseless acts of terrorism while they tried helping others," Jacobsen wrote. "How could she be so ungrateful and insensitive? How could she be so ignorant? I would urge her and the high school students she addressed to visit the State Department building in Washington, D.C. Within the diplomatic entrance, they will find a granite wall inscribed with the names of those who died in the service of their country and of humanity itself. May Mrs. Murray never disregard their sacrifice again."
Former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer said he believes Sen. Murray "will not face political death the way her colleague from Mississippi did."
"Her remarks only made the press Saturday morning and the story will be over by tonight," he wrote yesterday in his daily e-mail brief.
"Democratic Senators won't run to microphones to distance themselves from her," said Bauer, president of the lobby group American Values. "Her closest allies won't say she is an embarrassment to her party. The New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards will be silent. Liberals won't form a circular firing squad to destroy themselves over her gaffe. And I doubt the top political operatives of the GOP will spend any energy today on how to make this the national story it should be."
"Whatever one thinks about Trent Lott's gaffe," wrote Bauer, "no one would seriously argue his presence in the Senate would put our country at risk. But Senator Murray's mindset, shared by many on the radical left, is exactly the kind of blindness that could ultimately undermine our ability to win the war on terrorism."
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