Free Republic

The media’s ability to shape opinion derives from its power to slant the news―the pervasive activism known as “media bias”―and also from its power to choose what is and is not reported. But 2004 marked a watershed in American political history. That was the year the old media lost control of our national conversation.

Via Glenn Reynolds: "In order to Swift Boat John McCain you will need his fellow POWs to come out and say he is bloviating, etc. Swift Boating means someone who was there who knows you are full of hot air is on your tail. Not, I repeat not, what the left wants it to mean. The only way John McCain can be Swift Boated is if someone who was there with him causes McCain's campaign to scramble to answer the allegations. Otherwise, this is desperation by the left who sees their guaranteed win slipping away." It'll get uglier before it's...

It's only dirty pool if you lose. That's the apparent Democratic approach to presidential politics. In 2004, Democrats tried to use film, in the form of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 , to discredit and bring down President Bush in his re-election effort. CBS even got into the fray, using obviously forged documents to try to tarnish Bush's National Guard service. It led to news anchor Dan Rather's retirement. Yet, four years after a group of veterans from Democratic nominee John Kerry's "swift boat" days in Vietnam hit the news media with their concerns about his war record, it was considered...

It's only dirty pool if you lose. That's the apparent Democratic approach to presidential politics. In 2004, Democrats tried to use film, in the form of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 , to discredit and bring down President Bush in his re-election effort. CBS even got into the fray, using obviously forged documents to try to tarnish Bush's National Guard service. It led to news anchor Dan Rather's retirement. Yet, four years after a group of veterans from Democratic nominee John Kerry's "swift boat" days in Vietnam hit the news media with their concerns about his war record, it was considered...

Never Again! Not the Holocaust. We're talking about the MSM's determination not to let Barack Obama be "Swiftboated." In successive segments today, CNN provided a perfect example of the phenomenon. First, a one-sided trashing of Obama Nation, the anti-Barack book by Jerome Corsi, who co-authored Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. In the succeeding segment, anchor Suzanne Malveaux worried out loud to Paul Begala that Barack Obama might not be responding fast enough to attacks against him, thereby "falling into the same trap as John Kerry." Introducing the first segment, Situation Room anchor Malveaux didn't...

The political hunting season for presidential candidates has arrived early, and already it features a new level of mudslinging and cage-match attacks. A new GOP Web site, meetbarackobama.com, has a daily "Audacity Watch" on Democratic candidate Barack Obama - including a takeoff on a Facebook page ( www.barackbook.com) that features Obama "friends" like Tony Rezko, the Chicago fundraiser who was convicted of fraud, and William Ayres, a founder of the 1960s violent radical group the Weathermen. The Democrats this week launched the Exxon/McCain '08 campaign, complete with Web site, bumper stickers and slogans ("Oil Companies First"). They also created thenextdickcheney.com...

Re: "swiftboating" From StreetInsider.com, July 3, 2008: "The 'Swiftboating' slogan is used by leftist politicians and members of the old media to smear the Swift Vets and other anti-Kerry veterans as liars. The truth is that they were effective because they supported their charges with evidence. A second goal of this tactic is to preempt any criticism of Sen. Obama and the other Democrats they are trying to elect - however accurate and relevant such criticism may be," said Scott Swett, the primary author of To Set the Record Straight. Source: Authors of New Book on Swift Boat Veterans for...

The New York Times published an article Monday about the anger some Vietnam veterans feel over the vessel they used to serve on, Swift Boat, now being synonymous with "the nastiest of campaign smears." In dredging up this issue, Times' writer Kate Zernike not only misrepresented many of the facts surrounding the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but also completely ignored the mainstream media's role in turning the name of this patrol craft into a political pejorative. In fact, something the Times conveniently chose not to share with its readers was how one of its own...

The Republican party's attempts to portray Obama as arrogant could hurt him in the election. Presidential races generally hinge on character issues - as Republicans understand. That's why, the last two times out, the GOP has won the White House by hammering into voters' minds the idea that the Democratic candidate embodies a particular negative quality. In 2000, Al Gore was depicted (with the help of a lazy and compliant press corps) as a serial exaggerator. Four years later, John Kerry was portrayed as a weak-willed flip-flopper. Ultimately, it was these personal caricatures, far more than any specific policy prescriptions,...

Correction Appended Years ago, when William Miller talked about being in the Vietnam War — if he talked about being in the Vietnam War — he would tell people he served on a Swift boat. At least now they have heard of it. But not in the way he would like. “I was proud of what I did, and all the guys I was with,” Mr. Miller said. “Now somebody says ‘Swift boat’ and it’s a whole different meaning. They don’t associate it with the guys we lost. That’s a shame.” “Swift boat” has become the synonym for the nastiest...

It's common to see mentions in the press these days about some "swiftboating" of Barack Obama that is allegedly in the works, or might someday allegedly be in the works, or might someday be thought to be allegedly in the works. While I'm sure there will be some hit jobs on Obama — this is a presidential campaign, after all — this talk seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding, perhaps willful in some cases, of the swiftboat episode in the 2004 campaign. The swiftboat veterans in that year were the officers who served alongside John Kerry in Vietnam....

Short Pants’ Short Memory Swift-boat THIS.by Steve Finefrock Michael Kinsley is wearing his intellectual short pants again, in his essay on Swiftboating. Wishing upon wishes for a ‘clean’ campaign of purity, he asserts, “Swift-boat is shorthand for the brilliant, despicable Republican campaign strategy in 2004 that turned John Kerry's honorable service in Vietnam into a negative factor in his campaign. The phrase has become more broadly the term for a particular category of campaign tactics and has even become a verb. To ‘swift-boat’ somebody is to use these tactics against him or her.” Kinsley is not stupid, nor ignorant, but...

John McCain and Barack Obama are about to face a moral choice. It will probably be made in bits and pieces over the next five months, but we can imagine it as a single dramatic incident: the adviser approaches and says, "Yes or no. Do you want to swift-boat?" If you were the presidential candidate, what answer would you give? Swift-boat is shorthand for the brilliant, despicable Republican campaign strategy in 2004 that turned John Kerry's honorable service in Vietnam into a negative factor in his campaign. The phrase has become more broadly the term for a particular category of...

Barack Obama supporter accuses Jewish lobby members of McCarthyism By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 1:04PM BST 27/05/2008A foreign policy expert consulted by Senator Barack Obama, the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, has accused members of the American Jewish establishment of "McCarthyism" in its attitude towards critics of Israel. Mr Brzezinski has been accused of being 'anti-Israel' by some Jewish academics, writers and bloggers Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, said that the pro-Israel lobby in the US was too powerful, while the slur of anti-Semitism was too readily used whenever its power was called into...

While Senator Clinton tries to prove that in counting delegates, 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2, the rest of us are already weighing the choice between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. Obama has, however, learned a valuable Clinton trick from this protracted primary -- how to obliquely reference the “vast, right-wing conspiracy” to misdirect people’s attention away from glaring, personal deficiencies. During his victory speech in North Carolina on Tuesday night Obama said, “We know what’s coming…the same names and labels they (Republicans) pin on everyone who doesn’t agree with all of their ideas.” Actually, we have some new...

I want . . Freedom of the press to be the right not to be lied to. You are confused. So very seriously confused about the First Amendment, that you are not thinking any more clearly about it than I was before the mid-1990s, when I began to see through the system by which the "journalistic objectivity" con is perpetrated. And since I was already in my fifties by then, I have every reason to understand how you might see things the way you do. Freedom of the press is much more like "the right to lie to you"...

To the question of the moment--What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?--I answer, Obama knew everything, and he's known it for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah Wright's disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack Obama must have long been aware of his pastor's political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year's worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine, Wright's glossy national "lifestyle magazine for the socially conscious," makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise. Wright founded Trumpet Newsmagazine in 1982 as a "church newspaper"--primarily for his own congregation, one gathers--to "preach...

SDS General Educational Development by: Cliff Kincaid, May 06, 2008 Tom Hayden, who cheered for a communist military victory in Vietnam, is calling attention to Senator Hillary Clinton’s old ties to communists. But Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, formerly of the Washington Post, wonders if Hillary’s comments on Senator Barack Obama’s ties to communist terrorist Bill Ayers constitute McCarthyism. Bernstein, now an election analyst for CNN, has reason to be concerned about where all of this may lead. His parents were members of the Communist Party USA, and he says in his book about them, Loyalties, “I am proud of the...

By Christopher CookThe National Campaign Fund has produced a devastating campaign ad exposing Barack Obama's weakness on matters of crime, and positing questions about his potential conduct in waging the War on Terror. The ad can be viewed at the site ExposeObama.com.After you've watched it, check out these headlines, culled from a single day of reporting on the ad: How Republicans Plan on Ganging Up on Obama for Being "Weak" on Street Gangs Obama Gets the Willie Horton Treatment Breaking... Obama "Swiftboating" Plan Revealed Conservatives rolling out attack ads aimed at Obama, supporters Willie Horton Mastermind Takes Aim at Obama...

If the words "swift" and "boat" must be combined and turned into a verb, then let us insist on its proper use. The word as a verb originates from the campaign undertaken in 2004 by the Swift Boat Veterans in response to the John Kerry presidential candidacy. The word means, or should mean, the exposure of a fraudulent autobiography of one seeking political office or public influence. It is the correction of a personal and professional record that has been selectively and dishonestly compiled, as the Swift Vets did so effectively to that of John Kerry. Although swiftboating may be...