Teacher's pet: Kerry-Edwards, media dishonesty

Washington Times ^ | Friday, July 16, 2004 | Diana West

[JohnHuang2]

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Teacher's pet

By Diana West
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 16, 2004

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Even though it's unlikely that this nasty, fraught election summer will include a "silly season," I want to play a game. To better expose the increasingly frightening dishonesty of our media, I want to pretend that John Kerry and John Edwards are Republican senators running for the White House against an incumbent Democratic administration.
    Let's begin by flipping the candidate biographies from Left to Right:
    A four-term senator, GOP hard-liner John Kerry likes to invoke his tour of duty as a naval officer on a patrol boat during the Vietnam War as his core qualification for the presidency. Indeed, this Boston Brahmin who attended Swiss finishing school may be said to wear his four months inside Vietnam, like Teflon armor to deflect all political sallies against his ultra-conservative Senate voting record. But questions about his Vietnam service remain. While this Republican fat cat -- Mr. Kerry's wife Teresa Heinz Kerry controls between $900 million and $3.2 billion (millions of which flow to extreme right-wing causes) -- surrounds himself with a small cadre of former crew members at campaign appearances, no fewer than 254 of Mr. Kerry's former Vietnam War shipmates, including 17 out of 24 officers in his division, have signed a public letter stating that John Kerry, the Republican nominee for president, is unfit to be commander in chief.

[Imal]

Imagine the 24-7, blood-in-the-water feeding frenzy that 254 Air National Guard veterans could trigger by writing the same kind of public letter calling George W. Bush unfit to be president. That's the game.

Indeed it is, and the game is afoot. May the best man win.

[Jet Jaguar]

http://tonkin.spymac.net/hanoikerry1.html

[weegee]

Media Schadenfreude and Media Shenanigans PING

[Tom_Busch]

the increasingly frightening dishonesty of our media

Indeed.

[swilhelm73]

All so true.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Too true. However, with the new media, they are going to have a much harder time doing that. They may want their dynamic dimwits to win, but not to the degree of looking like fools and idiots.

[ARCADIA]

They may want their dynamic dimwits to win, but not to the degree of looking like fools and idiots.

Too late, they are well past the fools and idiots point, and well into the full fledged propaganda level. I trust the evening news about as much as we use to trust Pravda during the height of the cold war. The freedom to speak has become a freedom to lie.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

You may be right about that. I just don't think they realize how they look to the rest of us. After all, they have Walter "the wiseman" Cronkite up there with his tongue tied in the middle and flapping on both ends. And if they take his gravitas seriously, I don't think they realize just how much the gravitas has hit the fan.

[Veritas_est]

"In the Senate four years -- and that is the full extent of public life ' no international experience, no military experience, you can imagine what the advertising is going to be next year.... When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, I don't know if John Edwards was out of diapers then." --John Kerry, January 2004

"John Edwards is ready for this job. He is ready for this job." --John Kerry, this week, following the Edwards announcement