Posted on 11/21/2001 6:15:20 AM PST by SolitaryMan
George Stephanopoulos and Alexandra Wentworth walk down the aisle of New York's Holy Trinity Cathedral after being wed in a Greek Orthodox ceremony Tuesday night, Nov. 20, 2001. The couple were married by George's father, Robert Stephanopoulos, Dean of the Archdiocesan of the cathedral. (AP Photo/Holy Trinity Cathedral, Dimitrios Panagos)
He is. That's Ru Paul on the left.
Diane Sawyer on Tuesday morning praised George Stephanopoulos: "You've been completely non-partisan in covering the news."
Her affirmation of his supposed lack of any partisan agenda came during a segment caught by MRC analyst Jessica Anderson in which Stephanopoulos appeared with his fiancee, bit-part actress Alexandra Wentworth, who had declared herself a Democrat after affectionately telling Stephanopoulos: "Honey, you can touch me, we’re getting married....I’m not Janet Reno, I’m your fiancee."
Stephanopoulos is co-hosting GMA all this week as part of a tryout to be the permanent co-host, as the July 24 CyberAlert noted in citing a USA Today story.
Below is a rundown of the exchange during which Sawyer made her claim, followed by a Media Reality Check fax report the MRC distributed on Wednesday which recalled just a few of the most recent partisan comments from the former Clintonista.
Wentworth, who has appeared in the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld, a couple of episodes of Felicity and who has had small roles in movies such as Jerry McGuire, sat in with Stephanopoulos and Sawyer on July 24 for a few segments on wedding planning. Just past 8:30am Stephanopoulos reached over to hold her hand, prompting this exchange:
Wentworth: "Honey, you can touch me, we’re getting married.... I’m not Janet Reno, I’m your fiancee."
Sawyer: "I have to tell everybody something else, because your Mom was Social Secretary in the Reagan administration and so does this mean that politics is a staple of your conversation?"
Stephanopoulos: "She swears she’s a Democrat."
Wentworth: "Yes. Well what am I going to say?...I’m a Democrat, I grew up around politics and I swore I would never, ever marry anybody involved in politics -- but like they say in the Godfather, ‘just when I thought I was out they pull me back in.’"
Sawyer: "And we should say, I mean, George being a Democrat, but I, watching you and watching you cover the news over the past year, you are so much about passion for politics and it doesn't matter to you, I mean -- I really mean this."
George Stephanopoulos: "Thank you."
Sawyer: "You've been completely non-partisan in covering the news."
Wentworth: "That’s true."
The Internet Movie Database Web site identifies Wentworth’s mother as Mabel Cabot Wentworth, "First Lady Nancy Reagan's social secretary in the White House. Her father, Eric Wentworth, was a reporter for the Washington Post." For more on the younger Wentworth’s career, go to: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Wentworth,+Alexandra
To watch a RealPlayer video of the above exchange, go to the MRC home page where the MRC’s Andy Szul has already posted it: http://www.mrc.org
Sawyer’s preposterous claim about Stephanopoulos led the MRC’s Director of Media Analysis, Rich Noyes, to produce a Media Reality Check on Wednesday with some of his more partisan jabs of late. It was titled, "‘Completely Non-Partisan’ Stephanopoulos: Diane Sawyer Praised Objectivity of Former Clinton Aide Currently Auditioning for Morning Host Job."
To view it as fax recipients saw it, access the Adobe Acrobat PDF version:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/reality/2001/pdf/fax0725.pdf
The pull-out quote in the middle of the page, headlined: "Once a Spin Doctor, Always a Spin Doctor." "Gore exaggerated a little bit. You saw him backtrack on whether or not he was really with James Lee Witt in Texas last night...but there were no big, big lies or distortions."
-- ABC "truth squad" analyst George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, October 4, 2000, downplaying the importance of Al Gore’s false debate claim that he visited a Houston, Texas disaster site with then-FEMA Director James Lee Witt.
Now an excerpt of the July 25 Media Reality Check:
....[Stephanopoulos has] "been completely non-partisan in covering the news." Oh, really?
> Remember Al Gore’s unctuously aggressive first debate performance last year, later lampooned by Saturday Night Live? Stephanopoulos claimed he loved it: "Gore dominated the debate," he gushed. "Even the way that he would interrupt Jim Lehrer and say, ‘Listen, I want one more word.’ He looked like he was dominating and, then again, the issues that the time was spent on -- prescription drugs, education, Social Security, even the RU-486 and abortion issue -- all of those favor Gore." (ABC’s post-debate coverage, October 3, 2000.)
> He was equally "non-partisan" when it came to analyzing then-President Clinton’s speeches. "Virtuoso, Peter," he exclaimed after the 2000 State of the Union address. "The address of a proud President, a tireless policy wonk and a very shrewd political strategist." (ABC’s post-State of the Union coverage, January 27, 2000.)
> During the primaries, he insisted on labeling both Gore and Bill Bradley as "basically centrist Democrats. I think they have one huge fundamental policy difference, over the issue of health care." (Good Morning America, January 6, 2000.)
But when it came to labeling the Republican candidates, Stephanopoulos crowed that "Democrats are pretty happy right now....They had decided they would rather run against George W. Bush, especially because he’s had to move so far to the right. He’s now the kamikaze conservative, with all the positions he’s had to take here in South Carolina — against choice, going to Bob Jones University, really locking himself in on that huge tax cut." (This Week, February 20, 2000.)
> During the Florida mess, it was hard to tell where David Boies ended and George Stephanopoulos began. "There is no question, or very little question, that Al Gore won the votes cast in the state of Florida," he baldly asserted a week after the election. "The question is, will he win the votes counted?" (This Week, November 12, 2000.)
> Stephanopoulos has also proved a tireless proponent of McCain-Feingold, although that hardly distinguishes him from the Washington press corps. Reacting to billionaire Warren Buffett’s endorsement of so-called campaign finance reform, Stephanopoulos lectured that "Warren Buffett is showing the common sense that made him a wealthy man." (This Week, March 18, 2001.)
As a liberal Democratic "spin doctor," Stephanopoulos recognized that the best spin combines a few factual statements to establish credibility with self-serving analysis and labels like "kamikaze conservative" that shove your opponents into an ideological drawer. ABC has labored to transform his image from Democratic boy wonder to an allegedly neutral journalist, but their efforts — and Sawyer’s shameless claim that he’s completely non-partisan — are belied by his incessant liberal spin.
END Excerpt of Media Reality Check
BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Yeah, gays.
I read his book a couple of years ago and I remember he took Rush Limbaugh's lampooning of him with good humor. Remember Rush's TV show? He used to depict a baby in diapers with a picture of George's face stuck in place of the baby's face. Later on, he met Rush at some function and commented on it (I can't remember what he said to him), but after their conversation, the diapers were gone and George had progressed to short pants.
alt.showbiz.gossip
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.