To: petuniasevan
Here's a "review" of this article from a Dem site:
BILL KELLER: ON BENDED KNEE TO DUBYA
Just Like Reagan, All Right: Media's Cover Up, That Is Keller Sprays Teflon Just Like 20 Years Ago
In what the New York Times Magazine is billing as a major political piece on the eve of the State of the Union address, Bill Keller has deployed the same protective falsehood maneuvers that the media favored in covering (and covering up for) Ronald Reagan twenty years ago.
Above all, Keller makes factually inaccurate assertions about public support for Bush, making Dubya seem much more popular than reports in his own newspaper and others show he is.
These erroneous claims form the entire premise of Kellers piece. Despite all of the missteps, scandals, and other disasters of this administration, Keller writes, Bushs approval ratings held firm and high. Nothing stuck.
The wonder, to Keller, is Bushs seeming invincibility to bad news.
Then Keller is off and running, getting sycophantic quotations from Reagans sycophant, the ex-convict Michael Deaver (ex-con? yes, but Keller doesnt tell you that), making Bush out to be a bold radical conservative in the Reagan mold who remains oh so popular.
But Kellers reporting is just as inaccurate as the reporting on Reagans popularity was way back when. Theres a reprise theme here, all right in how reporters and pundits like Keller insist on covering Bush with Teflon based on falsehoods, just as reporters did for Reagan.
The facts? Aside from what everybody recognizes was the artificial jump in Dubyas ratings after September 11, 2001, his public support has steadily declined.
Between his installation and the attacks, Bushs approval figures were scattered but showed on average a drop from the high-fifties to low-sixties down to around fifty percent. (The Gallup poll, which has consistently been at the high end, recorded more than a ten-point fall between mid February and late August 2001.)
Then, since the attacks, Bushs ratings have plummeted again, very steadily by somewhere between thirty-five and forty points. His latest ratings are just about as low as they were before 9/11....
Keller's own papers poll has recorded a drop of more than thirty points since September 2001, from 90% to 59% at the latest reading. Most other polls show a somewhat more dramatic drop, down to the 53% - 56% range.
Held firm and high? Invincibility? It's nearly as bad as Poppy's free-fall in 1991 -- and we're not done yet!
Yes, its déjà vu all over again but for the media. The same kinds of disinformation floated now by the likes of Bill Keller and Howie Mistah Kurtz were commonplace when the press systematically ignored the facts and portrayed Ronald Reagan as uniformly popular despite his descent in the polls after 1982 and after 1987.
Reagans term has been dubbed the Teflon presidency. But even at the time and more so since it has been shown repeatedly that lazy, backwards bending (or knee-bending) reporters and pundits sprayed on the Teflon themselves thereby helping to assure, among other things, Reagans huge re-election victory in 1984.
Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review way back in 1987, Michael Schudson and Elliot King demonstrated conclusively that reporters and pundits routinely claimed that Reagan was far more popular than he actually was.
Bill Kellers flat-out erroneous article is the most prominent evidence to date that exactly the same thing is going on with Dubya.
But this time, were onto the game of bended knee.
Email a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Magazine, pointing out Bill Kellers flat-out errors, and how they destroy the entire premise of his article on George W. Bush.
Email Bill Keller to ask that he publicly correct his errors in his article on Bush. Also ask him why he eagerly takes the word of an ex-convict partisan like Michael Deaver -- and why he reports it to his readers without even noting Deaver's crimes in the service of Ronald Reagan....
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Here is what I would politely say in response to this Dem site: Face it: Dems will probably lose big in Election 2004. (And, you can't blame it all on the "media.")
I don't mean that in an evil tone either. I just think it will be a cold day in h*ll before any Dem site ever recognizes how much actual damage former President Clinton did to the entire Dem Party. More voters will be voting GOP for a long time to come. It doesn't mean these voters will agree with everything. But it's better than agreeing with nothing. Just my 2 cents.
13 posted on
01/26/2003 12:35:29 AM PST by
summer
To: summer
To: summer
... it will be a cold day in h*ll before any Dem site ever recognizes how much actual damage former President Clinton did to the entire Dem Party.I believe you nailed it, Summer.
37 posted on
01/26/2003 5:13:04 AM PST by
Marauder
To: summer
I don't mean that in an evil tone either. I just think it will be a cold day in h*ll before any Dem site ever recognizes how much actual damage former President Clinton did to the entire Dem Party. Actually, I think the damage is from guys like Daschle and Leahy.
Clinton was wildly and undeservedly popular and fooled much of the nation into viewing him as a centrist.
Then, along came Daschale, Leahy, et al, who weren't as slick and let the public see the true, left wing obstructionist, face of the Democratic party.
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