Those Pesky Voters
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times
Published: June 12, 2006
I remember fielding telephone calls on Election Day 2004 from friends and
colleagues anxious to talk about the exit polls, which seemed to show that
John Kerry was beating George W. Bush and would be the next president.
As the afternoon faded into evening, reports started coming in that the
Bush camp was dispirited, maybe even despondent, and that the Kerry crowd
was set to celebrate. (In an article in the current issue of Rolling Stone,
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes, "In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to
bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.")
I was skeptical.
The election was bound to be close, and I knew that Kerry couldn't win
Florida. I had been monitoring the efforts to suppress Democratic votes
there and had reported on the thuggish practice (by the Jeb Bush
administration) of sending armed state police officers into the homes of
elderly black voters in Orlando to "investigate" allegations of voter fraud.
As far as I was concerned, Florida was safe for the G.O.P. That left
Ohio.
Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious
to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Mr. Kennedy, in his
long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no
doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the
Buckeye State. Mr. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his
votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote
for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.
Mr. Kennedy's article echoed and expanded upon an article in Harper's
("None Dare Call It Stolen," by Mark Crispin Miller) that ran last summer.
Both articles documented ugly, aggressive and frequently unconscionable
efforts by G.O.P. stalwarts to disenfranchise Democrats in Ohio, especially
those in urban and heavily black areas.
The point man for these efforts was the Ohio secretary of state, J.
Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who was both the chief election official in
the state and co-chairman of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio — just as
Katherine Harris was the chief election official and co-chairwoman of the
Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida in 2000.
No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But
whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks
that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that
every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and
regulation, somehow favored Mr. Bush.
For example, the shortages of voting machines and the long lines with
waits of seven hours or more occurred mostly in urban areas and discouraged
untold numbers of mostly Kerry voters.
Walter Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University, did a
statistical analysis of the vote in Franklin County, which includes the city
of Columbus. He told Mr. Kennedy, "The allocation of voting machines in
Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high
proportions of African-Americans."
Mr. Mebane told me that he compared the distribution of voting machines
in Ohio's 2004 presidential election with the distribution of machines for a
primary election held the previous spring. For the primary, he said, "There
was no sign of racial bias in the distribution of the machines." But for the
general election in November, "there was substantial bias, with fewer voting
machines per voter in areas that were heavily African-American."
Mr. Mebane said he was unable to determine whether the machines were
"intentionally" allocated "to create these biases."
Mr. Kennedy noted that this was just one of an endless sequence of
difficulties confronting Democratic voters that stretched from the
registration process to the post-election recount. Statistical analyses —
not just of the distribution of voting machines, but of wildly anomalous
voting patterns — have left nonpartisan experts shaking their heads.
The lesson out of Ohio (and Florida before it) is that the integrity of
the election process needs to be more fiercely defended in the face of
outrageous Republican assaults. Democrats, the media and ordinary voters
need to fight back.
The right to vote is supposed to mean something in the United States. The
idea of going to war overseas in the name of the democratic process while
making a mockery of that process here at home is just too ludicrous.
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 Tue
21 Mar 2006
By Ali al-Mashhadani
HADITHA, Iraq (Reuters) - A video of civilians who may have been killed
by U.S. Marines in an Iraqi town in November showed residents describing a
rampage by U.S. soldiers that left a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and
destruction.
A copy of the video, given to Reuters by Iraq's Hammurabi Organisation
for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy, showed corpses lined up at the
Haditha morgue. The chief doctor at Haditha's hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi,
said the victims had bullet wounds in the head and chest.
Most residents interviewed by Reuters in Haditha on Tuesday echoed
accusations by residents in the video that U.S. Marines attacked houses
after their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb.
They said the Marines opened fire on houses. "I saw a soldier standing
outside a house and he opened fire on the house," said one resident, who did
not want to be identified.
Time magazine published allegations on Monday that U.S. Marines killed
civilians in Haditha after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside
bomb. It published detailed accounts by people in the town, west of Baghdad.
A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week. Time said
the main question facing the probe was whether the "Marines killing of 15
non-combatants was an act of legitimate self-defence or negligent homicide."
Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is in Anbar province,
an area that has seen much activity by Sunni Arab insurgents whose campaign
to topple the Iraqi government has killed thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces
and civilians.
On November 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool issued a
statement saying that, on the previous day, a roadside bomb had killed 15
civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops had
killed eight insurgents, he added.
U.S. military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version
of the events of November 19 was wrong and that the 15 civilians were not
killed by the blast but were shot dead.
TRUCK PILED WITH CORPSES
Time magazine said this week the video of the corpses it provided to the
military in January had prompted the revision.
Accusations that American soldiers often kill innocent people have
fuelled anger at the occupation among Iraqis over the past three years.
The video given to Reuters shows bodies piled in the back of a white
pickup truck outside the morgue. Among them was a girl who appeared to be
about three years old.
One man wept and leaned against a wall as he identified a relative and
other residents inspected bodies in the morgue. One man's face had been torn
apart by bullets, while a blackened corpse was missing legs and forearms.
The video also showed houses with bullet holes in the walls, pieces of
human flesh, pools of blood and clothes and pots scattered across floors.
In one home, a young boy wept as he sat beside a corpse and said: "My
father. My father."
Some residents blamed U.S. President George W. Bush, former Iraqi Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi and President Jalal Talabani. "Is this the democracy
Allawi, Talabani and Bush are talking about?" one resident asked.
Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani, head of Hammurabi, said U.S. Marines had
killed 15 people in Haditha after the roadside bomb attack. The group's
Haditha branch said it got the video from a local man.
Mashhadani said he had brought the case to the attention of the United
Nations office in Baghdad. "These violations of human rights happen every
day in Iraq," he told Reuters.
On Tuesday, residents of Haditha had similar accounts to those on the
video.
"This room had a family of eight inside, children and their father and
mother," one man said of his relatives who were killed in their home.
Another resident confirmed his account, saying one of the children was three
years old.
"They are all gone," he said.
(c) Reuters 2006.
Last updated: 22-Mar-06 11:32 BST
©2006
Scotsman.com |
|
June 13, 2006
First lady to return to Indiana for fundraiser
Visit may help boost Mike Sodrel in what may be one of
nation's closest House races
By Maureen Groppe
Star Washington Bureau
June 13, 2006
WASHINGTON -- First lady Laura Bush is the latest
Republican coming to Indiana to help endangered U.S. Rep. Mike Sodrel, R-New
Albany.
Bush is scheduled to host a June 30 fundraiser for
Sodrel in Starlight, about 15 miles northwest of Louisville, Ky., according
to an e-mail invitation.
"Mike Sodrel has a tough race," U.S. Rep. Tom Reynolds,
the New York Republican who heads the campaign arm of House Republicans,
said Friday at a briefing on the congressional elections. "He knows he has a
tough race. We know he has a tough race."
Sodrel is the first Republican to represent
southeastern Indiana in more than four decades. He also was the only U.S.
House member to win in 2004 with less than 50 percent of the vote.
Baron Hill, the Democratic incumbent Sodrel beat, is
back for a rematch.
Political handicappers think it could be one of the
closest races in the country. It's one of three congressional seats in
Indiana that Democrats hope will help give them the 15 additional seats they
need to take control of the House.
Working against Sodrel are the low poll numbers of
President Bush, the GOP-led Congress and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a
Republican.
"Mitch Daniels' numbers are not good there," Reynolds
said of the 9th District, which borders Kentucky to the south and Ohio to
the east.
But Reynolds said Sodrel has been going home nearly
every weekend and is "doing all the things he needs to do" to get
re-elected.
The Republican Party, likewise, is pulling out all the
stops. Sodrel also has benefited from fundraisers conducted for him by party
leaders, including Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, House Speaker Dennis
Hastert of Illinois, House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and
Reynolds.
The event with the first lady will be at Huber's
Orchard & Winery. Tickets are $2,100 to have a photo taken with Mrs. Bush
and $200 to attend the reception.
She traveled to Indianapolis last week to speak to a
consortium of social workers, educators and others who work with youths.
Sodrel's office declined to comment on the event, which
has not been officially announced by the first lady's office.
Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com. |
|
June 13, 2006
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, June 13 — The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday
advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be
charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year
criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.
The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a
letter to Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung
over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about
his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity.
In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel
Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking
charges against Karl Rove."
Mr. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, said he would not comment on
Mr. Rove's status.
For months Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation appeared to threaten Mr. Rove's
standing as Mr. Bush's closest political adviser as the prosecutor riveted
his focus on whether Mr. Rove tried to intentionally conceal a conversation
he had with a Time magazine reporter in the week before the name of
intelligence officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, became public.
The decision not to pursue any charges removes a potential political
stumbling block for a White House that is heading into a long and difficult
election season for Republicans in Congress.
Mr. Fitzgerald's decision should help the White House in what has been an
unsuccessful effort to put the leak case behind it. Still ahead, however, is
the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis
Libby Jr., on charges for perjury and obstruction of justice, and the
prospect that Mr. Cheney could be called to testify in that case.
In his statement Mr. Luskin said he would not address other legal
questions surrounding Mr. Fitzgerald's decision. He added, "In deference to
the pending case, we will not make any further public statements about the
subject matter of the investigation. We believe that the Special Counsel's
decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove's
conduct."
But it was evident that Mr. Fitzgerald's decision followed an exhaustive
inquiry into Mr. Rove's activities that had brought the political strategist
dangerously close to possible charges. In October, when Mr. Libby was
indicted, people close to Mr. Rove had suggested that his involvement in the
case would soon be over; speculation about Mr. Rove's legal situation flared
again in April when he made his fifth appearance before the grand jury.
A series of meetings between Mr. Luskin and Mr. Fitzgerald and his team
proved pivotal in dissuading the prosecutor from bringing charges. On one
occasion Mr. Luskin himself became a witness in the case, giving sworn
testimony that was beneficial to Mr. Rove.
As the case stands now, Mr. Fitzgerald has brought only one indictment
against Mr. Libby. The prosecutor accused Mr. Libby of telling the grand
jury that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters, when in reality, the
prosecutor said he was told about her by Mr. Cheney and others in the
government. Mr. Libby has pleaded not guilty in the case, which is scheduled
to begin trial early next year.
Ms. Wilson is married to Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador who
wrote in an Op-Ed column in the New York Times on July 6, 2003 that White
House officials, including Mr. Bush, had exaggerated assertions that Iraq
had sought to purchase nuclear fuel from Africa. Mr. Wilson wrote that such
claims were "highly dubious."
He said his conclusions were based on a trip he had made in early 2002 to
Niger, a fact-finding mission that he said had been "instigated" by Mr.
Cheney's office.
It is now known that the column upset Mr. Cheney and that within his
office it was viewed as an attack on the Vice President's credibility,
according to legal briefs filed in the Libby case by Mr. Fitzgerald. In his
filings, Mr. Fitzgerald depicts Mr. Cheney as actively engaged in an effort
with Mr. Libby to rebut Mr. Wilson's assertions.
After the Wilson column was published, Mr. Cheney wrote notes on a copy
asking whether Ms. Wilson played a role in sending her husband to Africa and
whether the trip was a "junket." At the same time, Mr. Fitzgerald has said,
the vice president dispatched Mr. Libby to challenge Mr. Wilson in
conversations with reporters.
It was during that effort, Mr. Fitzgerald has alleged, that Mr. Libby
disclosed Ms. Wilson's employment at the C.I.A. along with the possibility
that it was she who sent him to Niger.
In Mr. Rove's case, Mr. Fitzgerald centered his inquiry on why Mr. Rove
did not admit early in the investigation that he had a conversation with
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about Ms. Wilson and whether Mr. Rove
was forthcoming about the later discovery of an internal e-mail message that
confirmed his conversation with Mr. Cooper, to whom Mr. Rove had mentioned
the existence of the C.I.A. officer.
Mr. Rove told the grand jury that he forgot the conversation with Mr.
Cooper and volunteered it to Mr. Fitzgerald as soon as he recalled it, when
his memory was jogged by the e-mail to Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy
national security adviser, in which Mr. Rove referred to his discussion with
Mr. Cooper.
At the center of the inquiry involving Mr. Rove are the circumstances
surrounding a July 11, 2003, telephone conversation between Mr. Rove and Mr.
Cooper, who turned the interview to questions about the trip to Africa by
Mr. Wilson.
In his testimony to the grand jury in February 2004, Mr. Rove did not
disclose the conversation with Mr. Cooper, saying later that he had
forgotten it among the hundreds of calls he received on a daily basis. But
there was a record of the call in the form of Mr. Rove's message to Mr.
Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, which confirmed the
conversation.
One lawyer with a client in the case said Mr. Fitzgerald was skeptical of
Mr. Rove's account because the message was not discovered until the fall of
2004 — a year after Mr. Rove first talked to investigators. It was at about
the same time that Mr. Fitzgerald had begun to compel reporters to cooperate
with his inquiry, among them Mr. Cooper. The prosecutors legal thrust at
reporters, in effect, put White House aides like Mr. Rove on notice that any
conversations might become known.
Associates of Mr. Rove said the e-mail message was turned over
immediately after it was found at the White House. They said Mr. Rove never
intended to withhold details of a conversation with a reporter from Mr.
Fitzgerald, noting that Mr. Rove had signed a legal waiver to allow
reporters to reveal to prosecutors their discussions with confidential
sources. In addition, they said, Mr. Rove testified about his conversation
with Mr. Cooper — long before Mr. Cooper did — acknowledging that it was
possible that the subject of Mr. Wilson's trip had come up.
It is now known that Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury have questioned
Mr. Rove about two conversations with reporters. The first, which he
admitted to investigators from the outset, took place on July 9, 2003, in a
telephone call initiated by Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist. In a
column about Mr. Wilson's trip four days after the call to Mr. Rove, Mr.
Novak disclosed the identity of Ms. Wilson, who was said by Mr. Novak to
have had a role in arranging her husband's trip. Mr. Novak identified her as
Valerie Plame, Ms. Wilson's maiden name.
Copyright 2006
The New York Times Company |
| The
pharmaceutical giant Merck produced the vaccine, known as Gardasil, which
will be nothing short of a lifesaver for countless women. Cervical cancer is
the second most prevalent cancer killer among women in
America, striking nearly
14,000 each year. Of those, nearly 4,000 die. Poor women and women of color
will benefit the most from the vaccine, as Latino and black women suffer the
highest rates of cervical cancer. Lower-income women typically lack the
funds and health insurance necessary to have regular screenings for HPV.
Despite the benefits of the vaccine,
conservative organizations began to rally against it last year. One of the
most vocal opponents was the Family Research Council. The council, according
to its mission statement, “promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview as the
basis for a just, free, and stable society.” Last October the council’s
president, Tony Perkins, spoke against the vaccine. “Our concern,” he said,
“is that this vaccine will be marketed to a segment of the population that
should be getting a message about abstinence. It sends the wrong message.”
He went on to say that he would not vaccinate his 13-year-old daughter.
Yet another organization that promotes
abstinence is the Physicians Consortium. The head of the consortium, Dr. Hal
Wallis, is also critical of the vaccine. In his opinion [http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/3429199D-5FE5-4795-B0E6-CD957617C160.asp],
“If you don’t want to suffer these diseases, you need to abstain, and when
you find a partner, stick with that partner.” The founder of the National
Abstinence Clearinghouse also opposes the vaccine. This organization was
formed “to promote the appreciation for and practice of sexual abstinence
(purity) until marriage.” Leslee Unruh, the organization’s founder, stated
firmly, “I personally object to vaccinating children against a disease that
is 100% preventable with proper sexual behavior.”
Now that FDA approval is official,
conservative organizations are strategizing to blunt acceptance of the
vaccine. Much of this effort is directed toward the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices (ACIP). This committee is a part of the Centers for
Disease Control, and is responsible for establishing the classification of
vaccines that the government recommends. This recommendation prompts states
to require a particular vaccination, typically guarantees that insurance
companies will cover it and determines the level of public funding.
In 2003 President Bush’s secretary of
health and human services appointed a medical doctor, Reginald Finger, to
the ACIP. Until last fall, Dr. Finger was also the medical affairs analyst
for Focus on the Family, the nation’s largest and most powerful evangelical
Christian organization. In an effort to gain the support of this group,
Merck has been forced to aggressively lobby Focus. Merck has admitted
holding numerous meetings with Dr. Finger at Focus headquarters. It’s
troubling that a vaccine manufacturer has to be concerned with securing the
backing of a conservative Christian organization. And Merck is likely to
have an uphill battle.
Although children are required to have
various vaccinations before attending public schools, conservatives are
against the ACIP recommending such a practice for the HPV vaccine. The
Christian Medical & Dental Associations is an organization that “exists to
glorify God by advancing Biblical principles in bioethics and health to the
Church and society.” The group’s executive director, Dr. Gene Rudd, has
stated [http://www.cmdahome.org/index.cgi?BISKIT=343567272&CONTEXT=art&art=3241],
“While accepting HPV vaccine is morally acceptable, it should not be
mandatory.”
And the Family Research Council has
gone even further. While testifying before an ACIP conference, the council’s
spokesman said: “Because parents have an inherent right to be the primary
educator and decision maker regarding their children’s health, we would
oppose any measures to legally require vaccination. There is no
justification for any vaccination mandate as a condition of public school
attendance.” And Focus on the Family issued a formal statement declaring
that it “supports widespread (universal) availability of HPV vaccines but
opposes mandatory HPV vaccinations for entry to public school.”
But in most instances, parents can’t
pick and choose what vaccinations they want their children to receive in
order to attend public schools. Children are required to be vaccinated
against measles, mumps, chicken pox and various other diseases. Public
health experts recommend that the HPV vaccine be administered to children at
about ages 11 or 12, before sexual activity commences. And there’s no
scientifically defensible reason that it shouldn’t be universally
administered.
Of course, there’s the rub: The
objection to the HPV vaccine isn’t based on science; rather, it comes from a
biblically based squeamishness about premarital sex.
Religious values, however, shouldn’t
affect FDA approval or recommendation by the ACIP. From a public health
perspective, we can’t continue to allow conservatives to depict science as a
cultural bogeyman.
Gene Gerard has taught history,
religion and ethics for 14 years at several colleges in the Southwest and is
a contributing author of the forthcoming book “Americans at War” (Greenwood
Press). He writes a political blog for the world news website OrbStandard,
at www.orbstandard.com/GGerard.
From 1010wins.com
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor,
Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C |
Sunday, June 11, 2006
By
Anonymous Liberal
In her Sunday column--entitled "Al
Gore's Convenient Fiction"--Debra Saunders dredges up a highly personal
and completely baseless story meant to impugn Al Gore's integrity. Saunders
writes:
Just 10 years ago, Gore told the Democratic
National Convention that after his sister Nancy's
needless death in 1984 from lung cancer, he
committed himself "heart and soul into the cause
of protecting our children from the dangers of
smoking." In his new film, Gore again dredges up his
sister's death and how it led his once tobacco-
growing family to turn away from tobacco.
After the DNC speech, reporters with memories
intervened. America learned that contrary to his
rhetoric, in 1988 Gore campaigned as a tobacco
farmer who told his brethren that "all of my life," I
hoed it, chopped it, shredded it, "put it in the barn
and stripped it and sold it." The year his sister died,
Gore helped the industry by fighting efforts to put
the words "death" and "addiction" on cigarette-
warning labels.
Saunders then explains:
Let me be clear: The problem with Gore is not that
he is a hypocrite. The problem with Gore is that
he has no idea he is not Lancelot. He has this scary
ability to block out any facts that make him less
than a perfect, selfless eco-hero, and in his need to
present himself as the world's savior, he'll say
anything -- no matter how hysterical.
But there's a problem with
Saunders' story. It completely misrepresents what Gore said in his 1996
speech. Saunders writes "Gore told the Democratic National Convention that
after his sister Nancy's needless death in 1984 from lung cancer, he
committed himself 'heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children
from the dangers of smoking.'" This sentence is clearly intended to convey
to the reader that Gore claimed to have made this commitment the moment his
sister died.
But here's what Gore actually said in
his speech, after describing the ordeal his sister went through:
Tomorrow morning another 13-year-old girl will
start smoking. I love her, too. Three thousand
young people in America will start smoking
tomorrow. One thousand of them will die a death
not unlike my sister's, and that is why, until I
draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul
into the cause of protecting our children from the
dangers of smoking.
Notice that Gore clearly
made this pledge to the audience, that night, in the future tense. He was
not claiming to have made such a pledge the moment his sister died, as
Saunders' column falsely implies. She took the quote from his speech
entirely out of context.
In fact, Gore acknowledged candidly at the time that it took quite a while
for the meaning of his sister's death to sink in. A New York Times
article published the day after his convention speech noted:
Mr. Gore said today that he ''felt a numbness'' after
his sister's death that made it hard to translate her
illness into personal and policy decisions. ''It takes
time to fully absorb the most important lessons in
life,'' he told reporters at a luncheon today.
And while the article
discussed Gore's slow evolution on tobacco issues during his political
career, it also noted, contra-Saunders, that "[a]fter his sister died, Mr.
Gore became an ardent Congressional proponent for cigarette warning labels"*(see
postscript). So Saunder's smear is completely baseless. Gore never
claimed to have had an epiphany at his sister's deathbed. He candidly
admitted that his thinking evolved over time as the meaning of her death
became clearer to him.
Saunders' column is merely the latest in a long line of manufactured stories
intended to portray Al Gore as dishonest or prone to exaggeration. However,
the fact that these stories are made up has not stopped them from gaining
currency. Most Americans would be quite surprised to learn, for example,
that Al Gore never actually claimed to have "invented the internet."
Often these stories are the handiwork of partisans like Saunders and are
carelessly repeated by the mainstream media, eventually becoming the
accepted truth. But, as Bob Somerby of the
Daily Howler has exhaustively chronicled, many of the stories about Gore
were not invented by partisan apparatchiks, but instead by mainstream media
scribes and, occasionally, self-proclaimed "liberal" columnists and pundits.
What happens, as near as I can tell, is that through some combination of
intentional partisan framing by political operatives and the press corps'
pre-existing feelings toward a candidate, a narrative is born. In the case
of Gore, particularly in the 1999-2000 timeframe, these two forces combined
to form a sort of perfect storm. The press never really liked Gore, and his
political opponents were determined to portray him as dishonest and
inauthentic. As a result, the narrative of Gore as serial exaggerator
emerged. Any inaccurate statement he ever made, no matter how innocent or
trivial, was trotted out as evidence of Gore's pathological need to inflate
his own importance. When someone offered forth a new example that fit this
narrative, it was uncritically accepted as true and repeated endlessly, even
if Gore had never in fact made the statement in question.
And this phenomenon sometimes works against Republicans too. Remember Dan
Quayle? Though I'm sure Quayle is no genius, he is certainly not the dunce
that he was mercilessly portrayed as in the media. But that was the
prevailing media narrative, so any story, no matter how trivial, was trotted
out as evidence of Quayle's utter stupidity. Though many of the most
embarrassing stories and quotes turned out to be inaccurate, as with Gore,
no one ever bothered to report it. The damage was done, the conventional
wisdom had congealed.
Once the media has settled on a narrative, it is very hard to change it. Al
Gore's recent re-emergence into the national spotlight has resulted in some
uncharacteristically favorable press coverage. But Gore's conservative
detractors, like Saunders and the National Review's
Jonah Goldberg are trying very hard to reassert the old Gore narratives.
And
mainstream journalists (and even liberal commentators like
Frank Rich) have demonstrated recently that the old Gore narratives
still shape their views of the man.
But I'm cautiously optimistic that this phenomenon can be more effectively
combatted and contained in the future. The reason for my optimism is the
emergence of the blogosphere as a factor in American politics. In the past,
the proliferation of false anecdotes and stories was enormously aided by the
fact that, more often than not, no one was making any attempt to correct the
record, at least until it was too late. But the emergence of the internet
and bloggers allows, at least potentially, for real-time fact-checking of
media accounts. These days, when someone makes up a story or misrepresents
what a candidate said, there is a far greater chance that someone will
discover the misrepresentation and write about it. If the misrepresentation
is sufficiently egregious, it can trigger, relatively quickly, a chorus of
blog posts exposing it and a barrage of angry emails to the media outlet
responsible for airing it. Even when this doesn't result in a retraction, it
often highlights for others in the media the dubious nature of the story and
provides some incentive not to repeat it (if for no other reason than to
avoid being deluged with angry emails). In this way, many false stories can
be nipped in the bud, before they ever have the chance to solidify into
conventional wisdom.
In a long and
comprehensive examination of this very subject over at Media Matters,
Jamison Foser made the following important observation:
No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or
a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same
flood of conservative misinformation in the media.
Too many people chalk up outrageous media
treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the
men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better
candidates, they'd have gotten better press
coverage. That's naive. The Democratic Party could
nominate Superman to be their next presidential
candidate, and two things would happen:
conservatives would smear him, and the media
would join in.
That's
undoubtedly true, and it's something that anyone interested in the success
of future candidates must internalize. There are no perfect candidates and
most of the ones the Democrats have put forth in the past, though not
without their flaws, were not inherently inferior to their Republican
rivals. It's unfortunate that the fate of important policies often depends
on the perceived personal attributes of the candidates who champion them,
but that's the reality of the world we live in, particularly when it comes
to presidential campaigns.
But in the age of internet, we are not entirely powerless as the 'forces
that be' construct their narratives about our next generation of candidates
and leaders. We have the power, through vigilance, to ensure that the
media's depiction of candidates tracks closer to the actual facts than it
has in the past. It's important, as we get closer to 2008, that bloggers pay
close attention to emerging anecdotes and stories about the presidential
contenders and fact-check them thoroughly. False stories and quotes must be
confronted at an early stage, before they have been repeated enough times to
gain the aura of truth.
*Postscript: In her column, Saunders writes: "The year his
sister died, Gore helped the industry by fighting efforts to put the words
'death' and 'addiction' on cigarette-warning labels." This is misleading on
a number of levels. First, the legislative wrangling Saunders is referring
to took place in early 1984, as evidenced by this June 1984
National Journal article describing it. Gore's sister died in mid-July
1984. So the events Saunders is pointing to as evidence of Gore's hypocrisy
took place BEFORE his sister died. Second, and more importantly, Gore was in
no way acting as a shill for the tobacco industry. At the time, the industry
was pushing hard against the proposed warning label legislation and might
well have succeeded had Gore not stepped in and used his clout among
tobacco-state politicians to broker the compromise that eventually allowed
the legislation to pass. If anyone's interested in a balanced,
contemporaneous account of Gore's actions, I suggest reading the 1984
National Journal article cited above, which includes a brief profile of
then-Congressman Al Gore and his views regarding the tobacco industry.
CLARIFICATION: Above I wrote: "This sentence is clearly
intended to convey to the reader that Gore claimed to have made this
commitment the moment his sister died." In fact, the sentence itself only
suggests that Gore claimed to have made this commitment at some time in the
past; it does not necessarily imply that he made it at the time of his
sister's death. This, of course, doesn't make her sentence any less false,
but I believe in being precise. My point remains the same. She
misrepresented a future pledge as a claim of past commitment.
Morever, while the sentence itself does not necessarily imply that Gore's
alleged commitment coincided with his sister's death, the overall context of
the piece certainly does. Otherwise, Saunders argument would make no sense.
The events she points to as evidence of Gore's dishonestly did not happen in
or around 1996, but much earlier (some even before his sister's death). If
she was not suggesting that Gore claimed to have made this commitment prior
to those events, then her argument completely fails. Long story short, she
manipulated a quote and distorted the timeline and nature of Gore's conduct
in an effort to paint him as dishonest and phony. |
Donle’s Daily Dispatches
