Saturday, November 08, 2008

The Bozo-ing of the Media

The media is becoming more and more clownish. Major national media aren't even doing basic fact checking any more. That makes for ludicrous gullibility.

John McCormack gives a little help on journalistic competence to Newsweek's Daren Briscoe, Eleanor Clift, Katie Connolly, Peter Goldman, Daniel Stone, Nick Summers, and Evan Thomas in their "The Final Days" report:

Via Isaac Chotiner, Newsweek reports:

The day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska.

The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her.

So according to the hatchet man/woman who talked to Newsweek, Palin is such an ideologue about drilling in ANWR that she won't stand next to Bradley, even though John McCain has the exact same position?

And Palin is such an ideologue that she won't appear with pro-choice politicians, even though she attended events with pro-choice Clinton donor Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild?

And we're really supposed to believe that Palin is so dumb she doesn't know Africa is a continent, but she knew about the voting records of John Sununu and Jeb Bradley in the first place?

Hmmm. I guess that might be remotely possible if it weren't for the fact that John Sununu has a 100 percent pro-life rating from the National Right to Life Committee.

Glad to see that whoever leaked this story is too dumb to come up with a plausible smear. And kudos to Newsweek for dumping this whopper without bothering to check if Sununu is in fact pro-abortion.

Oh, and by the way, Jeb Bradley isn't running for U.S. Senate, as Newsweek reports. Perhaps they might want to check out Wikipedia before publishing the next batch of Palin smears.


Rich Lowery does something the Bozo mainstream press apparently hasn't thought of--actually talks to a non-anonymous source--the McCain guy who briefed Sarah Palin on foreign policy:

I talked to Steve Biegun, the former Bush NSC aid who briefed Sarah Palin on foreign policy, and he considers the leaks against her on the international stuff "absurd."

He says there's no way she didn't know Africa was a continent, and whoever is saying she didn't must be distorting "a fumble of words." He talked to her about all manner of issues relating to Africa, from failed states to the Sudan. She was aware from the beginning of the conflict in Darfur, which is followed closely in evangelical churches, and was aware of Clinton's AIDS initiative. That basically makes it impossible that she thought all of Africa was a country.

On not knowing what countries are in NAFTA, Biegun was part of the conversation that led to that accusation and it convinces him "somebody is acting with a high degree of maliciousness." He was briefing Palin before a Univision interview, and talking to her about trade issues. He rolled through NAFTA, CAFTA, and the Colombia FTA. As he talked, people were coming in and out of the room, handing Palin things, etc. She was distracted from what Biegun was saying, and said, roughly, "Ok, who's in NAFTA, what's the deal with CAFTA, what's up the FTA?"—her way, Biegun says, of saying "rack them and stack them," begin again from the start. "Somebody is taking a conversation and twisting it maliciously," he says.

In general, according to Beigun, Palin had a steep learning curve on foreign issues, about what you would expect from a governor. But she has "great instincts and great core values," and is "an instinctive internationalist." The stories against her are being "fed by an unnamed source who is allowed by the press to make ad hominem attacks on background." Biegun, who spent dozens and dozens of hours briefing Palin on these issues, is happy to defend her, on the record, under his own name.


HT: National Review Online

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