The Media's New Clothes

Hugh Hewitt just had a caller, Steve, who said he opposed the war in Vietnam, but that after hearing the latest Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad, he understands why some of his friends who had served in Vietnam suffered from depression and drug problems. Several have died, some by suicide. He said he will never forgive John Kerry.

That free speech can be a bitch, eh, John?

Then there's this little slip by Tom Oliphant (at the end of the post).

Update: At least somebody in the press has a common sense response to this. I hope this election blows back in the face of the mainstream media big time. They've never deserved it more.

Oh, NO! Michael Barone has joined the front for the Bush Campaign!

The Backlash

Posse Incitatus reports:

Captain Ed continues to blog up a storm on the Kerry's increasing Vietnam difficulties. We'll probably have to add him to the blogroll since we're linking almost daily anyway.

As the hated Evil Glenn reports, the Big Media wall of silence around Kerry has now morphed into a full-on attack machine. The Swifties must be destroyed and they're getting the full smear.

I just sent the swift boat vets $50.00. If I were as wealthy as the guy in Texas, I send them half a million.

The media haven't been on neutral ground for a long time, but they've now slid down the slippery slope and over the cliff. People need to stand up for free speech and against this threat to our democracy. Sent money to http://www.swiftvets.com/

We're still waiting

Jim Geraghty of NRO's Kerryspot column fisks Kerry's answer to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. There aren't links for individual posts, just scroll or check archives for the one including "KERRY'S SWIFT BOAT RESPONSE [08/19 06:13 PM]" in the title.

Kerry hasn't really answered the questions about his Cambodia claims or his Apocalypse Now fantasies. Merely calling his fellow Swift Boat vets liars and pointing to their source of funding doesn't really answer their claims, and attacking them as "a front for the Bush campaign" when Democrat-oriented 527 groups like MoveOn.org have been spending all kinds of money on scurrilous ads demonizing Bush. I didn't notice Kerry calling for Move On or George Soros to drop their advertising.

Meanwhile the mainstream media (MSM) are practically screaming their own hypocrisy by not giving any coverage to Kerry's weird claims about having been in Cambodia delivering CIA, Navy SEALs, Green Berets and/or guns on illegal covert missions. The details of firefights with the VC don't really interest me, because there's not much of a way to prove whose memories are accurate, but this Cambodia stuff, and Kerry's weak response and equivocation about it really do give reason to distrust his integrity and judgment. What personal need drives a man who's already achieved prominence to gild the lily like this?

"Don't use my name"

It's kind of chilling that a professional journalist would have to state his critical opinions of the media via an anonymous email to Instapundit. Freedom of the press indeed!

Uncle Walter hangs up his spurs

Walter Cronkite has issued his parting shot at the world that no longer spins around him, griping like a geezer that in his day there wasn't any free speech except for those who owned presses and broadcast facilities. This newfangled media, the internet, makes it possible for any yahoo to spout off to the world.

It's not going over well with bloggers.

I noticed another severe case of "I'm a journalist; I'll tell you what to think" disease in a replay on C-Span's Book TV of an interview in February of Ken Auletta. He blandly asserted the myth of 'professional' journalist ethics and objectivity and said that people should only get their news from a single source. While he admitted that accuracy was important, he had no complaints about the New York Times, thinking that it is still generally the most comprehensive news source available.

It resembled a type of brain damage where a person can't see what everyone else does, or a confusion of liberal, J school dogma for reality.

If anybody needs proof that this is nuts, this election year should be enough proof, but if your assumption is that Republicans are intrinsically evil and Democrats unalloyed honest, compassionate and not the least political, you're not likely to see anything wrong with, say, the astonishing contrast between the press's nonstop fascination with Bush's National Guard service and it's resistance to examine the claims of other Vietnam era swift boat veterans that Kerry is not the hero he has portrayed himself to be. They seem to think that any questioning of Kerry's character is blasphemous, because he was awarded medals, and that his anti-war slander of everybody who served in Vietnam is just more proof of his heroism. If he gets elected, you can bet that all these charges will begin to be investigated and come back to haunt him, once the demon Bush has been dispatched.

I couldn't agree more.

Instapundit:

it would be useful if those more moderate Muslims would take a more aggressive role. Some are -- see, for example, the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism -- but we could use more of that, no doubt. But to the extent that these people encounter comments urging that Islam be "banned," they're likely to feel less, rather than more, motivated toward reasonableness.

This is why Bush has so consistently called Islam a religion of peace. I've read about four books about Islam since 9/11 and all I can say is that the image that the Saudis have created of Islam in this country is about the worst one possible, even if it's probably the true face of Wahhabism, and a misrepresentation of Islam as a whole. It's as if the Jim Jones cult or the Branch Davidians were represented as mainstream Christianity.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Details about Kerry's yarns keep coming in. Fox News, particularly Brit Hume, is not letting up on coverage of the Swift Boat Vets' charges. He interviewed John O'Neill on his program today. He asked tough questions, as he should, but also allowed O'Neill to answer, which other "hosts" have not. Hindrocket and The Big Trunk at Power Line blog succeeded in getting the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to publish their comments about the story, and the LA Times (to which I refuse to link because of their registration policies) has broken the blackout among major mainstream media. A lot of smaller papers rely on wire services for national and international news stories, and if Reuters, the AP and others don't cover a story, a lot of local papers don't either. Maybe those who use the L.A. Times News Service will pick this up.

The most hilarious story today was MoveOn.org's latest ad calling for Bush to stop the Swift Boat veterans ads. It's comic to see one 527 organization, uncontrolled by the Democrats, calling on the Republicans to silence another which they don't control. The right held off on these 527 ads, which were initially run by groups like MoveOn.org attacking Bush, until the FEC failed to declare them illegal under campaign finance reform, then ads started popping up attacking Kerry. We had a saying when I was a kid, "If you can't take it, don't dish it out." The open, naked hyporcrisy is astonishing. This is a classic Elsworth Toohey moment.

The pot is starting to steam

Hugh Hewitt commenting on Juan Williams defense of Kerry's Cambodian covert operations with the CIA and SEALs:

"Embellished" has an "l" in it, an "i" in it, and an "e" in it. It's a liberal's way of saying "lied."

It's not boiling yet, but it's warming up. The hypocrisy of reporters and editors who pumped Bush's National Guard record into a scandal for months, yet now sniff at Kerry's "embellishment" of his own record as if it were a dead rat, is beyond belief.