Lindgrin is not an <font color=blue>"anti-Kerry"<font color=black> type. Instapundit.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Northwestern Univ. law professor Jim Lindgren emails:<font color=red>
<font size=4>
What strikes me about Kerry's<font color=blue> "Christmas in Cambodia"<font color=red> story is not that Kerry almost certainly repeatedly told falsehoods (whether intentionally or not) but that the mainstream press is barely covering the story.
If Bush were caught lying about his service in the National Guard, it would be leading the TV news. This is not just a hypothetical. The network news repeatedly led with charges that Bush MIGHT not have been present when he said he was during his National Guard service. Once the pay records were released, it turned out that the charges were false, but few news organizations bothered to correct the earlier false rumors they spread.
This press coverage follows the pattern. Kerry almost
certainly falsely stated that he resigned from Viet Nam
Vets Against the War BEFORE the fateful meeting at which
the plot to assassinate several pro-war US Senators was
debated. Yet when both FBI records and some of his
supporters verified that Kerry had spoken forcefully
against the proposal to murder Senators (to Kerry's credit
at the time), most of the press did nothing. Can you
imagine if Bush had been caught in such a falsehood, saying
that he didn't attend a meeting where others were proposing
to murder US Senators when he had been present and helped
to persuade them not to do it?
Just yesterday it was revealed that when Kerry heard about the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, he admitted that he was too stunned to think clearly for quite a while. This contrasts with among Bush's first statements to his aides that we are at war (i.e., moving out of the <font color=blue>"criminal act"<font color=red> mode of the Clinton administration). Bush was praised for being among the first to understand that the world had changed. Then Kerry had the nerve to criticize Bush for acting calmly in the initial minutes after the attack. If Bush had done this--criticizing Kerry for not thinking clearly when he had admitted that he was paralyzed in shock--the press would crucify Bush. But Kerry will get another pass--just wait and see.
Likewise, the statements that Bush lied about the foreign intelligence reports regarding uranium: It was a big story when the press thought that Bush might be lying, but it was mostly a non-story when it turned out that he wasn't.
If one were just watching the network news, one would think
that Bush was the one with the honesty problem. Why doesn't
the press just cover the stories on both sides and let the
voters decide whom to vote for? Frankly, I find the press
bias this year pretty frightening, not because Kerry as
president will be so terrible (I doubt that he will be),
but for what it says about the future of democracy in a
world where traditional media still dominate public
discourse. Kerry would not stand a chance if the press bias
were reversed.
I think that the press will choose the president this year;
I hope that they have chosen wisely.
Evan Thomas famously told us that the press wants Kerry to win, and added <font color=blue>"They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points."<font color=black>
That's enough to swing almost any presidential election, and -- if it's right -- it raises the question of whether we can have an established press, and democracy, at the same time. |
