More from Hewitt - with this great line.
How odd for papers to carry opinion pieces relating to controversies that their readers have never read about in those papers, but which the opinion pieces presume they have heard or read about elsewhere.
Note that in his interview with the Times, Kerry had begun to hedge the Christmas Eve in Cambodia story months ago, perhaps aware that it couldn't hold up, but that he was hanging tough on his ride with the spook. Heh. This little piece proves he knew we would come to discover that he way lying with his soaring declarations of having been involved in illegal cross-border missions, and at the same time, that his magic hat story was too emphatic and recent to recant.
As for the times, are their reporters too lazy to read the blogs that have pushed the story far beyond last weeks news, or are they hoping that this ritual defense of Kerry somehow allows them to keep their library card saying "journalist," which they long ago left off being. Instapundit notes that both the Boston Globe and the Houston Chronicle carry opinion pieces that discuss the controversy, and do so with criticism of Kerry's stone-walling. How odd for papers to carry opinion pieces relating to controversies that their readers have never read about in those papers, but which the opinion pieces presume they have heard or read about elsewhere.
In fact, the secondary nature of the old media is becoming quite obvious. Reporters, pundits, talking heads etc all know about the magic hat and the now discredited claims of Christmas Eve in Cambodia. Most of them know that Douglas Brinkley also raised the stakes last week by citing three or four missions to Cambodia with SEALs, Green Berets, and CIA men, and that Brinkley must have gathered info on those missions from the Kerry journals. Other shoes will drop soon, and the papers are fighting the battle of two weeks ago. Very weird, but very revealing of why the papers are dying and why some of them, like the Los Angeles Times, cannot add market share even with a monopoly position in their markets --they have nothing to sell to anyone not part of their ideological world.
On the campaign front, Bush-Cheney put the spotlight on Kerry's dilettantish record on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Speaker of the House Hastert stepped forward to demand that Kerry allow the release of his attendance records while a member of the committee --or more accurately, his non-attendance records:
"John Kerry served on the Intelligence Committee from 1993 to 2000, and according to official records, John Kerry missed 76 percent of the public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings during that time. This figure doesn’t include his attendance at closed door meetings. Those records can only be released to the public at John Kerry’s request. This is something that needs to be done, and I join Senator Roberts, Senator Chambliss, Senator Cornyn, and Senator Coleman and others in calling on him to do so, so that the American people can judge the whole picture for themselves."
-Speaker Dennis Hastert, U.S. House of Representatives
John Kerry will have trouble presenting himself as seriously committed to either the 9/11 Commission reforms or to the business of intelligence generally if his attendance was as abysmal as this suggests. The Bush campaign is just beginning to roll out the attack on Kerry's fitness, and it is coming at a time when Kerry is already seriously weakened by the Swift Boat Vets withering broadsides and independent reporting, including the internet's, into Kerry's resume padding.
Kerry is responding to these two terrible --soon to be three-- terrible weeks by wind-surfing and mocking the cost of doing so, and by playing front porch games that are hardly noticed in the roar over his Vietnam-era Mittyisms. The New York Times quotes one consultant to Kerry as saying that: "They're doing a good job at putting settings that do not portray him as an elitist...These front-porch settings give people a sense of traditional values. They have a nostalgic feel to them." Right. Just as he flies from mansion to mansion with side-trips to fly fish. Too many people watching and commenting to try and paint Kerry with everyman colors, so the attempt to do so is itself more evidence of hypocrisy and elitism.
Next week's polls will show some weakness for Kerry, but the Republican convention --which will hopefully include some well-deserved mocking of John Kerry, everyman wind-surfer and CIA ferryman, will punch new holes in the Kerry facade. When will the Charlie Cooks and the Larry Sabatos --who went way out on their limbs-- start crawling back? The trouble with the internet is that predictions by the so-called experts are more easily remembered these days. |
