N.Y. Times Finally Reviews 'Unfit for Command'
After months of the book sitting atop the newspaper's own best-seller list, the New York Times Sunday Review of Books has finally taken the time to review "Unfit for Command."
In the opening line of the review, the Times admits the serious influence the book could have in American political history:
"If John Kerry loses the presidential election, 'Unfit for Command,' by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, will go down as a chief reason. The book – a sort of companion piece to the political attack ads placed by O'Neill's group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – is a furious assault on Kerry's character and service in Vietnam."
But the Times quickly turns its review into a hatchet job, describing the book as "discredited" and "faulty."
The Times devotes just a half-page column to the book and offers little detail about the allegations against Kerry and why these allegations might be baseless.
Meanwhile, in the same edition of the Times Sunday Review of Books, Kitty Kelley's "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Family Dynasty" is prominently featured with a two-page spread.
The Times describes Kelley's tome as "weighty" and a "relentless" probe of the first family that leaves "few stones unturned in its quest to present what she calls 'the real story' of the Bushes."
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Contrast the treatment of Kelley to that offered by Times reviewer Susannah Meadows, who could barely conceal her contempt for the co-authors of "Unfit for Command," calling O'Neill "so curdled with hatred for Kerry that ... you can't trust what he says."
Meadows chastises Corsi for once referring to Kerry as a "Commie" in an Internet posting, as if his meetings with North Vietnamese officials in wartime and the fact that he's honored as a hero in a communist museum in Ho Chi Minh City today doesn't warrant the moniker.
But though Kelley's book has had no impact on the presidential race, having been largely laughed off even by the anti-Bush press, the Times claims that its "sensational allegations are now filling water-cooler conversations around America."
Really? Where? At the Times?
If Kelley's rumormongering works, it is because the Times' review reprints many of her most outrageous and unsubstantiated claims against the president and his family.
The truth is that the buzz on Kelley's screed lasted exactly three days. That's how long it took to flunk the smell test on NBC's "Today" show, where even Democrat-friendly host Matt Lauer had to spend more time covering Kelley's reputation for distortion than any of her revelations about Bush.
"Unfit for Command," on the other hand, has forced Kerry to abandon the central premise of his campaign: that his combat record in Vietnam made up for a 20-year Senate record of trying to undermine U.S. nanational security.
URL:http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/10/11/100148.shtml |
