See What the Boys in the Boiler Room Will Have: Can the Media Change an Electoral Outcome?
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
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Author: Nicholas Stix
Bio: Nicholas Stix
Date: November 15, 2004
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See What the Boys in the Boiler Room Will Have: Can the Media Change an Electoral Outcome?
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After an election night story by the New York Times’ Jodi Wilgoren on Democrat-media dirty tricks, election reporting may never be the same.
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As I reported in a previous column, although shortly after midnight after Election Day 2004 George W. Bush clearly had captured Ohio, and thus the election, Dan Rather refused all through the night to call Ohio for Bush, and ABC and CNN likewise refused to make the call.
On November 4, the New York Times’ Jodi Wilgoren explained why CBS, ABC, and CNN had refused to acknowledge that Bush had won Ohio, and thus the election.
“The critical moment came at 12:41 a.m. Wednesday, when, shortly after Florida had been painted red for Mr. Bush, Fox News declared that Ohio - and, very likely, the presidency - was in Republican hands.
“Howard Wolfson, a strategist, burst into the ‘boiler room’ in Washington where the brain trust was huddled and said, ‘we have 30 seconds’ to stop the other networks from following suit.
“The campaign's pollster, Mark Mellman, and the renowned organizer Michael Whouley quickly dialed ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC - and all but the last refrained from calling the race through the night. Then Mr. Wolfson banged out a simple, two-line statement expressing confidence that Mr. Kerry would win Ohio once the remaining ballots were counted.
[Jim Axelrod of CBS cited that statement at the time, but without naming Wolfson.]
“‘What was driving our decision making was the memory of how in 2000, by allowing Florida to go for Bush, a lot of momentum was blocked,’ said one person who was in the room. “Our whole goal was stop the train from moving that way."
“Train stopped, lawyers and strategists at the campaign's Washington headquarters prepared court papers to challenge Ohio's process for counting provisional ballots, and made spreadsheets comparing each county's provisional ballots with its margin of victory or defeat.”
It didn’t occur to Wilgoren that anything was wrong with Democrats’ successful hijacking of election night coverage. And yet, I can’t imagine that her colleagues at the Times and elsewhere in the socialist mainstream media (SMSM) are at all happy that she reported on the Democrat-media collusion, or that her editors published her article. Because it told of Democrat-SMSM chicanery in much dirtier detail than ever before, yet in a tone that made it sound as if it were standard operating procedure, Wilgoren’s article may influence election reporting for years to come.
And look again at what her source told her: “What was driving our decision making was the memory of how in 2000, by allowing Florida to go for Bush, a lot of momentum was blocked. Our whole goal was stop the train from moving that way."
“By allowing Florida to go for Bush”? Clearly, these people think that they can use the media to make a state fall their way, the voters be damned.
In 2000, the networks called Florida for Gore while the polls were still open in the Panhandle. That violation of proper practice “stopped the train,” alright. But the networks only called the state for Bush much later, long after the polls had closed all over the state, which could have had no effect on the momentum of voting – lawful voting, that is.
Returning to the future, after midnight EST on Election Day 2004, with the polls long closed, withholding the Ohio results was not going to lead to more voters lawfully voting in the Buckeye State. The only voting “momentum” that could have been “blocked,” would have involved election fraud. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at Kerry headquarters!
“… lawyers and strategists at the campaign's Washington headquarters prepared court papers to challenge Ohio's process for counting provisional ballots …”
But the Kerry campaign had been counting on those provisional ballots. How then, could they challenge the process for counting them? It sounds as though they had taken Democrats’ preferred method of election fraud from 2000, of “reinterpreting” key-punch ballots for Bush or with no vote into Gore votes, and bizarrely projected it onto the provisional ballots. Jacques Derrida, who denied the objective meaning of texts, yet said that everything is a “text,” and gave all power to the privileged interpreters of texts, may be dead, but his spirit lives on in the Democrat party.
If FCC chief Michael Powell has any cojones, he will investigate the collusion between the Kerry campaign and ABC, CBS, and CNN. And those of us concerned with such corruption must beat the drum from now until 2008, reminding voters that exit polls are just another form of Democrat disinformation.
In early July 2004, Evan Thomas, Newsweek’s longtime Assistant Managing Editor, noted on the PBS show Inside Washington,
There’s one other base here: the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards -- I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but -- they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.
(A tip of the hat to the Media Research Center for the Thomas quote.)
At the time, I thought I’d heard the quote as “five percent,” because while five percent was perfectly believable, 15 percent was not. While many poorly informed, middle-of-the-road voters may have been influenced by the endless campaign of SMSM fraud, the reaction cut both ways. While for example, the majority of white, Christian Evangelicals voted FOR George W. Bush, millions of voters who supported him were voting AGAINST other people and policies, rather than for Bush: Against gay marriage, against a Democrat party whose patriotism is suspect, and against an anti-American SMSM. Ultimately, the media may have won the election – but not for the candidate whom they thought they were helping!
* * *
I sent the following letter to the New York Times, but rather doubt that letters editor Thomas Feyer will publish it.
To the Editor:
The blind rage of New York Times op-ed columnists Maureen Dowd (“The Red Zone,” Nov. 4) and Paul Krugman (“No Surrender,” Nov. 5) at the election results was truly a sight to behold. Madame, Sir, I feel your pain. To borrow from Alan Jay Lerner: Poor Democrats. “How simply frightful! How humiliating! How … delightful!”
Sincerely,
Nicholas Stix
Nicholas Stix
A Different Drummer
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Biography - Nicholas Stix
Award-winning, New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix founded A Different Drummer magazine (1990-93). Stix has written for the Die Suedwest Presse, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Middle American News, Toogood Reports, Insight, Chronicles, the American Enterprise, Campus Reports, VDARE, the Weekly Standard, Front Page Magazine, Ideas on Liberty, National Review Online and the Illinois Leader. His column also appears at Men’s News Daily, MichNews, Intellectual Conservative, Enter Stage Right and OpinioNet. Stix has studied at colleges and universities on two continents, and earned a couple of sheepskins, but he asks that the reader not hold that against him. His day jobs have included washing pots, building Daimler-Benzes on the assembly-line, tackling shoplifters and teaching college, but his favorite job was changing his son’s diapers.
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