Topic: NewsBusters
Remember when the MRC folks got all het up over the John Edwards campaign hiring two bloggers for low-level posts who wrote things prior to their hiring that the MRC didn't like? Brent Bozell treated the bloggers' views as Edwards' own, as the headline "John Edwards Maligns Faith" attests. Months after the bloggers were forced to resign, the MRC was still ranting about "John Edwards' bigoted bloggers."
Fast-forward to a July 29 NewsBusters post by Warner Todd Huston regarding another controversial hire by another presidential candidate. But the treatment is much, much different.
Huston reported on the Fred Thompson campaign's hiring of former congressman Spencer Abraham. Described in some news reports as a "campaign manager," Huston declares that "Spence" (as Huston affectionately calls him -- interesting that he feels close enough to Abraham to call him that) "will be a mere campaign advisor and 'ambassador' to Washington, NOT the campaign manager," adding "Abraham is not in the decision making position that other news media is assuming he is going to be." Either way, though, Spence is in a pretty high-level position in the campaign.
Why is that noteworthy? Because Abraham has been accused of being "anti-Israel," not a popular stance in the Republican Party and certainly not a part of the platform of any Republican presidential candidate.
While Huston acknowledges the issue, he doesn't rush to hang Abraham's views around Thompson's neck, as his fellow MRC writers did with Edwards and the bloggers, or even make an effort to confirm or deny that characterization of Abraham's views. Rather, in addition to demonstrating that Abraham will not be in a "decision making position" in Thompson's campaign, Huston digs up several examples to show that "Thompson does not have a record of being anti-Israel," concluding, "Man. None of THAT seems too anti-Israel!!"
Would Huston and the rest of the NewsBusters gang be as charitable if a person with Abraham's views had hired onto a Democratic campaign? As the Edwards case demonstrates, not a chance. It's just another double standard.
