Topic: NewsBusters
The folks at NewsBusters have their ration of Sarah Palin Kool-Aid, and they're drinking deeply.
-- A Sept. 3 post by Matthew Sheffield suggested that CNN's Campbell Brown will "go down as the next Dan Rather in the halls of liberal bias infamy" because of an interview with McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds in which he repeatedly refused to give a straight answer to Brown's question of what kind of foreign-policy experience or even "one decision that she made as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard." Sheffield put his own spin on it, of course, asserting that Brown "repeatedly attacked Bounds over Sarah Palin's supposed lack of qualifications" and failing to note that Bounds never bother to actually answer the question he was asked. Sheffield also portrayed it as some kind of vindication that in a later segment on CNN, "Brown admitted that Palin had, in fact, deployed the Alaska National Guard to fight forest fires."
-- A Sept. 3 post by Kerry Picket complained that Chris Matthews portrayed Palin was "a member of Alaska’s Independence party," even after "Howard Fineman mentioned he received documentation from the McCain campaign showing Palin had been a registered Republican since 1982 and never a member of the Alaskan Independence party," finally declaring, "The connection to Palin still remains weak." Picket doesn't mention that Palin's husband was an actual member in the party or that Palin apparently attended the party's convention with her husband in 1994. (UPDATE: And also sent video messages to the party's 2006 and 2008 conventions and "visited" the 2000 convention.)
Picket added: "If the media is so interested in fringe movements candidates were actually involved in, the currently ignored Annenberg papers provide all the information needed." But they're not being ignored; they're being sifted through right now -- and it's all boring:
There are boxes and boxes of documents on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a multi-million dollar non-profit project designed to improve public education in Chicago. Much of the paper in the CAC collection released Tuesday [August 26] and reviewed thus far appears to be routine correspondence.
[...]
Most of the documents that journalists have reviewed thus far deal with correspondence and budget issues.
That report adds: "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was set up to support school reform, promote literacy, teacher training and community involvement in Chicago Public Schools." Picket seems to think such things are "fringe."
-- A Sept. 3 post by Terry Trippany desperately tries to spin Palin's laughing along with a radio host's depiction of another Alaska politician, Lyda Green, as a "cancer" (Green is a cancer survivor) and a "bitch." Trippany insists that things are "woefully out of context" and that "Palin appeared to be caught off guard and gave a short laugh while [radio host Bob] Lester continued to criticize Green." Trippany then tries to make the case that Green really is a bitch:
The interview focused around Lyda Green's attempt to delay the start of the Senate's legislative session to coincide with the start time of Sarah Palin's state of the state address. A month earlier Palin had requested and received approval from the House for a special 6:00 p.m. start time so that she could attend her son Track's Army boot camp graduation to the infantry. Green was well aware of this fact and appeared to be stonewalling as some sort of plan to make life difficult for Governor Palin. This became evident as the excuses for not being able to make the 1:00 p.m. scheduled start of the Senate legislative session began to fall apart. All of this was explained by Palin in the full uneditied clip of her radio interview.
Nice one. Trippany fails to mention the bio of Palin's radio buddy, Bob Lester:
Today I find myself working the morning shift on 106.5 K-Whale. It has been the best radio job I have ever had, unless you count that one gig where I was the intern for an all-lesbian station in Switzerland I worked at as a lotion applicator. No, wait a minute…that’s my favorite masturbation fantasy….never mind.
Food: Anything raw or cooked,
Drink: Milk. (Honestly…especially breast milk…I miss mom.)
TV show: Deadliest Catch.
Movie: Asian prison sluts in heat part 4. (Although part 3 is a close second.)
Wouldn't professional prude Brent Bozell be going after this guy if he wasn't so hypocritical about such things?
-- A Sept. 3 post by Warner Todd Huston uncritically repeated McCain operative Steve Schmidt's assertion that "the media has deluged the campaign with demands that it provide DNA samples to 'prove' that baby Trig is the true offspring of vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin." As TPM notes, quoting a political "insider":
First of all, that's the first time I've heard anyone in the campaign/political press throw out the notion of paternity tests. So Schmidt is to blame for bringing that issue into the mainstream. If anyone is smearing the candidate, it's Schmidt. This is as cynical a tactic as I've ever seen in politics.
Secondly, how can it be a "smear" if it was during an off the record lunch with McCain campaign aides?
Thirdly, hey, colleagues, you're on notice: Steve Schmidt does not respect "off the record." Watch your backs, my friends.
Wasn't NewsBusters a few days ago touting how keeping conservative secrets is the epitome of journalistic integrity?
