Topic: NewsBusters
In an Aug. 29 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham describes Charles Pierce as "the self-impressed Boston clod who is so deeply a tool of the Kennedys that he infamously wrote in the Boston Globe Magazine in 2004 that 'If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.'"
As we've detailed, the MRC has long taken that line out of context; in fact, rather than an example of sycophancy, it was part of a larger criticism meant to show that the death of Kopechne kept Ted Kennedy from having the "moral credibility" to be president.
Graham also noted Pierce's statement on Eric Alterman's blog at The Nation that Kennedy "leaves behind a pair of shoes that most of his Senate contemporaries could use for swimming pools." Graham snarkily added: "The swimming metaphors are probably not the best choice." Graham failed to mention that immediately after writing that, Pierce fired a zinger at ... a prominent Democratic senator: "Harry Reid, come on down!"
Pierce also seems to have predicted Graham's smear of him by concluding:
That long, extended, respectful peace beside the dark harbor is going to be a good bulwark of memory to have when the smugness and the vicious ignorance and the nearly bottomless banality that usually encrusts our politics reasserts itself, probably by Sunday. Amen.
Pierce was off by an hour or so: Graham posted his NewsBusters item at 10:50 p.m. on Saturday.
