Thursday, February 21, 2008

All the loaf that’s fit to pinch off?

The NYTimes has got to be kidding, with this article on John McCain. First of all, a candidate’s relationship (any kind of relationship) with a lobbyist only matters if it reflects in his/her record as an instrument of abuse of power or conflict of interest. This is not substantially evidenced in the article. Secondly, if McCain had an alleged romantic relationship outside of his marriage that would be a lead story---if you were a tabloid rag, not a reputed journalistic institution.

There are several important issues on which McCain needs to be questioned, such as his recent aloofness from campaign finance reform and conveniently-altered stance on (of all freaking things!) torture. Not only did the Times choose not to put up a well-researched challenge of McCain on any of these issues, they actually chose to make allusions to some of these issues in such an innuendo-out-the-other article (apologies to Michael Feldman) about an alleged affair. Now, the conservative spin machine can dismiss all of these issues as being part of “That NYTimes-librul-media misrepresentation column”

Finally, the conservative outrage machine can shut the hell up. The Times did the republicans an enormous favor. Their candidate, not in good graces with the ultra-conservatives, now looks like a martyr as being the target of the “vast-left-wing-conspiracy”. Also, this is supposed to hurt his candidacy? The nauseating gush you all heard this morning was all of the (corrupt and sexually-hypocritical) ultra-cons and neo-cons collectively wetting their underwear in excitement without the benefit of Viagra! “Our candidate in bed with a lobbyist? Oh, I love it when you talk like that! You mean figuratively and literally?” O-face! O-face!

Dammit. Did Murdoch buy the Times along with the WSJournal last year and not tell anyone about it?

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

This whole thing is beyond pathetic. This just another nail in the coffin of print journalism.

Tom Friedman is on sabbatical, Bill Kristol has a column, and now this.

Why do I link to them again?