Dan Froomkin: On Calling Bullshit

Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do.

What is it about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that makes them so refreshing and attractive to a wide variety of viewers (including those so-important younger ones)? I would argue that, more than anything else, it is that they enthusiastically call bullshit.Calling bullshit, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy.

And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. The relentless spinning is enough to make anyone dizzy, and some of our most important political battles are about competing views of reality more than they are about policy choices. Calling bullshit has never been more vital to our democracy.It also resonates with readers and viewers a lot more than passionless stenography.

I’m convinced that my enthusiasm for calling bullshit is the main reason for the considerable success of my White House Briefing column, which has turned into a significant traffic-driver for The Washington Post’s Web site. More

MAUREEN DOWD: What's in a Name, Barry?

If you call Barack Obama’s office to check the spelling of his middle name, the reply comes back: “Like the dictator.”

In the first rush of our blind date with the young senator from Illinois, we are still discovering things that are going to take some getting used to. Like his middle name: Hussein.

There were already a few top Democrats scoffing at the idea that a man whose surname sounded like a Middle East terrorist could get elected president. Now it turns out that his middle name sounds like a Middle East dictator. So with one moniker, he evokes both maniacal villains of the Bush administration. And to top it off, as Jennifer Senior noted in New York magazine, Barack rhymes with Iraq.

Republican wizards have whipped up nasty soufflés with far less tasty ingredients than that.

The middle name — the first name of his Muslim grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, and the middle name of his father, a Kenyan goatherd — had been cited in a few places, like Ms. Senior’s piece. But there hadn’t been much focus on the unfortunate coincidence of the senator from the city known as the Hog Butcher to the World having the same name as the Butcher of Baghdad until a Republican operative dropped the H-bomb on “Hardball” this week.

Ed Rogers, a Bush 41 official, said he was underwhelmed with “Barack Hussein Obama,” dismissing him as “a blank canvas where people project their desires.”

This set off indignation among liberal bloggers and in the Obama camp, where the middle name has not been hidden, but has not been mentioned much, either, even on the senator’s August odyssey to his paternal home in Africa. The hush-hush on Hussein is a bit odd given that Mr. Inclusive is presenting himself as the American dream in human form, a multiethnic quilt whose journey is his qualification for higher office.

Obama aides thought Mr. Rogers was trying to stir up racial and religious biases.

“It wasn’t a slip of the tongue, I know that,” said Robert Gibbs, the senator’s director of communications. “The 2006 election proved that people are far smarter than the spin and fearmongering. You can’t solve Iraq with a campaign about people’s middle names.”

He said that when Mr. Obama was running for the Senate, there were conservative Web sites that crowned the Democrat’s picture with a turban and tried to make an issue of Obama and Osama sounding alike — just as G.O.P. strategists shamefully linked Max Cleland with Osama in 2002, and claimed in 2004 and 2006 that a win for the Democrats counted as a win for the terrorists.

Mr. Gibbs said some had suggested to Mr. Obama early in his pursuit of a Senate seat that, given 9/11, he might want to go by his childhood nickname, Barry. (Then it could have been Barry! vs. Hillary!)

In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” the senator describes a lunch with a media consultant in late September 2001. Looking down at a newspaper picture of Osama, the politico shook his head and said: “Really bad luck. You can’t change your name, of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were at the start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now ...”

The senator wrote: “His voice trailed off and he shrugged apologetically before signaling the waiter to bring us the check. I suspected he was right, and that realization ate away at me.”

The Republicans are expert at tying Democrats to villains. Mr. Rogers’s bad-boy mentor, Lee Atwater, yoked Willie Horton to Michael Dukakis. Mr. Atwater and his successors also liked to present their side as being more American. Traveling on the campaign trail with Bush Senior in ’88, Loretta Lynn made fun of Mr. Dukakis’s ethnicity, noting, “Why, I can’t even pronounce his name.” And in 2004, a Bush 43 campaign adviser trashed John Kerry for looking French.

Names can be fraught in politics. Hillary Rodham felt she had to switch to Mrs. Clinton after her husband lost the Arkansas statehouse in 1980.

Mr. Rogers denies he was playing hardball when he lobbed “Hussein” on “Hardball.”

“No, I wasn’t trying to say he is Saddam-like,” he laughed. “The context was, this guy’s a lightweight. Never have I seen so much swoon for so little biography. If he can make something out of this, it proves he’s very thin-skinned and he ain’t ready. Hillary will beat him like a rented mule.” That would be Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton to you, Ed.

Truman: We're not going to turn the US into a right wing totalitarian country.

Harry Truman on fighting international threats...
01:07

2 US soldiers accused of sexual assault of a child

Dallas News

Two soldiers have been indicted on separate sexual assault charges after being accused of having sex with a San Angelo girl they met on the social networking Web site MySpace.com.

Ephrem Christopher Jones, 18, a Fort Hood soldier now in Iraq, told investigators he met the 14-year-old girl twice, according to a report that appeared in Saturday editions of the San Angelo Standard-Times.

Jones told police he had sex with the girl in a car during June and engaged in a sex act with her at a motel during August. Floyd Karl Parker, 33, a drill sergeant at Fort Sill, Okla., is accused of having sex with the same girl at the same hotel in September.

Jones told authorities the girl said she was 20 years old, but later said she was 16. Under state law, people younger than 17 are not capable of consenting to sex with an adult.

Well-known (WA state) GOP activist held in sex-predator sting

Seattle Times

Larry Corrigan, a well-known activist in local Republican politics as a backer of U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert and King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng, was arrested Wednesday in an Internet sting for allegedly trying to arrange sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Corrigan was the director of financial operations at the prosecutor's office for more than 25 years and was deputy treasurer in Reichert's 1997 and 2001 runs for King County sheriff. He was also a supporter without an official role in Reichert's congressional campaigns.

According to the Seattle Police Department, Corrigan, 54, of Seattle, was chatting online with an undercover police officer who was posing as a 13-year-old girl when he agreed to meet the minor at a Capitol Hill video store on Broadway for sex.

He was booked into King County Jail around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday for investigation of the attempted rape of a child and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes.

Media Matters Latest, December 01, 2006

Wolf Blitzer said "I have to assume [Powell] honestly believed" 2003 U.N. speech, ignoring evidence to contrary
On the November 29 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) said of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations Security Council, in which Powell alleged that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was involved in terrorism: "[T]he suspicion is that he and others may have known that the facts were not true." Host Wolf Blitzer replied: "You're not accusing Colin Powell of deliberately lying to the American people." Blitzer added, "I assume, knowing him as I do for so many years, that he honestly believed when he was told at the CIA that there were weapons of mass destruction stockpiles -- and he said that before the U.N. Security Council -- I have to assume he honestly believed it." Blitzer then asked Rangel, "[D]on't you believe that Colin Powell is a man of integrity that believed what he said?" Read more

MSNBC baselessly characterized Iraq Study Group's call for withdrawal "relatively soon" as "similar" to Bush's position
On the same day that President Bush said, "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done," MSNBC correspondent Jeannie Ohm described the reported forthcoming recommendation by the Iraq Study Group for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as "similar to what the president has been saying." Read more

After previously endorsing Saddam's tactics, O'Reilly advocated running Iraq "much like Musharraf runs Pakistan"
On the November 28 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said that the Bush administration should "consider allowing the Iraqi military to run the place, much like [President Pervez] Musharraf runs Pakistan." Musharraf, a general in the Pakistani army, took control of the country in a bloodless coup in 1999. After vowing to step down as his country's military leader in 2005, Musharraf reneged and now plans to stay until 2007. Read more

Scarborough labels O'Reilly's attack on NBC over "civil war" decision "insane" and "insulting"
On the November 29 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough said that Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's criticism of NBC and MSNBC for deciding to use the phrase "civil war" in describing the situation in Iraq, was "insane," "insulting," "over the top," and "very disturbing." On the November 28 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said "the American media is not helping anyone by oversimplifying the situation and rooting for the USA to lose in Iraq." After airing the clip, Scarborough said O'Reilly is "suggesting that NBC is rooting for America to lose in Iraq" and asked: "What is going on at Fox News? Why is Bill O'Reilly claiming that my network, NBC News, is rooting for terrorists? That's truly insulting to me." Read more

O'Reilly falsely claimed he warned of the dangers of Iraqi looting "on the night that Saddam's statue fell"
On his radio show, Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that, "on the night" Saddam Hussein's "statue fell" in Baghdad at the beginning of the war in Iraq, he publicly criticized the Bush administration for not having a postwar reconstruction plan for Iraq. In fact, on that night's edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly made no mention of looting or the difficulty of reconstructing Iraq, though he did ask a guest to comment on plans to "stabilize Baghdad." Read more

Wash. Post headline -- "Bush, Maliki Put off Meeting" -- inconsistent with article saying Iraqis, Jordanians called off talks
The New York Times' November 30 article on the last-minute decision by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and Jordan's King Abdullah II to bow out of the previous day's scheduled summit with President Bush featured the headline: "Iraq's Premier Abruptly Skips a Bush Session." While the Times' headline clearly indicated that Maliki had chosen to "skip" the summit (thereby delaying his meeting with Bush until November 30), The Washington Post proclaimed: "Bush, Maliki Put off Meeting" -- suggesting that the decision to postpone the meeting was mutual. The Los Angeles Times proclaimed that the November 29 summit was "canceled" -- offering no indication that Maliki had backed out of the meeting. Read more


O'Reilly, appearing on 700 Club: Catholic Church "very silent in the culture war"
On the November 30 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's (CBN) The 700 Club, during a discussion about Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's views on a purported "culture war," 700 Club host Pat Robertson asked O'Reilly, "[W]hy don't ['traditionalists'] stand up and fight these people ['secular-progressives']?" O'Reilly replied that "I ask that question about my own church. ... The Roman Catholic Church has been very silent in the culture war." Robertson did not respond to O'Reilly's contention about the Catholic Church. Read more

Conservatives attack animated penguin movie as global-warming propaganda
Cultural conservatives, led by CNN's Glenn Beck, Fox News' Neil Cavuto, and syndicated talk-show host Michael Medved, have all criticized Happy Feet, the new Warner Bros. animated movie about Mumble, the tap-dancing penguin, because they say the movie is laced with liberal overtones and tries to "indoctrinate" children. Specifically, conservatives claim the movie is pushing a global-warming agenda. Yet the film makes no references to global warming. Instead, the movie's conservationist subplot revolves around Mumble's attempt to combat man-made pollution and overfishing in his quest to help his fellow penguins. The blockbuster movie, which has already earned more than $100 million in U.S. ticket sales, is silent regarding the issue of global warming. Read more

Savage: "[S]wine" at Media Matters "take me out of context"
On the November 29 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage called Media Matters for America a "group of swine ... who take me out of context," during a segment in which he smeared former President Jimmy Carter. Savage cited no example in which Media Matters took his statements out of context. Read more

Savage: Congressman swearing on Quran represents "the tyranny of the psycho, whacked-out minority"
On the November 28 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show The Savage Nation, host Michael Savage compared reports that incoming Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) "won't swear to uphold the oath of office on the Bible, but on the Quran instead" to "[a] witch get[ting] elected" and saying "she's gonna only be sworn in with her hand over a pentagram." Savage called Ellison's reported decision to be sworn in with a Quran "the tyranny of the psycho, whacked-out minority." Read more


Repeating omission of Wash. Post, NY Times ignored GOP decision to punt on spending bills, "gum up" Democrats' agenda
On November 29, The Washington Post reported that incoming Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged to work with Democrats on parts of their agenda but failed to mention the decision by congressional GOP leaders to put off work on several government spending bills for fiscal year 2007 until Democrats take control of the Congress next year. The day after, in its profile of McConnell, The New York Times followed suit. Read more

Wash. Post identified Harman as "strong-on-defense" Democrat
In a November 29 article about incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) decision to pass over Reps. Jane Harman (D-CA) and Alcee Hasting (D-FL) to chair the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 110th Congress, The Washington Post identified Harman as a "strong-on-defense 'Blue Dog' Democrat," drawing an implicit distinction with the average, presumably "weak-on-defense" Democrat. The Post's characterization echoes a practice previously noted by Media Matters for America of the media's labeling of those in favor of the Iraq invasion as "pro-military" or supportive of the troops, in implicit contrast with those who opposed it or now support withdrawal as somehow "anti-military" or not supportive of the troops. Read more

Military historian says Iraq is "most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC"

There is a remarkable article in the latest issue of the American Jewish weekly, Forward. It calls for President Bush to be impeached and put on trial "for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them".

To describe Iraq as the most foolish war of the last 2,014 years is a sweeping statement, but the writer is well qualified to know.He is Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians. Several of his books have influenced modern military theory and he is the only non-American author on the US Army's list of required reading for officers. More

US raps official for UK comments

BBC

A US official who said Britain got nothing back from its "one-sided" relationship with the US has been summoned by his superiors.
Kendall Myers, a senior analyst at the state department, said he was "ashamed" that Prime Minister Tony Blair was often ignored by President George Bush.

But a State Department spokesman said: "We repudiate and disassociate ourselves from these comments."

He said the department was considering what action to take against Mr Myers.

"The comments, frankly, I think, could be described as ill-informed, and I think from our perspective, just plain wrong," said the spokesman, Tom Casey.

He said the analyst had no policy-making role and was not authorised to speak for the department.

Mr Myers made the comments at an academic forum at a university in Washington.

He said he believed the war in Iraq, in which Mr Blair has stood solidly behind the US line, had "greatly strained" the relationship between the two countries and he feared that it would break down.