anybody remember this>?
 

You know, I had thought that Lockhart's "why don't you ask a journalist how often this happens" answer was a McClellanesque* dodge, but now that you bring this up and after reading the charges against ABC News producer Chris Vlasto on Atrios I'm wondering if Lockhart was really making a larger point, that this sort of stuff goes on often and it's really the journalists that should answer for it.

Tough time to be a newsie...makes one yearn for the simple innocence of the Jayson Blair days.

* second McClellan ref of the day. I think I may have a crush.

To Wonk
 

Sorry, just reading quickly and making a fast reply in between planes:

When I said "to be a patriot, you have to agree with me", I was joking - indicating that patrotism has a much broader meaning than what has been tossed around the politisphere lately. You'd have to have read it that way to have it make sense in the context of the post in which it resided. As I said, Kerry was being a patriot when he was in his anti-war mode in the seventies, in my mind. A patriot does what he or she thinks best serves their country. We can all disagree on what that it, but that only defines how YOU serve YOUR OWN patriotism.

I need to use more smileys.

anybody remember this>?
 

There has to be an important difference between these guys talking to each other and passing tips and leads, and what they put in the stories they run. The former doesn't bother me a bit. It's their currency. It's the kind of stories Vlasto was running that crosses way over the line.

Bush flip-flops on Iraq, calls for retreat.
 

• MIXED MESSAGES. The Bush administration can't seem to decide on an angle of attack against John Kerry's very effective speech yesterday at New York University. As this article covering the president's response notes, President Bush claimed Kerry's plan is "exactly what we're currently doing." But campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt put out a statement yesterday claiming that "John Kerry's latest position on Iraq is to advocate retreat and defeat in the face of terror." So are we to believe that Bush's policy is to retreat in the face of terror?

Nick Confessore in TAPPED

Rathergate: The Story that Keeps on Giving
 

For those who aren't completely nauseated with the Rathergate story yet, Bryan Curtis of Slate posits the theory that Rather isn't a hack -- he's simply bonkers.

Excerpt:

• In reponse to these brouhahas and the National Guard story, conservative media critics have demanded blood. They charge that Rather's careless muckraking belies a liberal bias, but it's actually much worse than that. Rather isn't a liberal hack. He's bonkers.
  
  What other reporter could get away with the spontaneous fits of rage and the homespun corniness that are his trademarks? Raised in Texas, Rather reads the news in a colloquial rat-a-tat: Paul Harvey as performed by Bill O'Reilly. He peppers his copy with aphorisms—e.g., "that dog won't hunt"—and for a while ended the Evening News with a single, baffling word: "Courage."
  
  Rather's taste for the absurd goes beyond mere oratorical style, according to Peter J. Boyer's excellent book Who Killed CBS? In 1981, Rather decided that he couldn't occupy Walter Cronkite's chair, so for his first Evening News broadcast he read the headlines while crouching behind the desk. When a rival TV journalist ambushed him outside of CBS headquarters—a favorite tactic of the 60 Minutes gang—Rather instructed the reporter, "Get the microphone right up, will you?" Then he barked, "Fuck you." The clip played on television for days. Then there's Rather's odd penchant for costumes. He once trekked across the Afghan border on foot and returned with hours of dazzling reporting—all of which he undermined by wearing a ludicrous peasant disguise on camera. TV critics lashed him with the nickname "Gunga Dan."
  
  Rather's most embarrassing tantrum came during the 1987 U.S. Open tennis tournament. When producers told him a match would run long and truncate the Evening News, Rather disappeared and left the network with more than six minutes of dead air. (Such was Rather's cachet that no executive dared summon a replacement.) And don't forget the 1986 "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" attack, in which Rather was accosted by street toughs on Park Avenue in New York. You can hardly blame Rather for that one, but Boyer notes that such things rarely seem to happen to Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. It's as if Rather attracts half the madness in the universe, and the other half comes out of his mouth.

To Wonk
 

We knew you didn't mean it.

I have no doubt, however, that you'd include all thos people who don't agree with you among the targets for your magical mystery bomb.

anybody remember this>?
 

I understand your point about currency, but when a source is (1) handing you an inflammatory document purporting to indict one candidate and (2) asking for the phone number of the other candidate because he doesn't think candidate 2 has been fighting hard enough, I'd like to think that journalistic ethics would discourage making such a love connection.

The CBS story would have been pretty damning if it were true. Turns out it was based on docs faked by an anti-Bush partisan. I don't understand why you think Vlasto is so much farther over the line than Mapes.

anybody remember this>?
 

Why? Burkett asked Mapes for Lockhart's phone number, and she gave it to him? That's not much more than an act of courtesy. He's giving her a scoop, and she's supposed to decline to give him a phone number?

If Mapes did this multiple times, I would quite agree. I don't know anything about her. Vlasto appeared to be pushing the envelope quite intentionally.

Another Anti-Kerry 527 Emerges...
 

anybody remember this>?
 

Terry McAwful is still blaming the forgeries on a Rove operative.

anybody remember this>?
 

Is this really smart at this stage? I would think he'd be better off keeping his big yapper shut (other than denying Dem involvement) unless he was damn sure of such an accusation. Why insert yourself into the story? The links to the Kerry campaign are tenuous at this point, but they are there.

Then again, McAuliffe has never been one to let any moment of silence go unfilled...

anybody remember this>?
 

Yes. Courtesy doesn't trump integrity. Why court that appearance of impropriety? I have a hard time believing that you'd be so accommodating if the shoe were on the other candidate's foot.

FWIW, my point at the start of this was that I think this does go on but nobody talks about it and maybe they should. Case in point: I agree with you more often than not on the board here and yet clearly we disagree about the propriety of these actions.

In other words, I was not looking to compare and contrast the misdeeds of two people whom I never wanted to hear about in the first place. Speaking of which...

You wrote that you had a problem with the "kind" of stories Vlasto produced. Now you say that it's the number. Either way, I believe one is enough. I would hope that journalistic integrity is not a "fool me once, shame on me" proposition.

anybody remember this>?
 

Be fair, now. He's leaving open the possibility it was a GOP-sympathizing freelancer as well.

Return of the Hanoi Whore
 

Swifties Ad #6

• Opens With: Footage of Jane Fonda
  Cuts To: Stills of Kerry, protesters, then Kerry testifying
  
  Cuts to: Fonda at a press conference
  
  Announcer: "Even before Jane Fonda went to Hanoi to meet with the enemy and mock America, John Kerry secretly met with enemy leaders in Paris. Though we were still at war and Americans were being held in North Vietnamese prison camps. Then, he returned and accused American troops of committing war crimes on a daily basis. Eventually Jane Fonda apologized for her activities, but John Kerry refuses to. In a time of war, can America trust a man who betrayed his country?"

anybody remember this>?
 

The most interesting theory that I've heard so far - which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved - is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is?