On Tuesday, Media Matters ran this history of the Lieberman Hack , essentially asking ABC, CBS and CNN to apologize for uncritically passing on false allegations. Betty Nguyen of CNN is the worst offender, first reading verbatim two paragraphs of campaign text:
"[...]Let me just read you a statement from the Lieberman campaign, this from the campaign manager, saying, 'For the past 24 hours, the Friends of Joe Lieberman's website and email have been totally disrupted and disabled. We believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the U.S. attorney and will be filing formal complaints reflecting our concerns.'
Also goes on to say, 'This type of dirty politics has been the staple of the Lamont campaign,' referring to Ned Lamont, the challenger, 'from the beginning, from the nonstop personal attacks to the intimidation tactics'
Now, was Sean Smith chanelling Abe Ribicoff there? That started life as "gestapo tactics," right?
'and offensive displays to these coordinated efforts to disable our website.'
...then Nguyen gives it the full Hindenburg:
"Basically, the situation is: Joseph Lieberman is saying that his website was hacked and that there are major problems with it. People can't even access it, especially on voting day. Today is the primary.[...]"
and delivering the coup-de-grace, emphasis mine:
"And Ned Lamont, as you well would assume, says he has nothing to do with it. There's no tampering of the website. So, we'll see."
CNN clearly did Lieberman a solid by passing along the attack, but what I love is the "all thieves also lie" tone of Nguyen's last comments.
As you well would assume, CNN has nothing to say about throwing the race to Lieberman. Here's CTBob's archive of Liebermania.
Attacks run faster than our ability to verify them. This brings us back to the present and to Barry. The killer in the debate -- man, nearly two weeks ago now -- was his excessively delicate, elevate-the-discourse jive on Wright. This emboldened HRC and Wright to, ironically, go on the road saying the same thing: "This is who I am; I dunno about Barry, but this is me." Barry's pimpslap to Wright should have been much harder, and should have come sooner. He knows he has to be twice as good in order to get half as far.
Willie Horton forever! I mean, if only Dukakis in 1988 had said something like, "If George Herbert Walker Bush is so scared of Massachusetts he can windsurf somewhere else," or, "Willie Horton never made it onto any country club, so I don't know what George Bush is worried about," idunno, something. Nip these things in the bud, people! The time to kill the attack, like a newborn wildebeest, is before it gets its legs under it...
I fear, K, we've drunk the kool-aid on the Wright issue. I don't understand why the Rev is a problem for Obama when dudes like Rev. Hagee and Chuck Keating aren't a problem for McCain. Obviously, we're just missing what Pennsylvania and Ohio and Indiana are getting. And seriously, I have no idea what that is. How the Ivy-educated scioness of Scranton gentry managed to be the candidate of blue-collar whites is beyond me. Do they vote for the boss? In making this election about identity -- rather than, idunno, war, recession, water, food, shelter -- we've handed it to McCain.
McCain by 5 over Clinton.
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