Right here…
My dad was a carrier man, served as a communications officer on the Kitty Hawk and the Coral Sea as well as the Constellation. He knew a few men who served on the Forrestal. He always told me you never ever wetstart a jet on the flight deck of a ship, never. 134 crewmen died as a result of this hotshot who was evacuated from the Forrestal for his own safety. Lots of men wanted his head right there and then.
There are other reasons. Who decided to put John McCain as the Republican candidate for the President of the United States anyways? McCain is as liberal as they come. Look at his bills with his name on them. McCain/Feingold, McCain/Kennedy, blah blah fucking blah! He is a disgrace to the conservative movement as far as I’m concerned.
And the SOB left his dying wife so he could chase some rich broads tail and start his political career. If it wasn’t for that, he would still be a damn Navy hack in DC. Fucking adulterer and opportunist.
That’s about all I have to say about John McCain.
Politico reporters Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris examine the claim that the media are overwhelmingly biased against the McCain campaign, conclude that it’s true, and then sum up their response in two words: “So what?”
Why McCain is getting hosed in the press.
OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.
And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.
So what?
You see, political journalists are a special breed of human being.
Responsible editors would be foolish not to ask themselves the bias question, especially in the closing days of an election.
But, having asked it, our sincere answer is that of the factors driving coverage of this election — and making it less enjoyable for McCain to read his daily clip file than for Obama — ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil.
The main reason is that for most journalists, professional obligations trump personal preferences. Most political reporters (investigative journalists tend to have a different psychological makeup) are temperamentally inclined to see multiple sides of a story, and being detached from their own opinions comes relatively easy.
So there you have it. Stop complaining about bias, and accept the opinions of your betters, America.
(hat tip:Chuckles)
You’re not going to believe this one. Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings, while covering the presidential campaign, entertained fantasies about “taking out” Rudy Giuliani.
And now he’s talking openly about it, and about his underhanded dealings with the John McCain campaign, as he pretended to be friendly and sympathetic while looking for every negative angle possible.
He doesn’t even seem to be self-conscious about revealing what a dishonest, biased scumbag he is.
HACK: CONFESSIONS OF A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN REPORTER.
The reality is: I quickly realized Rudy was a maniac. I had a recurring fantasy in which I took him out during a press conference (it was nonlethal, just something that put him out of commission for a year or so), saving America from the horror of a President Giuliani. If that sounds like I had some trouble being “objective,” I did. Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it—influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates—and despite what they tell themselves, it’s impossible to both be a part of the action and report on it objectively. In some cases, you genuinely like the candidate you’re covering and you root for him, because over the long haul you come to see him as a human being. For a long time, this was John McCain’s ace in the hole with the press, whom he referred to as “my base.” Reporters rode along with him, and he joked with them, and that went a long way toward shaping the tone of their coverage. (Last January a group of reporters asked McCain’s staff to make McCain campaign press T-shirts for them.) And because your success is linked to the candidate’s, you want to be with a winner, because that’s the story that makes the paper or the magazine or gets you on TV.
In my case, it was easy to despise Rudy. I’d spent two years covering the war in Iraq. I had a brother who was currently deployed there as an infantry platoon leader, and I had Iraqi friends who were now living as refugees. To listen to a man so casually invoke violence and warfare—a man who’d never set foot in Iraq or in any war zone—was troubling indeed. I wasn’t alone in the press corps. I don’t think I spoke to another journalist who ever said one good thing about the man. What did we say? We made fun of his divorces and his wives, that he’d married a second cousin, that he surrounded himself with corrupt cronies, that he had a piss-poor relationship with his children, etc. We talked about his megalomania and his cynical exploitation of September 11.
Still, I ate meals with staffers and campaign managers. I tried to say things that would make me appear sympathetic to Rudy while not technically lying. (“Wow, he sure seems popular.” “I was in New York on 9/11, and I have to be honest with you, I was glad Rudy was in charge.”) I tried to stay out of any discussion about issues and to just repeat the mantra to myself: I am here to observe and record, observe and record.
(Hat tip:Nancy)
Some very cool politically informed graphics from design student Heather Mantovani, at Andy Rutledge’s place: Design in the Sociopolitical Arena.
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