"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
They sent a reporter to interview Herman Cain during the Right Online conference, and the first four questions in the interview are about race.
Not like they’re obsessed or anything.
Meanwhile, here’s the last video from the Cain campaign:
HERMAN CAIN for PRESIDENT
Because The New York Times Would Go Nuts
“If you agree with him, you think what he does is citizen journalism. If you don’t, his work is little more than crowd-sourced political sabotage that freely distorts the facts.”
— Jeremy W. Peters, “The Right’s Blogger Provocateur,” New York Times
No need to guess which view of Andrew Breitbart the New York Times endorses. Peters managed to work “jowly” and “husky” into his description of Breitbart, but the key to the presentation is how he depicts Breitbart as (a) a media whore, and (b) a controversial ideologue. “Part performance artist, part polemicist, Mr. Breitbart, 42, has used his network of Web sites and their legions of followers to bring conservative media red meat.”
Perhaps someone can do a Lexis-Nexis search and tell me if the New York Times ever described David Brock’s Media Matters, Ariana Huffington’s Huffington Post or Markos Moulitsas’s Daily Kos in similar terms.
It’s fascinating to see how these reporters feel the need to provide little cues to tell their readers what to think.
Michelle Malkin rips into them good here:
With great fanfare and elite media sympathy, Jose Antonio Vargas publicly declared himself an “undocumented immigrant” this week. . . . In the felony-friendly pages of The New York Crimes — er, Times — the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned illegal-alien activist spilled the beans on all the illegal IDs he amassed over the years. He had documents coming out of his ears.
The Times featured full-color photos of Vargas’ fake document trove — including a a fake passport with a fake name, a fake green card and a Social Security card his grandfather doctored for him at a Kinko’s. He committed perjury repeatedly on federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. In 2002, while pursuing his journalism career goals, an immigration lawyer told him he needed to accept the consequences of his law-breaking and return to his native Philippines.
Following the rules would have meant a 10-year bar to reentry into America. Making false claims of citizenship is a felony offense. Document fraud is a felony offense. . . .
You should read the whole thing. The decision by the New York Times to publish Vargas’s column is a disgrace to the profession of journalism. In what alternative universe does it make sense to celebrate a man for committing forgery and perjury — crimes involving dishonest falsification — when that man is supposed to be practicing a craft devoted to truth-telling?
Please note that Vargas is a native Filipino, just like Michelle Malkin’s parents. But her parents obeyed the law — which, by the perverse logic of liberalism, somehow entitles liberals to shout “RAAAAACIST!” at their daughter. And the New York Times publishes a column by the admitted felon Vargas, but would never publish anything by Malkin.
Those are some of Professor Glenn Reynolds’ thoughts on exactly why the editors of the New York Times would assign a reporter to do a 2,700-word hit piece on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Twenty-seven-hundred words.
That’s four times the length of a typical news story, and the piece essentially re-hashes a Democratic Party talking point about Thomas’s alleged “conflict of interest” which Democrats say should force Thomas to recuse himself from the upcoming case on the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
Is there any chance — any chance at all — that the editors of the Times would ever consider themselves obliged to devote such resources to advancing a Republican talking point?
And they wonder why they’re losing influence . . .
Kate Zernike features Cain in the New York Times:
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Michele Bachmann was campaigning just north of here, the Sarah Palin tour was rumored to be arriving soon, and Mitt Romney was on his way to announce his entry into the presidential race.
Yet here was another voter swooning for Herman Cain.
“I watched you at the Republican debate, and I have to be honest, I’d never heard of you, but ever since that. …” said Nathan Lyons, 29, his voice trailing off wistfully. “You say it like it is.”
Joan Silvernail, 68, pumped Mr. Cain’s hand, then turned to her husband. “It’s his enthusiasm,” she said. “Wasn’t that what we felt with Ronald Reagan, his enthusiasm?”
Those not frequenting Tea Party rallies or the living rooms and coffee shops of New Hampshire and Iowa might dismiss Mr. Cain, a talk radio host and former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, as a frivolous candidate — “the pizza guy” as some call him.
But there are signs of what Mr. Cain, in his booming baritone, calls “Old Man Mo — Momentum!”
A Gallup poll released last week showed Mr. Cain with the highest voter intensity score of any Republican presidential contender — far higher than Ms. Palin, a former governor of Alaska, or Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts. While Mr. Cain’s name recognition was at 37 percent, it had risen 16 points since March. . . .
Read the whole thing — it’s 1,400 words, which is a lot of words for the New York Times to devote to a candidate that all the pundits keep telling us can’t win.
Isn’t it time you joined the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain?
Something I hadn’t previously noticed is how Rachel Maddow employed the word “creep” against Anthony Weiner:
(Hat-tip: PoliticalPAW.) Meanwhile, the latest spin on WeinerGate provokes Ace of Spades to lay down an incredibly brutal interrogation on the Prime Suspect — an instant blogospheric classic.
And, yeah, I’ve got a new WeinerGate column up at The American Spectator that includes props for Ace and Andrew Breitbart, which I hope you’ll go read.
The polling savant of the New York Times takes a look at the recent Gallup numbers and is intrigued:
I would not suggest that Mr. Cain is one of the leaders. But in a field where the three insider favorites to win the race — Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman — collectively poll at just 25 percent, and where some Republicans seem to be pining for an outsider (perhaps even outside-the-box) choice, he’s the freshest face.
Silver produces this very interesting graphic, illustrating the relative intensity of Cain’s support:
Which is impressive, any way you look at it. And as Caroline May reports, Democrats are now paying attention:
While conservative commentators Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove might not see Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as viable, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is keeping an eye on the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO.
While the DNC has been barraging media and supporters with alerts criticizing Republican presidential hopefuls Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, and Mitt Romney’s media appearances, Cain has largely been out of the mix. Last week, the DNC sent out more than 25 alerts attacking the aforementioned GOP frontrunners, not one mentioned Cain.
[Thursday], however, the committee ramped up its focus on Cain, issuing a “Rapid Response” attack against his morning “Fox and Friends” appearance, during which Cain praised the Paul Ryan budget.
What does this mean? Da Tech Guy thinks media liberals are now promoting Cain as a surreptitious way to submarine Sarah Palin.
That theory may attribute too much foresight and subtlety to the JournoList crowd. My own theory — insofar as any theory is needed to justify the overdue attention Cain is now getting — would be that political reporters are bored with the ho-hum GOP primary field and are looking for something new and exciting to write about. However you explain it, Herman Cain’s campaign has definitely gathered momentum in the past three weeks, whereas Tim Pawlenty . . . eh, not so much.
If you want a perfect example of how the Left pushes for more liberal press coverage, this is it: Eric Alterman accuses new-minted New York Times columnist Frank Bruni of being too soft on Bush.
It is not good enough for Alterman that Bruni is, and always has been, a reliably liberal member of the press corps. No, in Alterman’s universe, the job of reporters is to act as partisan attack dogs against Republicans. And so if Frank Bruni doesn’t fulfill that Alterman-approved role, he will be treated as the enemy.
There is something vaguely totalitarian in this attitude, and I think it is not an accident that the target of Alterman’s bullying is The First Gay Columnist in the Whole Dadgum History of the New York Times™.