Perhaps an actual journalist could adjudicate the question for us, but I think that might have been contrary to the prevailing Style Manual, Shelley not being a U.S. legislator.
Let me remind you: I did not start a thread to talk about “sins of the media” or “the liberal media”. It was about the N.Y. Times publishing an obviously slanted story, with the Bush administration journalist-buying briefly mentioned both to put the matter in perspective (my language made it obvious that I consider the latter more egregious) and to indicate that there’s just a wee bit of hypocrisy inherent in the Times’ getting all huffy about the ethics of the Bushites and then committing this piece of sleaze.
Why are you laboring so hard to pretend that there is nothing amiss here?
Thanks for pointing that out. This was state politics, not anything to do with a member of the US Congress or anything that has a bearing on National politics. Makes it less imperative, IMHO.
Oh, my bad. Between the “dudes” and “shes” I assumed that Apos was talking about Shelley.
From KPIX (regarding some of the millions in federal election funds that Shelley is accused of mismanaging):
*"Shelley reportedly channeled up to $500,000 in federal Help America Vote Act funds - in most cases without competitive bidding - to consultants who included a former campaign manager, his campaign treasurer’s law firm, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s press secretary and the son of a prominent Los Angeles County supervisor.
The federal money was intended to help California and other states educate voters, improve polling places and buy electronic voting equipment to avoid repeats of the 2000 Florida electoral debacle."*
Sounds like just a bit more than “state politics” to me.
So, if the idea here is that the Times deliberately omitted mention of Shelley’s party affiliation, I have to ask, what was the motive behind the omission? Can you help me out here, Jack? You’ve highlighted the crime, so to speak, but what was the reward? Did the Times expect people to assume that Shelley was a Republican?
Yes, given that the governor is a Republican, why shouldn’t the secretary of state be one as well? That seems to be a reasonable assumption to me.
Except the republican governor won his seat after the democrat governor was recalled. That made all papers here in California, and a couple of papers nationally. So I think the natural assumption would be that this particular turd is a democrat.
Lets boil this down to it’s basics.
It’s not enough to report on the wrongdoing of an indivual, who by all appearences should resign in disgrace and possibly face some charges. YOU want them to also implicate that individual’s party in his shame.
Is that about right?
I would have to disagree with that assumption.
Oh my, KPIX failed to give the party affiliation of Mayor Willie Brown or his press secretary. It’s an epidemic.
In numerous states, candidates for high state offices are elected separately and not as part of a unified ticket. Non-Californians would not be likely to know the party status of such officials.
I am dumbfounded by the silliness of this.
Here you have a top state official, considered a “rising star” in his party by some, who is accused of various embarassing if not criminal malfeasances, including charges of improper activities to benefit his party which include the diversion of federal election reform funds to political cronies.
And you don’t think it’s relevant to mention, however briefly, his party affiliation???
Be real.
Relevant? Yes. But it seems a stretch to assume that its omission is deliberate and/or malicious. What would be the point?
God damn you’re amazing at being deliberately obtuse!!!
Remember that lil’ old election in 2004? When lots of Republicans (sure, and Democrats) were going around and doing unethical things in terms of throwing away voter registrations, only registering Republicans, etc.? Since these were individuals doing unethical things, certainly only these individuals names should have been mentioned, and nothing to do with the party, right?
"In other news Senator Joe Dumbshit went around today with an AK-47 spraying people that had certain political affiliations… "
News Anchor: “No, I didn’t see any reason to mention that Senator Dumbshit was a Republican.”
Look, it’s hard enough for Americans to understand the federal constitution. Every state has its own constitution and the means by which they divy up power vary widely. Why in the hell should I assume that Schwarzenager doesn’t have the ability to change the Secretary of State after a recall if he chooses? How should I know that the Secratary of State of California is a Democrat or Republican? How much fucking space does it take to say Democrat? God damn, you people…
And yet you assert that they would easily assume this party official was a republican. You stated this.
Should the papers have mention of his party? Possibly, but only in as much as it seems customary to do so, or have usually done so in the past. His party affiliation has zero relevence to the charges that might be brought against him.
Why would it be important that he is a democrat or republican? That it may help some to disparage all democrats or republicans? So that it may help some to determine whether to work up righteous indignation or dismiss it as biased, depending on which side of the aisle that person was on (as you seem to have done)? All that is important is that he is an elected official and seems to have abused his authority.
Would you not agree that because this involved many individuals, and that the actions of these indivuals seemed to be to further the agenda of a particular party, and that these actions were committed against members of another party, that party affiliation might take on considerably more relevence?
I apologize for my worse than usual spelling, typing and puncuation. I am left handed for the next two weeks due shoulder surgery.
Well, how are people supposed to go around “connecting the dots” in these issues without publishing political parties? Unless you want to go around and try to distribute confidential surveys to politicians with questions like, “In the past year, in hundreds of thousands of dollars, how much money have you misappropriated to political cronies?” we depend upon each incident going into our heads and, frankly, shaping our views of the ethics of a party.
Sure, you could say that everything bad that anybody ever does only relates to them, but when people willingly join political parties, they sort of become representatives of that party. Saying that there’s no reason that a politician who has become embroiled in scandal should have his party published in the news stories is absurd.
What dots are you refering to? What allegations of wrongdoing would require knowedge of his party affiliation to understand?
Hey, fuckhead: you see the first two words in that post of mine you quoted? The part where I say that Shelley’s party affiliation is, in fact, relevant to the story? I’m not sure if I should even bother restating it, because if you’re too goddamned stupid to parse a post that takes up all of one line of text on your computer monitor, a more detailed explanation would likely cause that lump of rancid meat you call a brain to burst into flames, but here goes:
Yes, the Times should have included Shelley’s party affiliation. Yes, the omission of his affiliation is a mistake on their behalf. My question, which should be easily comprehensible to anything with at least a rudimentary nervous system, is “Why would the Times deliberately leave it out?” What is the end-goal in this nefarious plot of theirs? That people will, in the abscense of an explicitly stated party affiliation, automatically assume that any politician accused of corruption must be a Republican? Or is the idea here that most Americans are such drooling, knuckle dragging morons that they will assume that, if a state has a Republican governor, all government officials in that state will also be Republican? Because both of these sound like the sort of assumption that only the truly, deeply, and irretrievably stupid would make. Before this thread, I would have naturally assumed that that level of idiocy would preclude the ability to actually read and comprehend something as complicated as the written word, but you seem to have invalidated this hypothesis, at least partially, in so far as you were unable to actually understand what you read. Still, I’d like to think you’re the exception, rather than the rule.
Well, last time I checked the Secretary of State is within the executive branch, and on a national level, whenever you get a new chief executive, you get new cabinet members. How in the hell should I know how this works with recall? I don’t live in California, I haven’t gone to California’s schools, and I don’t intend to memorize every state’s constitution. So how should I know if Arnie gets to choose a new Sec. of State when he gets elected via recall? It’s not idiotic to think that it is a distinct posibility that he would get just that chance, especially to avoid a governor stalemated with an adversarial cabinet.
You’re right, the NYTimes should have said the party affiliation, glad we can agree on something. Why would they possibly avoid this? Either they left it out on accident, in which case they need to improve in the future, or more nefariously, they did so on purpose to avoid connecting these acts with a party that their editorial board most definitely slants to, and possibly even take advantage of the fact that some might assume that a member of the executive branch is a member of the same party as the governor, which is hardly the most asinine assumption in the world to make.
I don’t suppose to know why the affiliation was left out. The first reason is barely pit-worthy, but there, and the second is obviously pit worthy. Why is it such an unreasonable stretch to think this is possible. You stupidly ask, “Why in the world would the lovely, perfect, and sainted NY Times do such a thing?” Umm, because they might be biased?
If you are prepared to get your panties in a twist (let alone propose a conspiracy) about the non-identification of the party affiliation of the secretary of state of California, shouldn’t you at least know something about California, if not the political affiliation of the secretary of state of California?
There are plenty of stories everyday about politicians, some of greater note, that do not include party affiliation.