And yet a political campaign is the only context in which it matters, or even exists. So then …
It’s called “paraphrasing”. It’s a very useful tool.
So there will be no more of your hijacks here? Good.
My own view on the Swift Boating was:
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Kerry made his military service a central part of his appeal. Thus it was fair to place it under scrutiny.
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Although much of what the Swifties said was BS, their initial claim, that very few of his fellow officers supported his candidacy, was significant and worth letting voters know about. As was their attacks on what Kerry did after coming back from Vietnam. If they’d not let their hatred for him get the better of them and stuck to the provable facts, they might have convinced more people.
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The media sided 100% with Kerry. It is very unlikely that many minds were changed by the Swifties. There was just too much that was untrue and that destroyed their credibility, leaving only those already hating Kerry as the choir they were preaching to.
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I actually voted for Kerry. I felt that GWB was destroying conservatism by being a crappy President. So even though I listened to the Swifties and took SOME of what they said seriously, it didn’t make Bush a better President.
Yeah, I’m just gonna let this one stand. This is right up there with “The results in Iraq vindicated GWB” or “Hurricane Katrina was handled well”.
And those facts are not what people focused on. Rather, it was the claims about his time in service, and his silver star.
At the very least, Kerry gamed the system with his race to “3 Purple Hearts and I’m Outta Here” scheme. His idol was the original JFK from his own state. He saw what Kennedy’s service record did for him and figured he’d get him some Purple Hearts, too. Two of which, if I recall correctly, stunk. One for basically a scratch, the other for another very minor injury resulting from debris from his/their own fire, which, according to the rules, does not qualify one for a Purple Heart because it didn’t result from anomy fire.
Then he told lies about fellow servicemen to congress as he pomped himself up, publicly threw his medals away while speaking at the Washington Mall (guess if you never really earned them…), then laughably stood on a stage at the beginning of his Presidential run, saluted and said “Reporting for duty”, as if he was a George Washington succumbing to the will of the people in their time of need.
He is a loathsome.
Go read Unfit for Service. Or not. ::shrug::
And son’t get me started on the whole Iran thing. He’s so desperate to put a little feather in his cap he brokered a deal that is plutonium-grade stupid.
That’s how the media helped him out. They relentlessly fact checked those issues, focused on them, and since those were the allegations the Swifties had the least(or no) factual support for, it helped to discredit them without the media seeming to rush to Kerry’s aid.
In the end, Kerry was just beaten in much the same way Romney was. “Flip flopper”, “Not one of us”, turn out the base.
This is why not. Because it has been established for almost a decade that “Unfit for Service” is largely made up of lies. That it is and was a dishonest smear campaign against Kerry with approximately zero basis in actual reality, from people who weren’t there and whose testimony is highly suspect.
Nah. The people who lie about him are loathsome. And the people who repeat those lies a decade later without even a basic modicum of fact-checking are loathsome. He’s pretty okay for a politician. You won’t even tell us what lies he supposedly told to congress, which I find quite telling.
:smack:
Not going to bother. This statement cost me too many brain cells. Anyone else wanna take a whack?
Okay adaher, here’s a hint. If a random party alleged that a presidential candidate was a pedophile, and the media spoke about nothing else, even if it was largely to debunk it, you really think that’s helping the candidate? Really?
Not to mention giving equal time to those on the pro-pedophile side, despite the debunking.
I say not, because that was not the name of the book. 
Perhaps you are referring to “Unfit for Command” by Corsi, Corsi is pushing Birtherism nowadays and he was/is too biased to be reliable:
http://mediamatters.org/research/2004/08/06/mmfa-investigates-who-is-jerome-corsi-co-author/131607
So, this is example 20,300 of many on the right not being able to identify who is a reliable source.
I’m not seeing how the media “helps” a candidate by fact-checking his opponents. That’s their job, and they do it for everyone. It’s not like they did some special favor for Kerry. And most people aren’t news junkies like a lot of us, so the general take-away is that there is “some controversy”, and it cast a shadow over the campaign.
You ignore that a large portion of voters pay MUCH less attention to politics than the people you discuss politics with. They catch a few ads on TV and not much else.
As I mentioned earlier, in voter interviews a very large portion voted against Kerry because they “had doubts about his military record.” It wasn’t necessary that they believe the charges – in fact they may not have focused enough to really form an opinion – it was enough that doubts were raised.
My opinion is that the the Swiftboat campaign probably swung the election.
It would be good if it worked that way, but the 2004 Presidential election was an example of how it doesn’t always. Contrast the attitude of CBS and its fact-checking vis-à-vis Swiftboating Kerry vs. how they treated the National Guard forgeries, in which they lied and said the documents had been authenticated when they weren’t.
Regards,
Shodan
And the rest of the media was all over that.
Actually that was the same election where Mark Halperin sent out a memo telling his reporters at ABC not to use the same fact-check standards with Bush as with Kerry.
So the rest of the media were not “all over” fact-checking evenly for both sides. Unless you have a cite of the rest of the media doing fact-checking on the National Guard forgeries as compared to the Swiftboat stuff.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, that story was basically exposed as a fraud if not right away, virtually right away. IIRC, within 24 hours it was exposed as clearly false.
You don’t recall correctly.
Regards,
Shodan
Can I get a cite on this? Google is turning up nothing.
As I recall, the Halperin memo wasn’t an instruction to fact check differently, so much as to not treat both sides as equally dishonest. A lot of media tends to be “balanced” in that they act as stenographers for both sides, even if one side is lying their ass off while the other side is playing it straight.
That being said, I don’t think the 2004 campaign involved much in the way of the candidates lying about each other. Most of the dishonesty was coming from third parties. I think the distortions flew much faster between the actual candidates in the last election.
Of course not. Especially in cases like this where just having this crap in the public eye, regardless of whether it was being debunked or not, hurt Kerry’s image.
What, you mean the incident where it came out almost immediately that this was a fraud and Dan Fucking Rather was fired as a result? Also, your link is broken. Either way, that’s a terrible example. Sure, it was just as bogus as the swiftboat claims. But somehow, when democratic claims are false, they are quickly ousted and then discarded; when republican claims are false, they keep on trekking for as long as humanly possible.
As for Halperin, here’s the full memo.
How the hell do you come up with “Mark Halperin sent out a memo telling his reporters at ABC not to use the same fact-check standards with Bush as with Kerry”? That’s nonsense! He’s saying exactly the opposite - to use the same standard without inserting false balance in an attempt to seem unpartisan! Which is something more news organizations need to do.
Look, the fact is that regardless of what the right-wing persecution complex clique would say, the media lets republicans get away with a lot. Why? In an attempt to not look biased. Lies were essentially the entire basis of the right wing’s 2004 smear campaign against Kerry. And if the media actually was balanced, you would have seen far more slant to the left than you already see. You would not have seen anywhere near the same focus on the SBVTs. In reality, republicans all to often get treated with kid gloves by the mainstream media and democrats don’t, in the pointless and destructive mission of appearing “unbiased”. Halperin’s complaints were totally accurate, appropriate, and we need more of that today.
Your bias is blinding you. Do you really need it to say, “Pssst. As far as Bush goes, question everything, even after there are answers. Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt on anything. As far as Kerry, well, do the opposite. We have a country to save!” :rolleyes: