Posted by: McQ on Thursday, February 21, 2008 And does it matter? The hot story for the day, at least among the chatterati, is the NY Times story which claims, sort of, kind of, that John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist (Vicki Iseman). Of course the supposed affair is denied by both parties and, to make it an even less relevant story, supposedly happened during his 2000 run for the presidency. Now for Democrats, of course, this is no big deal. It's just a story about sex. So to our leftist and Democratic commenters, I assume you'll be silent about this. There's another twist to this story, well actually a couple. The NY Times endorsed John McCain and then ran this story. Either the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing (which with that organization is entirely possible) or it does, but doesn't care. This is a story that was visible in 2000, why run it again now (with no more than the usual anonymous sources and nothing any more concrete then than now)? I question the timing. The reason for the timing may involve, one of our favorite publications, The New Republic. According to the TNR website: [TNR correspondent] Gabe Sherman is working on a piece about the Times' foot-dragging on the McCain story, and the back-and-forth within the paper about whether to publish it.That prompted McCain aide Mark Salter to say: "They did this because the The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there," Salter said, "the Judy Miller-type power struggles — they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made the New York Times newsroom look bad."Apparently the NYT had this story written in December but was holding it for some reason and that was the story Sherman was writing. So is it a question of "smear McCain" to avoid a TNR smear? Is this "old news" undeserving of further coverage? Does this reflect more poorly on the NY Times or McCain? Look at the difference between the Washington Post coverage of the same story and that of the NYT. Somehow they managed to make the same points without the rumor and innuendo of an affair. UPDATE: John McCain has just held a news conference to specifically address the NYT story and has expressed disappointment in the NYT for running unfounded allegations. He also flatly denied the affair. He also denies knowing of his staff's intervention in 2000 to keep Iseman away. And he said he was never warned by his staff about staying away from her. Lastly, the letters he wrote on behalf of Iseman's clients were appropriate for his role as a committee chairman. He essentially challenged the integrity of the NY Times. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TrackBacks | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Return to Main Blog Page | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Comments For This Post | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Previous Comments to this Post |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Add Your Comment | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| Vicious Capitalism |
Buy Dale's Book!
|
