Last week’s CBS report on the disputed Jerry Killian memos and the blogosphere’s role in first questioning their validity is the subject of much back-and-forth in the ‘sphere this morning.
(As an aside, the mainstream press moved in to give credit where credit’s due. The Los Angeles Times ran a story crediting alert bloggers for first suspecting a hoax and introducing the possibility of forgery. And New York Times op-ed columnist William Safire today lashed out at Dan Rather, urging him to re-examine the sources.) Mostly, the frenzy consists of various bloggers swearing on the lives of their mothers that the Killian memos are authentic, and an equal number of bloggers swearing on the lives of their fathers that the Killian memos are fabricated.
As for those writing about things other than typewriters and superscripts, Glenn Smith, founder of Texans for Truth, writing on the Blogging of the President, takes issue with Michael Isikoff’s latest in Newsweek on the “The Secret Money War” in campaign 2004. Smith, who was interviewed by Isikoff, feels his views were portrayed inaccurately. Specifically, Smith writes that Isikoff fabricated Smith’s supposed fury at the Kerry campaign and omitted mention of another Smith organization, DriveDemocracy.org. Writes Smith: “But it is the piece’s myopic and unsophisticated take on money and politics that is most irresponsible. Money is seen by Newsweek as a threat to hijack the election when the dollars come in the form of small contributions from hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans who want their voices heard.”
In a discussion of Bush’s post-convention “bounce,” Pandagon’s Jesse Taylor catches CNN in the sort of poll mix-up that we’ve come to love them for. In the clip at issue, anchor Miles O’Brien stressed that the numbers in the cited poll measure “registered voters,” whereas the on-screen graphic showed poll results for likely voters. Prompted to check out Polling Report, Taylor finds that the much-discussed “bounce” is based on a Time poll that to him appears to be an outlier —one of the 5 percent of the polls that do not produce accurate results — because its numbers are out-of-sync with subsequent polling.
Andrew Sullivan, meanwhile, is peeved at the debate over the “Medicare premium issue.” In response to the complaints by advocate organizations for the elderly that Medicare premiums have just increased, Sullivan writes, the candidates are just “blaming each other . . . . [the] vital question — how can we afford all this stuff for decades to come? — just isn’t addressed.” In laying out the choices, Sullivan despairs: “There is no fiscally conservative presence in this election. At least Kerry supports the pay-as-you-go rules for Congressional spending, which Lyndon B. Bush won’t. But the rest is pandering and lies.”
Finally, Laura Rozen comments on the troubling news that 80 civilians in Iraq were killed yesterday, including Mazin Tumaisi, a 26-year-old reporter for Al Arabiya television. In the reporter’s final moments, caught on tape, he could be heard saying, “Please help me. I am dying.” Rozen responds, as if speaking to the ghost of Tumaisi, “Let me just say, I am so sorry. Given how the polls look, despite … the vast gap between the administration’s rhetoric on Iraq and the reality, I am feeling increasingly helpless about how to do anything to make the situation any less horrible.”
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.