Campaign Desk

Kos and Rove, Together at Last!

Newsweek couldn’t have been more predictable

• Print
• Email
• Comments
• Single page

As you’ve all probably heard by now, Newsweek has hired the liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas and former Bush adviser Karl Rove to comment on the 2008 presidential elections for the magazine. Oy. Concerning the Rove announcement, Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham told The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz yesterday that his magazine’s readers “are sophisticated enough to know that what they get from Karl has to be judged in the context of who Karl is…Readers will have to decide if he’s simply an apologist.”

You couldn’t think up of a weaker editorial endorsement from the head of a magazine if you tried. Basically what Meacham is saying is, “We all know that Karl is full of shit, but hey, who am I to judge?” Even more telling is the controversy the magazine is trying to gin up by hiring these two partisans, and how upfront Meacham is being about the marketing ploy. “I’m fully prepared for both the right-wing and left-wing blogosphere to be outraged, which means we’re doing our job,” he told Kurtz. Ah yes, the old “balance” defense. We’re getting it from both sides, so we must be doing our job. Meanwhile, what the readers get is two writers who have proven that they will stick resolutely to the partisan line—black, white, black, white, black, white, etc. And the national debate moves not an inch. It’s a betrayal of the press’s duty to foster honest debate, but think of the fireworks!

All that said, let’s take a look at the voices Newsweek is giving a platform to. Moulitsas, let’s not forget, is the guy who, after four Blackwater contractors were killed, burned, and had their charred remains strung up from a bridge in Fallujah in April 2004 wrote, “I feel nothing over the death of mercenaries. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.” Nice. He later apologized, but that hardly matters. It was an immature and morally revolting thought, one that doesn’t deserve to be rewarded. As for Rove, what can we say? This is a man who has made a career out of spinning (some might say lying to) the press, and who played a key role in outing Valerie Plame.

A prediction: Meacham will succeed in getting Moulitsas and Rove’s articles linked on plenty of political blogs, and that will allow Newsweek to claim success, But I would be shocked if either one writes anything that isn’t utterly predictable or that falls outside the narrow realm of the worlds inhabited by their ideological fellow-travelers. And in that, the hirings will have failed the magazine’s readership.

CJR

If you enjoy this kind of press criticism please consider a subscription to our magazine, Columbia Journalism Review—a deal via the Web site at $19.95.

To subscribe, to give CJR as a gift, to renew, or to check student and CJR in the Classroom rates, click here.

Comments

padikiller

Sat 17 Nov 2007 10:06 AM

Paul McLeary Weasels Some Words in the Name of "Professional Journalism"

As for Rove, what can we say? This is a man who has made a career out of spinning (some might say lying to) the press.

padikiller wonders who exactly "might" say this about Mr. Rove?...huh?...Here we have both unsubstantiated innuendo and unidentified, unspecified accusers wrapped up into one sentence!..

Another fine example of yellow journalism from CJR's Liberal in Residence...

Brendan Doyle

Sat 17 Nov 2007 05:13 PM

Yellow journalism? Liberal in Residence? Are you for real? You've got to be kidding! This is an *opinion* piece, padikiller... And I, for one, would be someone who might say that Karl Rove lied to the press. In fact, I do say that. So I really enjoyed reading this piece, which nicely highlights a shameless ploy used by Newsweek to attract readers, but if you don't like reading "yellow journalism" maybe you should look elsewhere for information. I hear Bill O'Reilly has a tv show you might enjoy...

padikiller

Sat 17 Nov 2007 10:24 PM

Show me a lie from Karl Rove...

And then we'll get down to business...

OK, pal?...

AhmNee

Sun 18 Nov 2007 05:13 PM

Oh, boy. Here we go.

First it's the President didn't lie. Not Karl Rove didn't lie. What's next? The Vice President didn't actually shoot someone in the face?

I personally have shown you specific statements from the President that were complete falsehoods. Including where the President admitted lying to the press and American people because he didn't want to discuss the sensitive subject of Donald Rumsfeld. So he made up a lie so the press would stop asking questions.

You've never accepted that the President lied when it was plain as day. Why should we believe it will be any different with Karl Rove? Stop wasting our time.

padikiller

Sun 18 Nov 2007 05:29 PM

I never said President Bush never told a lie...

Everybody sneaks a white lie in now and then...

Some Presidents even lie under oath and get impeached and disbarred for doing so (curiously, librals seem to be OK with this...).

President Bush, however, never lied to the American people about WMD's in Iraq.. (At least not that I've seen)

Karl Rove has probably fudged the truth too.. But I have never seen any "lie" from him about anything substantial..

If anyone has an example... Bring it on... I'm ALL ears!..

padikiller

Sun 18 Nov 2007 05:38 PM

Paul McLeary Picks Up a Padikiller Line

"Ah yes, the old “balance” defense."

padikiller nods

Imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery!

Maybe there's hope for Mr. McLeary yet!

AhmNee

Sun 18 Nov 2007 07:20 PM

Padikiller changes his tune:

"I never said President Bush never told a lie..."

Wow. Just ... wow. One more attempt to rewrite history, I guess.

You're always full of surprises, Padikins.

padikiller

Sun 18 Nov 2007 09:41 PM

The Padikiller Memorial "Bush Lied" Challenge"

If anyone posts a complete verifiable quote from President Bush that shows that he lied to anyone about Saddam's WMD program...

I will never defend him again.. I'm serious about this...

I'd be the FIRST one to call for his impeachment if this were the case.

So post a "lie" Moonbats!... No monkeying around with the text... No quotes out of context... Just the quote...

Let's see it...

I've been asking moonbats to put up or shut up for years over this "Bush Lied" crapola..

And all we see from them is more idiotic blithering.

padikiller

Sun 18 Nov 2007 09:45 PM

AhmNee wails

Padikiller changes his tune:

padikiller responds

BALONEY

This from the guy who told us that Thanksgiving was designed by the Pilgrims to celebrate their oppression of the American Indians..

watchman

Sun 18 Nov 2007 10:34 PM

You want Bush lies? He told a Polish television interviewer that the U.S. had found mobile biological warfare labs in Iraq. He told an American interviewer that the U.S. invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein wouldn't let the UN inspectors in. He said he wasn't wearing a wire during his first debate with Kerry -- that if appeared he was, he must have been having a bad shirt day. Those were blatant lies, as opposed to mere dissembling.

padikiller

Mon 19 Nov 2007 06:50 PM

President Bush's supposed "lie" to Polish TV occurred AFTER the invasion... (And was based in good faith on faulty intelligence- hardly a "lie")...

The U.S. DID invade Iraq because Saddam ignored UN weapons inspection resolutions... This is called a "truth" and not a "lie"...

Any statement about a presidential debate in 2004 has NOTHING to do with the justification for going to war in 2003...

This is the kind of moonbat nonsense I typically receive in reply to my challenege...

AhmNee

Tue 20 Nov 2007 10:09 AM

This from the guy who told us that Thanksgiving was designed by the Pilgrims to celebrate their oppression of the American Indians.

No. You're right. The romanticized version where the pilgrims sat down and had a nice feast right before they gave them blankets infected with smallpox is much more believable.

But you've managed to steer this way off topic. Not certain what you having changed your tune has to do with the history of the thanksgiving holiday. I'll just chalk it up to you being in the holiday spirit.

AhmNee

Tue 20 Nov 2007 12:29 PM

Tell you what, lets start with President Bush lies ... then work our way back to Iraq.

REPORTER: Last week you told us Secretary Rumsfeld would be staying on. Why is the timing right now, and how much does it have to do with the election results?

BUSH: You and Hunt and Keil came into the Oval Office and asked me to question one week before the campaign. Basically, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? The reason why is I did not want to make a major decision in the final days of the campaign. The only way to answer that question, and get it on to another question, was to give you that answer. The truth of the matter is as well, that is one reason I gave the answer. The other reason why is I had not had a chance to visit with Bob Gates yet. I had not had my final conversation with Don Rumsfeld yet at that point. I had been talking with Don Rumsfeld over a period of time about fresh perspectives. He likes to call it fresh eyes. -

Translation "I lied to you and the American people so you'd stop asking me uncomfortable questions so close to an election".

It's too bad they didn't archive the comments from before the forum change. I've already posted various Iraq War lies like 3 or 4 times over.

padikiller

Tue 20 Nov 2007 08:31 PM

More Moonbat Silliness

The romanticized version where the pilgrims sat down and had a nice feast right before they gave them blankets infected with smallpox

Reality Calling on Line One... Pick Up, Please!

"The Governor of Plymouth invited Grand Sachem Massasoit and the Wampanoag people to join them in the feast. Evidence to support that claim came from diaries of Plymouth. The settlers fed and entertained the Native Americans for three days..."

The Pilgrims were thankful to the Indians for helping them and wanted to share a feast with them... THIS is the plain REALITY here..

There is not one single shred of evidence that any Pilgrim (or anyone else in the Universe, for that matter) ever once used contaminated blankets to infect American Indians with smallpox...

PERIOD...

There is some evidence that the idea was considered by ONE British army officer more than 120 years AFTER the first Thanksgiving... But there is NO proof whatsoever that he or anyone else ever did sent contaminated blankets to the Indians...

This little Moonbat Fairy Tale is just another case of AhmNee's creative rewriting of history...

The truth is there....

Deal with it the way it comes...

padikiller

Tue 20 Nov 2007 08:49 PM

I've never said... (Nor do I care) that President Bush lied about keeping Rumsfeld on the job...

Such declarations of loyalty are the norm in politics...

Show me a lie from President Bush about Saddam's WMD's before we invaded Iraq in 2003... And I will immediately call for Bush's impeachment..

Otherwise, cowboy up and deal with the truth... Democracy demands maturity...

Learn it, live it, love it...

AhmNee

Wed 21 Nov 2007 12:50 PM

How true that history favors the victor. The truth, however, doesn't always.

Much of America's understanding of the early relationship between the Indian and the European is conveyed through the story of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed a holiday in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, this fairy tale of a feast was allowed to exist in the American imagination pretty much untouched until 1970, the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. That is when Frank B. James, president of the Federated Eastern Indian League, prepared a speech for a Plymouth banquet that exposed the Pilgrims for having committed, among other crimes, the robbery of the graves of the Wampanoags. He wrote:

"We welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people."

But white Massachusetts officials told him he could not deliver such a speech and offered to write him another. Instead, James declined to speak, and on Thanksgiving Day hundreds of Indians from around the country came to protest. It was the first National Day of Mourning, a day to mark the losses Native Americans suffered as the early settlers prospered. This true story of "Thanksgiving" is what whites did not want Mr. James to tell.

What Really Happened in Plymouth in 1621?

According to a single-paragraph account in the writings of one Pilgrim, a harvest feast did take place in Plymouth in 1621, probably in mid-October, but the Indians who attended were not even invited. Though it later became known as "Thanksgiving," the Pilgrims never called it that. And amidst the imagery of a picnic of interracial harmony is some of the most terrifying bloodshed in New World history.

So noble those pilgrims.

In his 'History of Plymouth Plantation,' the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with "corruption," and with "confusion and discontent." The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."

In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, "all had their hungry bellies filled," but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first "Thanksgiving" was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.

I don't know about you but this kind of thing always ruins dinner conversation for me.

However, as the trickle of settlers turned into a steady river, the atmosphere began to change. In 1614, a band of English explorers had landed in the vicinity of Massachusetts Bay. When they returned home, they took with them Native slaves they had captured, and left smallpox behind. By the time the Puritan pilgrims sailed the Mayflower into southern Massachusetts Bay, entire nations of New England Natives were already extinct, having been totally exterminated by smallpox.

You know, this really is a holiday in the greatest American Tradition, isn't it? Makes one proud. Here, put on your rose colored glasses and grab a piece of pumpkin pie. Happy Thanksgiving.

AhmNee

Wed 21 Nov 2007 12:58 PM

Such declarations of loyalty are the norm in politics

Declarations of loyalty? What are you reading? Not what I posted. He said he lied so he could move on to the next question. Are you suggesting that lying and deception is a common and acceptable part of politics?

padikiller

Wed 21 Nov 2007 07:28 PM

So.... In McLearyland we've gone from claiming that the Pilgrims sent poisoned blankets to kill the Indians after the first Thanksgiving... To instead pointing out that in 1970 (350 years AFTER the first Thanksgiving) some nut Indian activist was put down by the Man in Massachusetts when he tried to step up to the soapbox with some silly nonsensical garbage....

Now how can anybody refute THIS kind of ironclad reasoning?....

Oh... And in 1614 (five years BEFORE the first Thanksgiving), some English explorers "left" smallpox behind when they visited Cape Cod......

Surely because those jack-booted, capitalist/imperialist pig-dog English knights (on the payroll of a Halliburton predecessor corporation, nonetheless) wanted to deliberately carry the smallpox virus with them on a three month trip on a 100-foot boat across the Atlantic Ocean in order to orchestrate biological warfare attack on the Indians...

Such is the state of Moonbat debate in McLearyland...

As for those "unvited" Indians...

Here's the true dish (sorry to let Reality rain on the Moonbat Parade)...

"many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted"