Limbaugh gets a pass (11/21)
By Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan
When Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) suggested Wednesday that Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio hosts incite threats of violence, pundits immediately went into overdrive to downplay the vitriolic attacks Limbaugh has leveled at Daschle for months now. There's no question that much of Daschle's criticism was flawed and unfair, but too few in the media have recognized just how outrageous much of Limbaugh's rhetoric is.
During a press conference Wednesday, Daschle said, "What happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren't satisfied just to listen. They want to act because they get emotionally invested. And so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically, on our families and on us, in a way that's very disconcerting." Mentioning charges of obstructionism leveled against him last year, Daschle suggested that "there was a corresponding, a very significant increase in the number of issues that my family and I had to deal with."
Daschle continued by offering an unfair and exaggerated comparison of talk radio and religious fundamentalism:
"You know, we see it in foreign countries and we think, 'Well, my God, how can this religious fundamentalism become so violent?' Well, it's that same shrill rhetoric, it's that same shrill power that motivates. Somebody says something and then it becomes a little more shrill the next time. And then more shrill the next time. And pretty soon it's a foment that becomes physical in addition to just verbal."
While Daschle may feel there is a correlation between criticism by talk radio hosts and the number of threats he receives, there is no evidence suggesting that the hosts are the cause of the threats. Moreover, it is unreasonable to suggest that talking heads are responsible for the actions of a deranged few without specific proof that they have actively incited their actions.
Yet Limbaugh, especially, is guilty of extremely vicious rhetoric. Consider just a few examples from his frequent diatribes against Daschle over the last two years. On Nov. 15, he asserted that Daschle's criticism of the conduct of the war on terrorism amounted to "an attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism," called him "Hanoi Tom" and suggested that he is " a disgrace to patriotism." On other occasions, Limbaugh has suggested that "In essence, Daschle has chosen to align himself with the axis of evil" and has drawn an extended analogy between Daschle and Satan.
Many pundits downplayed Limbaugh's statements or were simply unaware of them. In his online Media Notes column, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asks, "Has the Senator listened to Rush lately? Sure, he aggressively pokes fun at Democrats and lionizes Republicans, but mainly about policy." Kurtz then cites a few generic quotes from Limbaugh as though they discredit the thesis that Limbaugh uses vitriolic rhetoric, writing, "Golly gee. We've heard worse on "Crossfire."
On the Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Brit Hume," Fred Barnes also denied the obvious:
I doubt if he's listened a lot to Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh a pretty conventional conservative, you know. He talks up -- he was a big supporter of Bush One and now he's a supporter of George W. Bush as president and the Bush agenda. He's not an extremist. He's a conventional conservative, as are so many talk radio people... Now what information do they get from Rush Limbaugh? For heaven's sakes, he does such radical things as read editorials from "The Wall Street Journal." Boy, that will really drive people to an emotional frenzy.
Perhaps the most egregious spin, however, came from Sean Hannity, the co-host of Fox's "Hannity and Colmes," who didn't even bother to address the substance of Limbaugh's attacks on Daschle, instead blaming him for tactics Hannity says Democrats use to attack Republicans. On Wednesday's show, Hannity said, "You want to talk about shrill rhetoric ... the attacks by Daschle and the likes of him saying Republicans want to poison the air, water, and kill children, that Republicans every year we have the ads, grandma thrown down the stairs. If you elect a Republican, another black church is going to burn, a Democratic party ad ran that in a recent election. They are the ones with the shrill, mean- spirited hateful rhetoric."
While Daschle's comments were certainly unfair, it's absurd to deny that Limbaugh is consistently more mean-spirited and nasty than virtually anyone else in the mainstream discourse.
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Related links:
-Spinsanity on attacks against Tom Daschle
-Spinsanity on Rush Limbaugh
11/21/2002 07:51:07 PM EST |
False hypocrisy charges against Gore (11/21)
By Ben Fritz
In response to recent reports that Al Gore now supports a single-payer national health care system, several pundits are falsely accusing the former Vice President of hypocrisy.
Last week, the ABC News political unit reported that Gore told an audience at a synagogue in New York that he now favors a single-payer health care system (He has since told the Washington Post he supports some type of single-payer plan, but won't provide details until next year). That prompted swift responses from a number of pundits and commentators.
Two of them, Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online and Michael Kelly of the Washington Post, claimed that Gore's endorsement of single-payer is hypocritical because he attacked former Senator Bill Bradley for backing the approach during the campaign for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination.
In his a column criticizing Gore's recent spate of media appearances, Kelly wrote that "Gore had 'reluctantly come to the conclusion' that the solution to the 'impending crisis' in American health care was the 'single-payer national health insurance plan' -- the idea he savaged his 2000 Democratic primary opponent, Bill Bradley, for supporting."
Goldberg made a very similar accusation, stating, "he's come out in favor of a single-payer health-care system, which must be of little comfort to former opponent Bill Bradley, who favored such a system only to be relentlessly mocked and attacked for it by Gore."
Bradley, however, did not support a single-payer health care system during the primary campaign. Instead, he proposed expanding the current mix of public and private health insurance coverage to reach universal health coverage using government subsidies and tax deductions (for full details on Bradley’s proposal, see this CNN report).
Gore did vigorously oppose this proposal, but it was distinctly not the single-payer approach that he now supports. Not only do these two pundits get the facts here wrong, but Goldberg even says it's part of a pattern of lying by Gore, and uses the disproven charge that he "lied about fixing love canal." The only pattern in this case, though, is the pundits who accuse a politician of contradicting himself, but don't take the time to accurately report just what it is they claim he's contradicting.
Update (12/4): In his column today, Michael Kelly corrected his error.
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11/21/2002 09:01:01 AM EST |
The new wave of attacks on Tom Daschle
By Bryan Keefer
Since he became Majority Leader, Senator Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has been the subject of repeated vicious attacks, particularly since Sept. 11. But when Daschle raised questions about the success of the war on terrorism last week, Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL, and radio host Rush Limbaugh took the attacks on him to a new low, explicitly questioning Daschle's motivations and branding him as unpatriotic.
This is the latest chapter in a troubling history of unfair attacks on critics of the conduct of the war on terrorism -- and Daschle in particular. In particular, when he suggested in February that success in the fight against terrorism was in doubt and that it would not be a victory unless bin Laden and other leaders were caught, prominent Republicans retaliated by suggesting, as Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), head of the National Republican Campaign Committee, did, that Daschle's "divisive comments have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies". (Read the whole column.)
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11/20/2002 10:48:59 AM EST |
In "Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore once again puts distortions and contradictions before the truth
By Ben Fritz
Michael Moore insists he wants to be taken seriously. The author and filmmaker, an unabashed champion for liberal causes, is challenging America's gun culture with his latest endeavor, the documentary "Bowling for Columbine." Like his first film, "Roger and Me," it consists of a mix of satirical interviews with average people, confrontational interviews with celebrities and Moore's thoughts on what is going wrong with America. The argument often takes a back seat to the humor, but that's just Moore's style, as he explained to the Contra Costa Times in March: "I always assume that only 10 to 20 percent of people who read my books or see my films will take the facts and hard-core analysis and do something with it. If I can bring the other 80 percent to it through entertainment and comedy, then some of it will trickle through."
The problem is, once you delve beneath the humor, it turns out his "facts and hard-core analysis" are frequently inaccurate, contradictory and confused. At one point in the film, Moore apparently even alters a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, changing history to make a point. Like many of the political celebrities increasingly filling our TV screens and bookstores, he is entertaining, explicitly partisan, and all too willing to twist facts to promote himself and his vision of the truth. (Read the whole column.)
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11/18/2002 10:41:06 PM EST |
Spinning Iraq inspectors' departure (11/18)
By Brendan Nyhan
In his newest syndicated cartoon, Tom Tomorrow purports to set the record straight on the circumstances under which United Nations weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998. But, like many liberals making this point, he presents the situation out of context.
In the strip, a character whose opinions are presented as authoritative states that inspectors "weren't kicked out [by Saddam in 1998] -- they were ordered to withdraw by chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler". But as Josh Marshall pointed out on Salon last week, this is a deceptive summary of what happened.
While Tomorrow is right to point out that inspectors were not technically expelled by Saddam -- as a number of media outlets have inaccurately reported -- he and others omit crucial context when they imply that the inspectors simply withdrew of their own accord. After repeated instances of Iraqi non-compliance with the inspection regime, the US and Great Britain decided to launch a series of retaliatory airstrikes against Iraq in December 1998. As a result, Butler withdrew the inspectors, saying "we can't adequately do our jobs under these circumstances" and that it "made logical sense therefore to pull our people out." After the strikes, Saddam did not allow the inspectors to return.
Give the importance of this issue to the current debate, both sides must take care to present what happened accurately.
Clarification - 11/19 5:18 PM EST: As Tomorrow points out (along with several readers), I should have noted that Saddam objected to the presence of American spies in UN inspection teams in 1998, a charge that was documented in subsequent media reports in the US press.
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Related links:
-Spinsanity on the debate over Iraq
11/18/2002 10:50:45 AM EST |
WSJ whitewashes attacks on Cleland (11/18)
By Brendan Nyhan
Today, the Wall Street Journal is the latest voice on the right to question the Democratic claim that Senator-elect Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., won his campaign against Senator Max Cleland, D-Ga., by attacking his patriotism, calling it "misinformation" and "a cock-and-bull story". This supposed spin-busting, however, is little more than an exercise in deception.
According to the Journal, "Mr. Chambliss never dishonored Mr. Cleland's Vietnam sacrifice." Instead, he "won by exposing Senator Cleland's voting record on the issues that mattered most to Georgians, such as taxes, missile defense and especially homeland security."
This may be the reason Cleland was defeated. But in its outrage, the Journal somehow fails to mention a notorious Chambliss press release accusing Cleland of "breaking his oath to protect and defend the Constitution." The alleged evidence? Cleland's vote for a successful 1997 amendment to the chemical weapons treaty (supported by several prominent Republican senators) that removed language barring inspectors from certain countries from being part of United Nations inspection teams in Iraq -- hardly sufficient grounds for such a grave and inflammatory charge.
As syndicated columnist Mark Shields has argued:
This is not the usual garbage of cheap political campaigns. This comes close to a charge of treason. To break that oath --"to defend ... against all enemies foreign and domestic" -- which Max Cleland first took as a young Army second lieutenant before volunteering for combat in Vietnam in 1967 and then took again following his 1996 election to the Senate -- would be nothing less than an act of deliberate disloyalty to his nation.
The editorial also fails to address a Chambliss ad associating Cleland with bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators," the announcer said as images of bin Laden and Hussein appear on screen, "Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead." While this ad did not directly question Cleland's patriotism in the same way as the press release, many have criticized its disreputable suggestion that Cleland lacks "courage" to defend the country against bin Laden and Hussein -- yet it goes unaddressed in an article purporting to debunk a supposed myth.
The subtext of Chambliss's accusations against Cleland is clear. Unfortunately, the Journal did not fairly present the facts so that its readers could make up their own minds.
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Related links:
-Saddam, terrorist comparisons become commonplace (Bryan Keefer, 10/25/02)
11/18/2002 10:17:34 AM EST |
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