While the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have generally eschewed direct personal insults so far, the same can't be said for their political opponents. Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., former Vermont governor Howard Dean and Senator John Edwards, D-NC, have all been tagged with derisive nicknames and labels, ones that in Kerry's case are being repeated over and over.
On April 22, an anoymous Bush adviser told the New York Times that Kerry "looks French,” a silly insult designed to capitalize on anti-French sentiment in the wake of the Iraq war. Since then, three right-wing pundits have repeated it frequently, calling Kerry "French-looking" in nonsensical terms. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz, lashed back in the press, prompting James Taranto, the author of the Best of the Web Today column on Opinion Journal, the website of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to first pick up on the phrase. In his April 24 column, he first discusses the controversy, then further down calls Kerry "French-looking," beginning a spree of 22 uses of the term that culminated in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday in which he repeated it.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh has used the term multiple times as well (see commentaries from June 9, July 16, July 22 and August 5, among others). He has also introduced other variants, calling Kerry "John French", Jean Cheri and "Jean F. Cheri".
Washington Times editor Wes Pruden is the other major figure using the term. He wrote on June 20 that "You have to feel a spot of sympathy for someone who looks as French as John Kerry. But he's sometimes got a mouth like Jacques Chirac, and he leaves a lurid paper trail." In a subtle touch, Pruden then called him "The French-looking senator" in his next sentence. On July 25, he called Kerry "the French-looking pursuer of Howard Dean."
Dean has also become a target of Limbaugh, who has begun referring to him as "Nikita Dean" in a reference to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Reacting to a Washington Post story that portrayed Dean as a fiscal conservative, Limbaugh said:
The Democrats always try to tell us that the Soviets, "well, they're just misunderstood people. I mean, they're really not our enemies, they're just afraid of us because of our nuclear arsenal." I've got a new name for Howard Dean. I'm going to call him "Nikita Dean." With the way the press is trying to position this guy, they're not going to get away with it. "Nikita Dean" from now on.
Later in the show, Limbaugh added:
He's [Dean] positioned himself so far out on the left that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is to the right of him. Hence the name "Nikita Dean." I mean I'll bet most of you never thought you'd see the day when the head of Russia was more supportive of capitalism, individual liberty and American foreign policy than the leading Democratic presidential candidate is, but it's the truth.
Finally, a Bush advisor labelled Edwards as the "Breck girl of politics" in the same April New York Times article where Kerry was labelled as looking French, which the Times described as "a reference to the shiny-hair model for a popular shampoo in the 1960's." The label has not been repeated very much in the political press (although Limbaugh has used it), in part due to Edwards' low standing in the polls, but is poised to come into wider use if his candidacy takes off.
Given that we're months away from the primaries and over a year from the general election, the repetitive use of nasty nicknames could indicate that the presidential campaign is going to be heavy on cheap invective.
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Related links:
-Patriotism attacks on Snowe and Voinovich (Bryan Keefer, 4/23/03)
-Cheap attacks on war opponents (Ben Fritz, 3/13/03)
-Taranto's defense of the indefensible (Brendan Nyhan, 2/18/03)
-Spinsanity on Rush Limbaugh
In his column last week, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, who created the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban after misreading a New York Times story, spreads two more falsehoods now working their way through the media.
First, Scheer addresses the report of the Congressional committee set up to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, focusing on the portion dealing with Saudi Arabia. He writes that while Saudi Arabia has close ties to terror, "The report finds no such connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists," making it appear that Congressional investigators sought evidence of such connections but failed to find any. However, the widely publicized July 23 UPI article upon which Scheer apparently based this conclusion was retracted -- the corrected version published on July 25 specifically disowns the original finding:
Prior to the report's publication, a person who had read it told UPI that it showed U.S. intelligence agencies had no evidence linking Iraq to the 9-11 attacks or to al-Qaida. In fact, the issue is not addressed in the declassified sections of the report.
One other person who has seen the classified version of the document told UPI subsequently that the Iraq issue is not addressed in the still-classified section, either. "They didn't ask that question," the person said.
This correction ran on July 25, days before Scheer's column (which is also syndicated by Creators Syndicate) was published on the 29th. The Democratic Party, which had attacked Bush in an email to supporters based on the original UPI story, published a correction Friday in another email that included a link to the updated story. Scheer's column yesterday, however, did not include such a correction.
Scheer's July 29 column also claimed that the Bush administration "[allowed] members of the large Bin Laden family who were in this country to be spirited home on their government's aircraft before they could be questioned" after Sept. 11. However, this myth (popularized by filmmaker/author Michael Moore) has been debunked by the urban legends website Snopes.com, which shows that "nearly every news account of these flights mentions that the FBI questioned the departing Saudis, grounded their planes, and supervised their departures." National Review's Byron York and others have argued that the questioning -- which took place "at the airport as they were about to leave," according to an FBI spokesman -- may not have been sufficient. But the Bin Ladens were questioned, directly contradicting Scheer's claim.
It is unacceptable for a major national columnist to repeatedly make factually inaccurate claims. Yet Robert Scheer continues to create and disseminate falsehoods by basing his columns on incomplete or untrue reports when accurate information is available. He needs to stop.
Update 9/7 9:57 PM EST: Several readers have contacted me to ask if recent reports based on a new Vanity Fair article by Craig Unger prove that Moore or Scheer were right. Here is the current status of this issue. Based on Unger's claims, it appears that Moore was correct in his statement (which I did not address in this post) that the bin Ladens were allowed to fly within the country while commercial and civil aviation was grounded. However, contrary to some claims, they were not allowed to leave until flights were resumed, which Unger made clear during a Sept. 4 interview on CNN. As for the alleged lack of questioning by the FBI, the evidence generally indicates that, while most or all family members were at least identified, had their passports checked by FBI agents and briefly questioned, serious questioning or interrogations do not appear to have taken place. The issue turns on the specifics of those conversations, which at this time appear to have included at least some questioning, though accounts of the matter differ. Scheer and Moore's assertion that no questioning took place is unproven at best, and contradicts much available evidence. (Note: Snopes.com has updated their article on the matter, which I linked to in the original post, to address this new information.)
Update 9/11 9:24 AM EST: In his newest column, Scheer states that "we can read in the current Vanity Fair about the White House-orchestrated post-9/11 evacuation of 150 Saudis -- including relatives of Osama bin Laden -- from the US when most flights were still grounded." But as the author of the Vanity Fair article stated on CNN (described above), the evacuation of the relatives from the country took place after commercial air travel was resumed. Flights within the country to gather family members were the ones that took place when flights were grounded.
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Related links:
-Scheer deception: The lies and jargon of Robert Scheer (Ben Fritz, 10/8/01)
-Spinsanity on Robert Scheer
-Spinsanity on Michael Moore
By Ben Fritz
Another debate over a judicial nominee is getting nasty in Congress, and the mischaracterizations and vitriol are starting to fly. The controversy concerns Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, whom President Bush has nominated to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor is a devout Catholic and some of his conservative defenders have claimed that Democratic opposition to his nomination is based on his religious views, most notably his opposition to legalized abortion. They argue that this amounts to religious discrimination.
While it's reasonable to debate the extent to which ideological beliefs, including those of a religious nature, should be considered in assessing the qualifications of judges, some are going over the line with cheap accusations. In particular, newspaper ads from the Committee for Justice and the Ave Maria List allege that Democratic opposition to Pryor is based on his Catholic views, which is visually highlighted with a sign on a door saying "Catholics need not apply," a clear reference to discriminatory signs that were displayed in the past. It's a simplistic smear that ignores the complexities of the debate.
Unfortunately, some Republican politicians and conservative pundits are using language that echoes this ad. On Thursday, Rush Limbaugh said "It's hard to see how this is not anti-Catholic bigotry" during his syndicated radio show (Windows Media Player audio). Senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT, meanwhile, accused Democrats of "religious profiling," a term also used by Colin Stewart, executive vice president of the Family Research Council.
One newspaper also mischaracterized a quote by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a leading opponent of Pryor's nomination, to make its case. The Union Leader of Manchester, New Hampshire wrote that Durbin "was quoted in The Hill newspaper yesterday as saying, 'Religion is the last refuge of extremists.' That fairly well sums up the view of the Senate's leading Democrats."
The actual article in The Hill provides vital context that the Union Leader ignores to make a biased case. The latter paper makes it appear that Durbin is attacking religious belief, when in fact he was responding to those who have made allegations of anti-Catholic bias. Durbin finishes his quote by saying, "That hard questions about policy is some sort of criticism about religion has no place in the public marketplace."
Right or wrong, the issues Durbin and other opponents and supporters of Pryor have raised are worth discussing and shouldn't be transformed into nasty accusations of religious bigotry.
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Related links:
-Spinsanity on judicial nominations