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Times Watch for December 9, 2003

Gore and Lieberman, Centered

     Al Gore's shocking endorsement of the candidacy of Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (and his implicit rejection of former running mate Sen. Joe Lieberman) is all over the Times today, giving the paper another chance to insist that Gore and Lieberman are "centrists."

     Tuesday's front-page story by Adam Nagourney and Jodi Wilgoren, "Gore To Endorse Dean, Remaking Democratic Race," emphasizes Gore's purportedly moderate credentials: "Mr. Gore's decision put him in the odd position of supporting an insurgent candidate who has built his campaign attacking the centrist Democratic positions that the former Vice President has espoused for two decades."

     Deeper in Tuesday's edition, Todd Purdum's "Mr. Inside Embraces Mr. Outside, and What a Surprise" opens with a similar formulation: "In moving to endorse Howard Dean, Al Gore embraced an insurgent candidate who has spent months railing against the brand of centrist-at-home, hawkish-abroad Democratic politics that Mr. Gore worked 20 years to help build." 

     Hold on. Is this the same "centrist" Gore who ran as a liberal populist in 2000, railing about "the people versus the powerful?" The same Gore who just last month spoke before the left-wing group MoveOn accusing Bush of exploiting the war on terrorism for partisan advantage: "The White House timing for its big push for a vote in Congress on going to war with Iraq also happened to coincide exactly with the start of the fall election campaign in September a year ago." Gore also called the Patriot Act " a kind of Tonkin Gulf Resolution conferring Congress’ blessing for this President’s assault on civil liberties."

     And it wasn't merely a matter of Gore abandoning a history of centrism to attract Democratic votes in 2000. An MRC analysis in 2000 found that Gore's American Conservative Union rating over his years in the House and Senate averaged 14.6, placing him well left of center.

     Diane Cardwell's story rounds out the Times' claims of the Democratic Party's "centrist " 2000 ticket: "Mr. Lieberman, a centrist from Connecticut who made history as the first Jewish vice presidential nominee of a major party, delayed announcing that he was entering the 2004 presidential race until last January, when he was certain Mr. Gore was not running again."

     As MRC noted back when Lieberman and Gore were still on speaking terms, Lieberman is hardly a centrist:: "[Lieberman's] earned a lifetime 'Liberal Quotient' of 77 from the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) for his votes since 1989....In 1999, Lieberman was assessed 95 percent from ADA while the American Conservative Union (ACU) gave him a zero for that year, making him one of the Senate’s eight most liberal Senators in 1999. His lifetime ACU rating: 19 percent."

For Nagourney and Wilgoren on the centrist Gore, click here.

For Purdum on centrist Gore, click here.

For Cardwell on centrist Lieberman, click here.

• Campaign 2004 | Diane Cardwell | Al Gore | Labeling Bias | Sen. Joseph Lieberman | Adam Nagourney | Todd Purdum | Jodi Wilgoren

Al Sharpton, "Civil Rights Leader"

     A "civil rights leader" wins in Brooklyn court--but hold the hosannas. Tuesday's story by Thomas Lueck is headlined: "City Settles Sharpton Suit Over Stabbing--Will Pay Him $200,000 In 1991 Attack at Rally." As in Al Sharpton, hatemonger.

     Lueck writes in the paper's Metro section: "The settlement is a welcome development for Mr. Sharpton, whose personal finances as a civil rights leader have often been stretched and shrouded in mystery. In his lawsuit, Mr. Sharpton said that the city failed to protect him at the time of the Jan. 12, 1991, stabbing, which occurred in a schoolyard as Mr. Sharpton was preparing to march in a protest recalling the 1989 killing of Yusuf K. Hawkins, a black teenager killed by a group of whites in Bensonhurst. In interviews, Mr. Sharpton has cited the stabbing as a turning point in his life, an event that helped propel him into politics."

     Lueck mentions the 1991 case which features Sharpton as victim, and even drills down for details like: "After the stabbing, Mr. Sharpton ran twice for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate from New York, the first time, in 1992, receiving 32 percent of the vote in a four-candidate primary."

     Yet there is not a single mention of the infamous Tawana Brawley rape-hate crime hoax of 1987 that first got Sharpton headlines (the event that truly "propelled him into politics," or at least the political world). Lueck also skips the related case of Sharpton in court, one he lost: Sharpton in 1998 was ordered to pay $65,000 in a defamation lawsuit for falsely accusing prosecutor Steven Pagones of raping Brawley.

For more on "civil rights leader" Sharpton's lawsuit victory, click here.

• Tawana Brawley | Civil Rights | Labeling Bias | Lawsuit | Race Issues | Al Sharpton

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org