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Times Watch for
December 17, 2003
Bush's Poll Numbers:
Nice, But What About Those Funerals?
Wednesday's Page One story by Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder (on the results of a NYT/CBS News Poll) gives Bush his due regarding his rising approval ratings. But the poll asked some odd questions that conform to the newspaper's mini-crusade regarding the alleged controversy over Bush's non-attendance at soldiers funerals. (A History News Network article demonstrated that it's actually rare for sitting presidents to attend soldiers' funerals during wartime.)
Nagourney and Elder jump on that aspect of the poll: "There was also clear public disapproval about some ways that Mr. Bush has responded to the war at home. For example, two-thirds of Americans, including most Republicans, said they disagreed with the White House policy of prohibiting news photographers from ceremonies where the coffins of Americans troops are brought home. The White House says that the policy is intended to protect the privacy of the families of the deceased; Democrats and some critics of the White House say it is intended to avoid the publication of emotionally charged photographs that might harden opposition to the war. Along those same lines, two-thirds of respondents said Mr. Bush should make it a practice to attend the funerals of some Americans killed in Iraq. (That said, a quarter of respondents said, incorrectly, that Mr. Bush was attending those funerals.)"
Two of the poll questions (# 61-62) are linked to the Times funeral crusade, which the paper has promoted in both its news pages and its editorials.
Question #61: "As far as you know, has George W. Bush attended the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq or not?"
Question 62#: "Should George W. Bush attend some of the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq, or isn't that necessary?"
That first question is rather leading, as demonstrated by the results the Times got back--half of the respondees didn't know one way or the other, suggesting a Times' attempt to push onto the agenda a topic people aren't actually focusing on. As for the other question: How would Bush navigate the political minefield of picking and choosing which funerals were worthy of attending?
Not that the Times would mind that particular strain of controversy.
For the rest of Nagourney and Elder's poll coverage, click here.
• George W. Bush | Janet Elder | Adam Nagourney | Polls
Dudley Clendinen, former national correspondent and editorial writer for the Times,
pens yet another look at Tony Kushner's pro-gay, anti-Reagan play "Angels in America." Clendinen focuses on shifting attitude toward AIDS for his Tuesday piece for the Science Times. Clendinen, who coauthored with Times campaign reporter Adam Nagourney the book "Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America," gets personal in his attacks on Reagan-Bush: "'Angels in America' begins in the mid-1980's, in the Reagan era, when the president uttered not a word about AIDS, and lovers and strangers alike ran from the disease."
That's flat wrong: National Review columnist Deroy Murdock quotes Reagan's 1986 State of the Union address (hardly an obscure forum), in which Reagan used the word AIDS five times.
[UPDATE: The following excerpt is actually from a speech given on February 6, two days after Reagan's State of the Union.]
Here's the excerpt Murdock found: "We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS." But Clendinen doesn't let such facts get in the way of a melodramatic line accusing Reagan of hard-heartedness.
Clendinen continues: "It wasn't until 1990, when the first of successive international conferences on AIDS was held abroad, that an understanding of the disease as a global and mainly heterosexual epidemic began to dawn. But the mounting death toll among gay men in the United States--and the striking lack of sympathy expressed during the Reagan and then Bush administrations--drew legions of angry homosexuals from the closet into the gay rights movement during the 1980's and early 1990's."
Yet Murdock notes: "In February 1986, President Reagan's blueprint for the next fiscal year stated: "[T]his budget provides funds for maintaining--and in some cases expanding--high priority programs in crucial areas of national interest…including drug enforcement, AIDS research, the space program, nonmilitary research and national security….In a Congressional Research Service study titled "AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999," author Judith Johnson found that overall, the federal government spent $5.727 billion on AIDS under Ronald Reagan."
Since liberals traditionally equate "sympathy" with "more federal spending," then by their own lights Reagan was quite sympathetic to the fight against AIDS.
For the rest of Clendinen on Reagan and AIDS, click here.
• AIDS | "Angels in America" | Dudley Clendinen | Tony Kushner | Adam Nagourney | Ronald Reagan
Was showing Saddam Hussein's checkup a violation of the Geneva Conventions? Baghdad-based reporter Edward Wong thinks so. Responding to a Nashville e-mailer wondering if the filming of Saddam Hussein's medical checkup violated international law for war prisoners,
Wong responds on the Times website:
"American officials undoubtedly showed this video to demonstrate the powerlessness of Mr. Hussein. But one could argue that the American government is violating its own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. Last spring, during the American invasion of Iraq, officials in Washington objected to videos that the Iraqi government had turned over to Al Jazeera showing American prisoners of war. The Pentagon said the videos were humiliating and violated the Geneva Conventions. To stay consistent with that definition, one would have to say that releasing the video of Mr. Hussein also violates the Geneva Conventions."
• Geneva Convention | Saddam Hussein | Iraq War | Edward Wong
Once again, it's centrist Joe Lieberman and the not-a-liberal Howard Dean. Wednesday's story by Diane Cardwell on the recent burst of publicity around Sen. Lieberman's occasioned by Al Gore's snub follows that pattern: "For months, Mr. Lieberman and his centrist campaign have been overshadowed by the antiwar excitement fueling Dr. Dean's popularity, and more than a few experts questioned his viability as he lagged in fund-raising and opinion polls."
For the rest of Cardwell on Lieberman's recent burst of publicity, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Diane Cardwell | Labeling Bias | Sen. Joe Lieberman
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org