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Times Watch for February 10, 2004

Nixonian Politics of Fear Rears Ugly Head (Says Gore)

     Covering a campaign rally for Democrats in Nashville, Katharine Seelye on Monday (in "Gore Says Bush Betrayed the U.S. by Using 9/11 as a Reason for War in Iraq")
appears to take Al Gore at his partisan word as the former vice president compared Bush to Richard Nixon.

     Seelye writes: "[Gore's] appreciation of Dr. Dean was tucked in passing into a fiery meditation on his own political history, including a recollection of the tactics used by the Republicans against his father, a longtime populist senator from Tennessee, in his last, losing election in 1970."

     Seelye took dictation as Gore wrapped Nixon's dark mantle around Bush: "[Gore] recalled that President Richard M. Nixon had used 'the politics of fear' to make his father, Albert Gore Sr., out to be unpatriotic and an atheist. And when his father lost, Mr. Gore said, his father said: 'The truth shall rise again.' He said he recalled that defeat because 'the last three years we've seen the politics of fear rear its ugly head again.' Like the Nixon administration, Mr. Gore said, the Bush administration is not committed to principle but is obsessed with its re-election."

For the rest of Seelye on Gore's speech, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Albert Gore | Richard Nixon | Katharine Seelye

No Rooting for the Home Team Here

     You certainly can't accuse the Times of being homers. Last fall a Times editorial cheered for the underdog Boston Red Sox, not the rival New York Yankees, to make the World Series. Tuesday's Times issues a sympathetic profile of Mexico, which plays the U.S. team in a soccer match Tuesday.

     In "Mexican Honor And Olympics On Line vs. U.S," sportswriter Elisabeth Malkin insists: "For Mexico's beleaguered people, Tuesday's soccer match between Mexico and the United States in Guadalajara is about much more than winning a place in the Summer Olympics in Athens. It is about national honor. To many Mexicans, soccer has become a proxy for all the indignities the country has suffered at the hands of the United States in almost two centuries of independence. During the first century, the United States invaded Mexico, annexed a third of its territory and intervened in its revolution. In Mexican eyes, the United States now alternately bullies its southern neighbor or ignores it--all the while building a wall to keep out Mexicans."

     Malkin passes along without comment this charming sidelight: "Mexico is expected to benefit from the home-team advantage and furious fan support. Fans chanted 'Osama, Osama, Osama' and booed during the playing of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' when the United States defeated Canada, 2-0, last Thursday in a first-round game in Zapopan." Malkin concludes with a quote from a Mexico City newspaper seller: "We should always beat them, we should always try to humiliate the gringos."

     Would the Times' reaction be equally blase if American fans had mocked a Mexican national tragedy, or used an offensive word like "gringos" to describe their opponents?

• Elisabeth Malkin | Mexico | Soccer | Sports

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