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Times Watch for
February 23, 2004
"Loony" to Link Fonda and Kerry?
In his Sunday column "You Can't Skip Vietnam Twice," arts editor turned columnist Frank Rich writes: "And now, of all unlikely developments, Jane Fonda has been roped into a comeback. A movie star who hasn't been seen in a Hollywood feature in almost 15 years and who is best known to younger Americans as Ted Turner's ex-wife has been drafted into a political attack on Mr. Kerry: he appears as a blurred extra sitting several rows behind her in a photo of an antiwar protest held two years before her famous, self-immolating trip to Hanoi. This is guilt by association so loony that even the perpetrators of the Hollywood blacklist might have found it a stretch."
Hardly. After all, as columnist Robert Novak notes, Kerry followed her as a speaker at that very same rally in Valley Forge: "A 34-year-old flier lists speakers for an anti-Vietnam War rally at Valley Forge State Park, Pa., Sept. 7, 1970. Included were two of that era's most notorious leftist agitators, the Rev. James Bevel and Mark Lane, plus actress Jane Fonda, a symbol of extreme opposition to the war. Leading off the list was a less familiar name: John Kerry. So much for the contention by Kerry supporters that his connection with 'Hanoi Jane' (so called for her later visit to the enemy capital in time of war) was accidental juxtaposition in a photograph."
The writer Mark Steyn also refutes Rich: "[Kerry] followed her as a speaker at the 1970 Labor Day anti-war rally in Valley Forge. In addition, Vietnam Veterans Against The War received a significant proportion of its funding from Jane Fonda at a time when John Kerry was its principal public spokesman. Don't take my word for it, ask Miss Fonda: she used to be quite proud of what she'd done."
For the rest of Rich on Kerry, click here.
• Jane Fonda | Gaffes | Sen. John Kerry | Frank Rich | Vietnam
The
Times' Anti-Republican Recycling Policy
In "Unhappy Bush Voters Weigh a Switch," Elisabeth Rosenthal does her bit for the environment and Democratic spin, recycling an anti-Bush quote from a self-described Republican she originally used in a story from three weeks ago.
Rosenthal writes for Sunday's paper: "George Meagher, a Republican who founded and now runs the American Military Museum in Charleston, S.C., said he threw his 'heart and soul' into the Bush campaign four years ago. He organized veterans to attend campaign events, including the campaign's kickoff speech at the Citadel. He even has photographs of himself and his wife with Mr. Bush. 'Given the outcome and how dissatisfied I am with the administration, it's hard to think about now,' he said. 'People like me, we're all choking a bit at not supporting the president. But when I think about 500 people killed and what we've done to Iraq. And what we've done to our country. I mean, we're already $2 trillion in debt again.'"
Rosenthal used a very similar quote from Meagher back on February 3: "'I don't think I could vote for George Bush again when I think of the 500 people killed in Iraq and what's happened to the economy in this country," said George Meagher, an independent, who runs the American Military Museum in Charleston and said he now favors Mr. Kerry."
Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds notes: "And as for relabeling the source guy from "independent" to "Republican" to fit the slant of the story, well, that's pretty lame--especially as the stories are by the same reporter."
This isn't the first case of the Times recycling anti-Republican quotes from "Republicans." Elisabeth Bumiller did her bit, using the same quote from self-described Wisconsin Republican Michael Retzer ("Right now I am very disillusioned with the Republicans' policies") in two separate stories five days apart.
To read Rosenthal's recycling, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Gaffes | George Meagher | Elisabeth Rosenthal
Left-wing, Khmer Rouge-defending Noam Chomsky makes what may be
his debut on the Times op-ed page Monday, with an opinion piece criticizing Israel's building of a security fence, and concluding: "Any real chance for a political settlement--and for decent lives for the people of the region--depends on the United States." Funny that Chomsky, who considers all intervention by the U.S. as intrinsically evil, would advocate the U.S. pressure a foreign country into doing what it wants. Actually, not so funny. As Aitan Goelman notes in the February 23 issue of the Weekly Standard, "Chomsky routinely compares Israel to Nazi Germany….constantly paints Israel as a neo-colonialist occupier and serial abuser of human rights." Apparently for Chomsky, the only thing worse than being the U.S. is being a friend of the U.S.
For the rest of Chomsky's apparent NYT debut, click here.
• Noam Chomsky | Editorial | Israel
McCarthy-Stalin: Just Two Mean Joes?
A piece in Saturday's Arts & Ideas section by Felicia Lee surveys the history of the left-wing magazine Dissent. "A Leftist Stalwart, Still Fighting the Fight" portrays the magazine as a stubborn fighter and has this odd comparison: "Started by a group of New York socialists and intellectuals fed up with what they saw as rampant complacency in American thought, Dissent, a quarterly journal, was devoted to slaying orthodoxies on the right and on the left in an era dominated by Joseph McCarthy and Joseph Stalin."
Yeah, no difference between those two--give or take 20 million deaths and 25 years of tyranny.
For the rest of Lee's piece, click here.
• Communism | Dissent | Felicia Lee | Magazines | Joseph McCarthy
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org