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Times Watch for
May 18, 2004
Celebrating Another "Independent" Republican
(and Bush Critic)
Carl Hulse's Sunday profile of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, "Senator's Pointed Questions Get to the Heart of the Matter," is another entry in the burgeoning cupboard of NYT paeans to Republican critics of the Bush administration.
Hulse opens with admiration for Graham for appearing to minimize the import of the Clinton impeachment: "Senator Lindsey Graham, the lawmaker who once wondered aloud whether President Bill Clinton's impeachment scandal was Watergate or 'Peyton Place,' has a way of getting to the heart of the matter."
(Yet Graham did vote to impeach Clinton, telling the Washington Post: "I think he's a perjurer and he obstructed justice and he did it in a mean way.")
Graham also won some liberal fans during hearings over Abu Ghraib when he asked Rumsfeld if he should resign. This is how Hulse tells the story: "'What do you say to those people who are calling for your resignation?' Mr. Graham asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as he faced the Senate Armed Services Committee amid the widening scandal of abuse of Iraqi prisoners. That was just one of the pointed questions that Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, posed as he questioned Pentagon officials and chided colleagues who sought to play down the reports by saying the abuse paled next to the horrors inflicted by Saddam Hussein's government."
Hulse offers typical Times-centric praise for Graham: "That independent streak is perhaps Mr. Graham's defining characteristic." (In NYT-speak, "independent" is code for "often sides with Democrats.")
Sure enough, here's Hulse's very next sentence: "In less than two years in the Senate, [Graham] has developed a reputation for going his own way, even working with the Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, to pass legislation on military benefits. He again joined with Democrats to help them block limits on medical malpractice awards."
Later, Hulse again uses Graham to downplay Clinton's impeachment: "Looking back at the impeachment, Mr. Graham acknowledges that significant debate over whether that proceeding was justified remains today. He said he would leave that judgment to history. But he also said the need to get to the bottom of the prison crisis was potentially much more important."
For the rest of Hulse on Sen. Graham, click here.
• Abu Ghraib | Bill Clinton | Sen. Lindsey Graham | Carl Hulse | Iraq War | Prisoners | Donald Rumsfeld
"Civil Rights Leader" Jesse Jackson
Adam Nagourney and Richard Stevenson travel to Topeka, Kansas for dueling appearances by George Bush and John Kerry, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's desegregation ruling, Brown vs. Board of Education.
The story included this puzzling sentence: "Among the prominent civil rights leaders who made their way to both events were the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, who did not speak at either event, and Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, a Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and who delivered a similar statement at the rallies."
Jesse Jackson, "civil rights leader?" What about, Jesse Jackson, "left-wing activist?" Jackson certainly has never been shy about his political views (he recently called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be tried for
war
crimes).
For the rest of Nagourney and Stevenson from Topeka, click here.
• George W. Bush | Civil Rights | Jesse Jackson | Sen. John Kerry | Labeling Bias | Adam Nagourney | Racism | Richard Stevenson
Krugman Morphs Into Anti-War Kucinich
Columnist Paul Krugman reveals himself to be the Dennis Kucinich of the NYT opinion page on Tuesday. After comparing Bush to a "wastrel son who runs up gambling debts in the belief that his wealthy family, concerned for its prestige, will have no choice but to pay off his creditors," he lets fly some geopolitical musings: "One by one, our erstwhile allies are disowning us; they don't want an unstable, anti-Western Iraq any more than we do, but they have concluded that President Bush is incorrigible. Spain has washed its hands of our problems, Italy is edging toward the door, and Britain will join the rush for the exit soon enough, with or without Tony Blair."
In the last paragraph, Krugman signs up for the left-wing cut-and-run brigade in Iraq, thinking its better to leave now than to wait for "ruin": "So how will it all end? The cries of 'stay the course' are getting fainter, while the calls for a quick exit are growing. In other words, it seems increasingly likely that the nation will end up disowning Mr. Bush and his debts. That will mean settling for an outcome in Iraq that, however we spin it, will look a lot like defeat--and the nation's prestige will be damaged by that outcome. But lost prestige is better than ruin."
With that statement, Krugman goes further left than even most anti-war liberal Democrats in Congress. Rep. Charlie Rangel tells The New Republic: "We don't want to just pull out and have every man for himself. We gotta provide some calmness and some degree of peace." Meanwhile, socialist Rep. Bernie Sanders, while calling the war a "disaster," says: "I think we can't just simply pull out and let that country go to chaos."
For the rest of Krugman, click here.
• George W. Bush | Iraq War | Paul Krugman
Ring-Bearers for Gay Marriage in Massachusetts
"Hundreds of Same-Sex Couples Wed in Massachusetts" is the headline over a huge photo spanning four columns of the Times front-page Tuesday. (Compare that prominent placement to the below-the-fold position of last Wednesday's photo of murdered American Nicholas Berg.)
Pam Belluck's accompanying lead story is titled "Advocates See a New Gain for Civil Rights," and lets liberal gay advocates compare the gay weddings in Massachusetts to the civil rights movement: "Gay rights advocates hailed this day, which fell on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, as an occasion that evoked the triumphs--and the social vindication--of the civil rights era."
For Belluck's story on gay marriage in full, click here.
• Pam Belluck | Civil Rights | Gay Marriage | Massachusetts
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org