Boosting Anti-Bush Crowd Figures, Again -- August 30, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for August 30, 2004

Boosting Anti-Bush Crowd Figures, Again

The Times again manages to pass along the highest crowd estimates for the anti-Bush rally in Manhattan on Sunday, just as it did during the anti-war protests of March 2003.

Robert McFadden's front-page story, "March Raucous but Largely Peaceful," opens: "A roaring two-mile river of demonstrators surged through the canyons of Manhattan yesterday in the city's largest political protest in decades, a raucous but peaceful spectacle that pilloried George W. Bush and demanded regime change in Washington. On a sweltering August Sunday, the huge throng of protesters marched past Madison Square Garden, the site of the Republican National Convention opening today, and denounced President Bush as a misfit who had plunged America into war and runaway debt, undermined civil and constitutional rights, lied to the people, despoiled the environment and used the presidency to benefit corporations and millionaires. The protest organizer, United for Peace and Justice, estimated the crowd at 500,000, rivaling a 1982 antinuclear rally in Central Park, and double the number it had predicted. It was, at best, a rough estimate. The Police Department, as is customary, offered no official estimate, but one officer in touch with the police command center at Madison Square Garden agreed that the crowd appeared to be close to a half-million."

That's by far the highest estimate of a major mainstream paper. The Washington Post pins the crowd figure at "more than 200,000 demonstrators, according to a police estimate." The Associated Press quotes another unofficial police estimate of 120,000, as does the New York Daily News. The Los Angeles Times claims "more than 100,000."

McFadden later notes "hundreds of protesters in a more belligerent mood made their way to Times Square and blocked the entrances of two Midtown hotels, while another group harassed Republican guests at a party at the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park. But a post-march gathering on the Great Lawn of the park was peaceful."

After going through some of the arrests made, it's on to talking points about protesters-as-peaceful-and-mainstream-citizens: "The organizers said they were also pleased by the size and diversity of the turnout. The faces appeared to be a cross-section of the American experience. There were individuals, families and groups from many states and across the region and the city. There were young people and older citizens, families with small children, students and representatives of the middle and working classes and many organizations, including advocates of gay and women's rights, antiwar groups, immigrants, veterans, artists, professionals, religious organizations and proponents of education, health and other causes. For many participants, there was also pride, and a kind of amazement, in being part of an event so large and diverse, and yet so pacific. And there was a satisfying sense for many of having played a role in larger political processes, of doing something beyond voting to affect the outcome of an election widely seen as crucial to America's future on issues as varied as the war in Iraq, the huge national deficit, abortion, same-sex marriage, the environment and the nation's role in the world."

Monday's special convention section also features a profile of protesters by Marc Santora, "Families and Individuals Join in Anger and Frustration," which carries the endearing subhead: "Coming to town, and taking (the children) to the streets."

Like McFadden, Santora also mainstreams protesters, though he makes the march sound like an awkward balancing act: "For every young man with an unorthodox piercing in a seemingly painful place, there was an elderly woman who walked in the midday sun for hours. For each wildly costumed, madly gyrating, drum-beating protester, there was a family that had made the trip into Manhattan together to march as one. And for all the chants denouncing President Bush as a terrorist, for all the obscenities screamed full throated, there were just as many people, young and old, who expressed in more subdued tones their anger with the Bush administration. Whether it was a mother who has a child fighting in Iraq or a father wanting his children to see history in the making, the march past Madison Square Garden yesterday had the distinct feel of a family affair."

How gratifying that the protesters calling the president a terrorist are apparently nullified by the ones who aren't.

For the rest of McFadden on the protesters, click here.

For the rest of Santora on the protesters, click here.

Republicans "Putting 9/11 Into August"

The Times helps spread the meme of Republicans politicizing 9/11 in the headline to Monday's front-page story by Adam Nagourney and Robin Toner, "The G.O.P. Arrives, Putting Sept. 11 Into August."

They note: "Republican leaders said yesterday that they would repeatedly remind the nation of the Sept. 11 attacks as their convention opens in New York City today, beginning a week in which the party seeks to pivot to the center and seize on street demonstrations to portray Democrats as extremist….The developments came on the eve of what party officials saw as a potentially tumultuous and politically complicated week. Mr. Bush seeks to accomplish a critical political goal--broadening his appeal to the center--against the backdrop of the biggest demonstrations in New York in 22 years and charges by some Democrats that he is trying to turn the tragedy of Sept. 11 to his political advantage…. And Republicans dismissed any suggestion that they were out of line in making the attacks a central part of the campaign. Mr. Gillespie noted that the Democrats had held their own tribute to Sept. 11 victims at their convention in Boston last month; Republican officials counted 100 separate instances of the attacks' being raised at the Boston convention."

The story also puffs up interparty controversy: "Some Republican moderates said the Bush forces were far too consumed with the right. 'They're so frightened that evangelicals will stay home, when they ought to be frightened that ours will,' said Ann Stone, chairwoman of Republicans for Choice….There were signs that the White House was not entirely successful in ending tensions between different wings of the party. A group of former Republican governors, senators and other public officials placed a full-page advertisement in today's issue of The New York Times urging the party to move to 'more mainstream' positions on the environment, the deficit, embryonic stem cell research and cooperation with international allies."

("Former" is right; the last governor listed retired in 1983, the last senator in 1989.)

For the rest of Nagourney and Bumiller, click here.

The Lead Convention Story So Far: Left-Wing Gripes

Whose convention is it, anyway?

A Republican intraparty "controversy" makes the front page of the special convention section of Monday's Times. David Kirkpatrick pens "Cheney Daughter's Political Role Disappoints Some Gay Activists," dominated by criticism from left-wing gay-rights groups.

Kirkpatrick writes: "Cheney, the daughter and chief campaign manager of Vice President Dick Cheney, had just slipped out of the room at a Davenport, Iowa, town hall meeting last week when her father publicly acknowledged for the first time that she was openly lesbian and that he disagreed with the president's support for an amendment banning same-sex marriage. If Ms. Cheney was gratified by his remarks about gay marriage, she has not let it show, two campaign aides said. But aides say she was clearly displeased the next day to find the cameras of the traveling press corps craning for shots of her face….Ms. Gephardt said gay groups' complaint with Ms. Cheney was not that she was unwilling to speak out about gay issues. It was that she was working so hard for Mr. Bush's re-election. 'This administration wants to impose a constitutional amendment so that she had no right to live her life, and yet she is working wholeheartedly for them,' Ms. Gephardt said."

Bush is supporting the status quo of marriage as it stands today, yet somehow that's telling Dick Cheney's daughter "she has no right to live her life?"

For the rest of Kirkpatrick on Cheney's daughter and gay marriage, click here.

Are Swifties Questioning Kerry's Patriotism?

Todd Purdum garners the front page of Sunday's Week in Review with his view of the political uses of Vietnam, "What They're Really Fighting About."

He rehashes an old chestnut of Republicans questioning Democratic patriotism: "But the old culture wars followed him into the 21st century, and he now finds himself bombarded by veterans who question not only his patriotism but his honor--in a sometimes distorted discussion that has nevertheless played into public doubts about the Democrats' strength abroad and values at home and that has hurt Mr. Kerry's standing in the polls."

That charge is, to coin a phrase, "unsubstantiated," yet the Times continues to circulate it as if it were obviously true.

For the rest of Purdum on Vietnam and politics, click here.

"Moderate" Traub vs. "Extremist" Republicans

James Traub, contributing writer for the Times Sunday magazine again portrays himself as a moderate while attacking Republicans for extremism. (Last October he wrote: "Today's Republican Party is arguably the most extreme--the furthest from the center--of any governing majority in the nation's history").

His latest story, "Going to Extremes," carries the subhead: "Both the president and the protesters prefer certainty to complexity. Is there room for nuance in a time of war?" Traub then betrays his own strange idea of moderate: "I was almost exactly Alex's age in 1968. At the time, I was an avowed moderate: I was a Hubert Humphrey Democrat…."

While saying how much he "loathed" the "moral posturing" of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," he nonetheless says it's the right that's unhinged: "Do we really have an unhinged and growing left, a new generation of Soixante-Huitards, to match the unhinged right? I say not. First of all, Bush hatred is much less predictive of an ideological position than Clinton hatred used to be: very few of the people I know who loathe the president considered themselves Dennis Kucinich supporters, as Michael Moore did."

Traub doesn't even think there is an off-campus left anymore: "Even the idea that there is a significant 'left,' at least outside of elite universities, seems faintly laughable. After all, Howard Dean held himself out quite plausibly as a fiscal conservative….No, the central fact about contemporary extremism, the fact that the convention will be designed to obscure, is that it is conservative culture, the culture permeating the Bush administration, that is shot through with Sixties moralism and self-righteousness, the calls to ideological purity, the insistence that the other is not merely wrong but illegitimate. Newt Gingrich fought a war inside the Republican Party to purge it of the old Rotarian spirit in favor of militant commitment. Gingrich is gone, but his spirit flourishes in a Bush White House that seems to deal only in unarguable certitudes. It's hard to think of any administration that has been as brutally dismissive of opposing points of view as this one has been, whether the issue is tax cuts or international treaties or planning for postwar Iraq."

For the rest of Traub's diatribe, click here.

• Labeling Bias | Republican Convention | James Traub

Lost in Cambodia

Sunday's exhausting story by David Halbfinger on Bush and Kerry's Vietnam history is headlined, "Three Decades Later, Vietnam Remains a Hot Issue." Perhaps Kerry had something to do with that by making his four months in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. But Halbfinger doesn't broach the subject, instead rehashing Bush's National Guard record in a replay of an article he co-wrote with Elisabeth Bumiller back in February that also made Kerry shine in contrast to Bush.

Halbfinger is the latest Times reporter to use the word "unsubstantiated" in reference to questions raised against Kerry's Vietnam service by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: "The anger over [Kerry's] antiwar period remains on fire to this day, consuming a group of veterans who have lobbed unsubstantiated charges that he did not earn his medals and are questioning his fitness to be president."

Halbfinger then somehow manages to bring up Cambodia without noting that Kerry's story about spending Christmas in Cambodia has been thoroughly discredited and been disavowed by the Kerry campaign itself: "[Kerry] wrote of watching a South Vietnamese soldier die of multiple wounds, and of shooting up a sampan, unwittingly killing a child on board. He also described cruising along the Cambodian border on Christmas Eve."

For the rest of Halbfinger on Bush, Kerry, and Vietnam, click here.

Republicans Already Upstaged in NYC

Have the protesters already "upstaged" the Republicans? Todd Purdum's front-page news analysis Monday, "Upstaging Before the Show," opens this way: "In a few dozen blocks of the same slender island, two worlds collided yesterday: the Republican convention's calculated claims to patriotism and the presidency met elaborately planned and heavily Democratic street protests that turned those same arguments back at President Bush--in ways that might help, or hurt, both sides. The demonstrations were New York City's biggest in decades, and the most emphatic at any national political convention since Democrats and demonstrators turned against each other in fury over Vietnam in Chicago in 1968. But the first day was overwhelmingly peaceful, and the demonstrators doused a good bit of Mr. Bush's intended message with television images of dissent."

Given that the broadcast networks won't even turn their cameras on for live coverage of the convention until Tuesday night, it seems a little early for Purdum to handicap the outcome.

For the rest of Purdum, click here.

• Anti-War Protesters | Campaign 2004 | Todd Purdum | Republican Convention

Another "Unsubstantiated" Portrayal of the Swifties

Sunday's front-page story by Adam Nagourney and Elisabeth Bumiller, "Bush Takes On Direct Role In Shaping Election Tactics," paints a picture of a plugged-in Bush, and includes the Times' favorite six-syllable word, "unsubstantiated": "Mr. Bush's role in his own campaign was described in extensive interviews with aides and party leaders as Republicans gathered in New York to nominate Mr. Bush for a second term. They arrived buoyed by three new polls suggesting Mr. Bush's standing had improved at least somewhat against Mr. Kerry. Democrats contend that any damage to Mr. Kerry's popularity was caused by unsubstantiated claims by veterans disputing his Vietnam combat medals and that Mr. Bush will ultimately be hurt by their accusation that his campaign was secretly orchestrating the veterans' attacks…."

But a profile of lead Swiftie John O'Neil in Saturday's paper features a caption of a photo of O'Neil that reads in part that O'Neil "has told friends that President Bush is unfit to lead the nation." A strange ally for Bush.

Nagourney and Bumiller later wonder if Bush should have offended the NAACP: "And some of Mr. Bush's own associates cringed when he decided against speaking at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People because he was annoyed with its criticism of his civil rights record. It provided an opening for Mr. Kerry and reinforced an image of Mr. Bush as a president who played hardball…."

The group has done a bit more than merely "criticize" Bush's civil rights record. The Times doesn't mention that NAACP board chairman Julian Bond claimed at the group's 2001 convention that Bush "selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics, appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing and chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection."

For the rest of Nagourney and Bumiller on Bush's tactics, click here.

Still Whining About Willie Horton

Robin Toner in Sunday's Week in Review, "Swift Boats and the Lessons of Dukakis," is another example of media obsession with a 16-year-old campaign commercial: The Willie Horton ad, widely thought in liberal media circles to have unfairly brought down Michael Dukakis.

In a "What Went Wrong for the Democrats?" story, Toner writes: "As Mr. Dukakis has long acknowledged, he contributed to his August slide. Perhaps lulled by his 17-point edge in the polls after the Democratic convention, he spent much of the month in his home state and was slow to react when the charges started coming that he was soft on crime and insufficiently patriotic. The Bush campaign portrayed Mr. Dukakis as a Massachusetts liberal who let criminals out on weekend furloughs and refused to require schoolchildren to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The Democrats campaign defended the policies--the furlough program had had bipartisan support, the policy on the pledge was the result of a Massachusetts court decision--but the legalistic responses were no match for the powerful imagery and rough attacks of the Republicans."

Toner seems to think the "rough" Horton ad also hurt Bush as president: "The rough lessons of 1988 took hold: Respond, hit back, leave no charge unanswered. Another lesson, which often gets lost, is that the way a campaign is conducted makes a difference. The senior Mr. Bush took office in January 1989 and immediately tried to strike a bipartisan, conciliatory tone. But the Democratic bitterness endured, and made the task of governing all the harder."

To complete the sympathetic picture, the caption to an archive photo of Michael and Kitty Dukakis reads in part: "Both of them were the subject of baseless rumors that dogged his presidential campaign that year."

For the rest of Robin Toner on Michael Dukakis, click here.

• Michael Dukakis | Willie Horton | Republican Convention | Robin Toner

Still Citing Paul Ehrlich: The Times' Population Story Bombs

Donald McNeil Jr.'s front-page Sunday Week in Review story, "Demographic 'Bomb' May Only Go 'Pop!'" while admitting the environmental movement hysteria over "overpopulation" was apparently overblown, seems unwilling to let go completely: "Remember the population bomb, the fertility explosion set to devour the world's food and suck up or pollute all its air and water? Its fuse has by no means been plucked. But over the last three decades, much of its Malthusian detonation power has leaked out….Half the world's population growth is in six countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh and China (despite its slowed birthrate). That makes doom-saying trickier than it was in 1968, when Paul R. Ehrlich frightened everyone with his book "The Population Bomb."

McNeil fails to mention Ehrlich's prediction in the book that millions of people would starve to death in the U.S. in the 1970s and '80s due to overpopulation and gives the discredited Ehrlich the last word in his story: "'I have severe doubts that we can support even two billion if they all live like citizens of the U.S.,' he said. 'The world can support a lot more vegetarian saints than Hummer-driving idiots.'"

For more on the population fizzle, click here.

• Environment | Paul Ehrlich | Donald McNeil Jr. | Overpopulation

More Media Oxygen for Air America

The Times delivers another plug for Air America in Saturday's Arts section story from Neal Matthews, "Left Is Gaining In San Diego, A Rightist Bastion," making a full story out of the fact that the liberal talk radio network is--gasp!--going on the air in San Diego.

Matthews writes: "With the nation's first openly gay district attorney, a majority of Democrats on the city council and this week's invasion by the Air America liberal talk radio network, San Diego is in danger of losing its image as a bastion of West Coast conservatism. On Monday, Clear Channel Communications, syndicator of Rush Limbaugh and owner of more than 1,200 radio stations nationwide, started broadcasting Al Franken and his left-leaning Air America cadres on Clear Channel stations in San Diego and Ann Arbor, Mich. That makes five cities, including Miami; Portland, Ore.; and Santa Barbara, Calif., where Clear Channel broadcasts Air America. The company is expected to announce soon that a sixth station it owns will switch to a 'progressive' format. Air America is also broadcast in 18 other cities, including New York, where it is heard on WLIB-AM (1190)."

By way of comparison, Rush Limbaugh can be heard on 600 radio stations.

For the rest of the big news about Air America, click here.

• Air America | Neal Matthews | Talk Radio | San Diego

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