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Times Watch for September 14, 2004

Room for Kitty Kelley, None for Swift Boat Vets

     After ignoring "Unfit for Command," the book written by two members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, despite its current #1 status on the New York Times best seller list, the paper lends credence to "The Family," Bush-hater Kitty Kelley's trashy "biography" of the Bush family with a front-page Arts section review.

     Michiko Kakutani review is headlined "A Bush Biography For the Age Of Innuendo," and the Times even plugs it on its front page. The Times has yet to review "Unfit for Command."

     Kakutani mentions the Swift Boat Veterans, but only to insult them in typical Times "unsubstantiated" fashion: "Kitty Kelley's catty new book about the Bush family is a perfect artifact of our current political culture in which unsubstantiated attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record and old questions about President Bush's National Guard service get more attention than present-day issues like the Iraq war, the economy, intelligence reform or the assault weapons ban."

     Note how only the Swifties make "unsubstantiated" attacks, while apparently forged documents used to attack Bush are only "old questions." Kakutani fails to use the term "unsubstantiated" to refer to Kelley's charges, thought she takes a dim view of them: "Other allegations in this book seem to be based on hearsay or a single (sometimes anonymous) source."

     Kakutani isn't impressed with "The Family," concluding: "But the author's undisguised contempt for many of the Bushes, combined with her failure to come to terms with politics and policy, and her tireless focus on sex, drugs and alcohol, will likely play into family members' penchant for assailing the media. It will likely give them an opening to shrug off this book as a snarky exercise in gossip, instead of forcing them to deal with substantive questions about their political record. Then again, in an election season willfully focused on the past and the personal and the unproven, this book may provide yet another distraction from issues here and now."

For the rest of Kakutani on Kitty Kelley, click here.

• Books | George W. Bush | Michiko Kakutani | Kitty Kelley | Swift Boat Veterans | "Unfit for Command"

Catching Up on "Memogate"

     Jim Rutenberg and Kate Zernike follow up on "memogate" in "CBS Offers New Experts To Support Guard Memos." The headline is kinder to CBS than is the actual story, which is skeptical about the authenticity of documents aired on "60 Minutes" purporting to be from the personal file of Col. Jerry B. Killian of the Texas Air National Guard.

     The Washington Post relays its deeper skepticism in its own headline, "Expert Cited by CBS Says He Didn't Authenticate Papers."

     The Times story strangely concludes with the minority view--citing someone who thinks the documents may be genuine, rather than someone upholding the general opinion that they are almost certainly fraudulent: "[Bill] Glennon was in charge of service for 1,000 contracts for I.B.M. typewriters for 15 years, starting in late 1972, around the time the memorandums were produced. He spent 15 minutes with the CBS documents, he said, and believes that they could have been created using the kind of typewriters he worked with at I.B.M."

     Incidentally, here's one quote from former typewriter repairman Glennon that might suggest his opinion of conservatives: "Because quite honestly there's some people out there, they're scary. You don't agree with them, you offer opinions that don't jibe with theirs and you get a target on your back." And blogger Tim Blair notes Glennon first waded into the debate by commenting on a blog entry for the liberal Washington Monthly magazine.

For the rest of Rutenberg and Zernike on "memogate," click here.

• George W. Bush | Forged Documents | "60 Minutes" | Jim Rutenberg | Kate Zernike

More Hot Air on Bush's Environmental Record

     Tuesday's front-page story by Felicity Barringer, "Bush's Record: New Priorities In Environment." She insists: "For many environmental groups, Mr. Bush's legacy was assured in his first year, thanks to highly publicized decisions that effectively repudiated Clinton administration positions. Mr. Bush backed off a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide and abandoned the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce heat-trapping gases linked to global warming."

     The Times again fails to point out that Bush isn't the first to reject the Kyoto Protocol--the U.S. Senate did so by a 95-0 vote in 1997, when Bill Clinton was in office.

     Barringer also insists: "The decisions sought to reverse environmental action for which there was broad support. Polls by The New York Times in mid-2001 and late 2002 consistently showed public opposition to drilling in the Arctic refuge. A CBS poll in the same period showed that, by ratios of better than two to one, those polled said that environmental protection was more important than energy production."

     Of course, those poll numbers never stopped the Times from using "record high" gas prices as a stick to bash Bush with, though increased energy production would increase the supply of gasoline and result in long-term lower prices.

     "The outcry ensured that some Bush administration initiatives favorable to the cause of environmental groups received little notice. They include the E.P.A.'s decision to force General Electric to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remove PCB's in the Hudson River, a cleanup that has been delayed; legislation speeding the cleanup of urban industrial sites known as brownfields; increases in financing for private land set aside for conservation of animals and their habitats; and the first limits for diesel emissions in trucks and off-road vehicles."

     As if the media has no control over what initiatives receive "little notice" and which don't.

For more from Barringer on Bush and the environment, click here.

• Felicity Barringer | George W. Bush | Environment | Kyoto Protocol

Cuban Dictator as "Ever-Charismatic President"

     Ginger Thompson and Felicity Barringer provide an update on Hurricane Ivan threatening Cuba and delivers a passing plug for the charisma of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Tuesday's story from Havana: "President Fidel Castro was on the air much of the time, listening to high-ranking officers report from around the country about conditions and preparedness. In the morning, the aging but ever-charismatic president told reporters that he was grateful for the 'kind attitude' of the hurricane in bypassing Cuba. He told reporters that his country had stood against threats of nuclear attack, and decades of economic sanctions. 'This storm,' he said, 'only renews our strength and our solidarity.' Watching Mr. Castro, a television anchor commented, 'Always on the front lines of combat.'"

For the rest of the story about storm preparations in Cuba, click here.

• Felicity Barringer | Fidel Castro | Cuba | Ginger Thompson | Weather

Anti-War Play "Not Half as Scary as the Real Thing"

     Monday Arts section has theatre critic Ben Brantley in London reviewing a current piece of political propaganda, "Stuff Happens," an anti-Tony Blair, anti-Bush, anti-war play. Though Brantley thinks the production leaves much to be desired as drama, he finds the play's vision of Bush "alarming": "Oh, sure, there are the expected, chuckle-drawing instances of slow-wittedness, confusion of facts and mangled sentences, many of them drawn from the public record. But an alarming, unyielding centeredness gradually reveals itself, suggesting that Mr. Bush has found in his born-again Christianity something akin to the divine right of kings. 'I don't need to explain why I say things,' he says. 'That's the interesting thing about being president.' Amid all the hyperarticulate aides and politicians, his blinking silences and distancing diagonal postures speak of a conviction that trumps all adversaries in its calm disregard of logic. As embodied by Mr. Jennings, this walking sight gag turns out to be drawn in shadows."

     Brantley finds the supporting cast not nearly as frightening as the real deal: "Adjoa Andoh's caustic Condoleezza Rice, Dermot Crowley's bull-terrierish Rumsfeld and Desmond Barrit's lizardlike Dick Cheney: they're all rendered as manipulative gargoyles. They're intermittently entertaining but not half as scary as the real thing."

For the rest of Brantley's review of the anti-Bush play in London, click here.

• Ben Brantley | George W. Bush | Iraq War | London | Theatre

Movie Critic Takes on Reagan's "False Dawn"

     Deep in the Sunday Arts section, Charles Taylor reviews the 1982 teen dramedy "Fast Times At Ridgemont High," now out on DVD: "Compared with a prestige stinker of the era like 'Ordinary People,' this raunchy teen comedy was unaffected by the infantilization that was starting to take over American movies--one movie that resisted the false dawn of Reagan's morning in America."

     Where did that come from?

For the full Taylor review, click here.

• Arts | Movies | Ronald Reagan | Charles Taylor

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