“Nonpartisan” Non-Personal Attacks at FilibusterFrist.com
 

     Deep inside the A-section today, Times stringer and Princeton student Elizabeth Landau (a January 2005 freelance piece for the Jewish newspaper The Forward  described her as “a student at Princeton University, majoring in anthropology and Spanish”) wrote like a publicist in describing the “nonpartisan” and non-personal attacks lobbed at Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist during a publicity-stunt filibuster at Princeton in protest of Republican plans to end judicial filibusters:

     “Organizers say the filibuster is nonpartisan, and they insist it is not a personal attack on Dr. Frist. A call to his Senate office asking for a comment was not returned. Democrats, Republicans, independents and libertarians alike have joined the Princeton effort by filibustering, signing up new speakers and maintaining the Webcam in the blue tent.”

     But anyone moving their Internet browser to FilibusterFrist.com finds a liberal sermon explaining why the Princetonians are protesting: “The implications for the federal judiciary, and the nation, are tremendous: the next round of appointees to sail through will no doubt be extremists ideologically committed to dismantling post-1937 constitutional jurisprudence (meaning no EPA, no FDA, no corporate liability, no healthcare or social welfare programs - ever).”

     Does that sound like a statement “libertarians” would support?

     At the bottom of the web page is notice that this publicity stunt is “sponsored by” the Princeton Progressive Review, Mercer County Democracy for America (a chapter of Howard Dean’s old organization, now run by his brother Jim), and the Princeton College Democrats. A peek at the Princeton Progressive Review blog shows it’s funded by the Clintonite group the Center for American Progress, and as for their declarations that this is not a personal attack on Sen. Frist, see posts like “The Daily Princetonian Rips Bill Frist to Shreds, and then Chews on His Carcass.” Asheesh Siddique wrote this purple prose about Frist: “He's not acting at the moment in the service of the nation, as any good Princetonian would. He's instead acting in the service of Mullah James Dobson and other Christian Fundamentalists who want to Talibanize and Osamaize this country in the name of false religion by corrupting the courts.”

     The Times doesn’t exactly hold up the usual end of the reporter’s bargain, to go beyond stenography (“organizers say it’s nonpartisan and civil”) and give the reader some investigation of the groups involved and their rhetoric.

For the full Landau story, click here. 

A Little Shy on the Liberal Labels
 

     The Times tendency to play down the liberalism of the environmental groups they support (including their financial support through the New York Times Company Foundation  ) continued Friday in a Felicity Barringer article on the Bush administration rolling back a “Clinton-era rule banning road construction” in national forests. “Clinton-era” is a strange adjective to apply, since Barringer explained “the rule was adopted as President Bill Clinton was leaving office in January 2001,” meaning the vast majority of the “Clinton era” had no such rule.

     Barringer couldn’t locate a liberal label for the greens in her piece: “Jim Angell, a lawyer for the environmental law group Earthjustice, scoffed at this idea, saying his group would soon challenge the new rule in the federal courts. For leading environmental groups like the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club and Trout Unlimited, the new rule - which they variously characterized as emasculated, Kafkaesque and a sham - is an unwelcome turning point in a decades-old battle over areas of the national forests where industry has, for the most part, not yet left a footprint.”

     And then see this verbiage: “Spokesmen for such environmental groups and for possible Democratic presidential contenders…denounced the decision as a giveaway to industry that flouted the public will. Watersheds and wildlife habitats are now at risk, they said. [Gov. Bill] Richardson, in a conference call organized by the National Environmental Trust, a nonprofit Washington lobbying group, argued that the rule was part of  ‘a wholesale assault by the administration to drill more oil or gas, to open up more roadless areas for timber’ and weaken environmental regulations.” Barringer does quote a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, a trade group for landowners and forest-product manufacturers, but would it have been so difficult to identify groups like the Sierra Club – which unloaded millions of dollars to defeat George W. Bush in the last two elections – with a little liberal label?

For the full Barringer story, click here. 

     Jodi Wilgoren’s story on a Kansas State Board of Education hearings over teaching evolution suggested only one side was ideological: “Darwin's defenders are refusing to testify at the hearings, which were called by the State Board of Education's conservative majority.” Wilgoren also used the C-word in this sentence: “For Kansas, the debate is déjà vu: the last time the state standards were under review, in 1999, conservatives on the school board ignored their expert panel and deleted virtually any reference to evolution, only to be ousted in the next election. But over the next few years anti-evolution forces regained the seats.” The liberals in the debate were described as “the pro-evolution Kansas Citizens for Science, whose members filled many of the 180 auditorium seats not taken by journalists, who came from as far away as France.” Another event was staffed by “evolutionists” denouncing the hearings as a “kangaroo court.” Can you have a kangaroo court if the allegedly wronged side of the “trial” refuses to show up as witnesses?

For the full Wilgoren piece, click here.

     Conservatives are easily identifiable in James Brooke and Kate Zernike’s article on lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s schemes as a hired gun for the Mariana Islands: “Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying partners also arranged many trips to the Marianas for conservative editorial writers and members of research groups. Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella, a former lobbying partner, ran several of the trips, whose guests included Nina Shokraii of the Heritage Foundation; Audrey Mullen of Americans for Tax Reform, a group run by a longtime friend of Mr. Abramoff, Grover Norquist; and Clint Bolick, spokesman for the Institute for Justice.”

For that article, click here. 

     The Times is not completely hopeless on Friday. David D. Kirkpatrick, the reporter allegedly on the beat of the conservative movement, used the word “liberal” to describe groups fighting over the judicial filibuster in Maine, home of two female moderate Republican Senators. The photo next to the article even noted two volunteers for an unidentified “liberal group.” This kind of balanced labeling is too rare in the American print media in general. The other notable point of the Kirkpatrick article on filibusters: “In interviews with about two dozen Mainers in Portland, Augusta, and their suburbs during the week’s Senate recess, none had a clear understanding of the Senate procedure at the heart of the debate.” That might suggest national polls on the filibuster need a much larger piece of the pie graph for people to suggest the reply “Don’t know.”

For the Kirkpatrick article from Maine, click here.

Liberal Cultural Sensitivity in “Arts Weekend”
 

     Friday’s Weekend Arts section has some interesting sentences on its front page. Alessandra Stanley’s review of the CBS Elvis Presley miniseries began with provocation. “Elvis is the mirror of our nation: fat but formerly great.” Charles Isherwood’s look ahead to the Tony Awards began: “Maybe this spring we can mothball the annual laments for the death of the straight play on Broadway.”

     But the winner for liberal cultural sensitivity on the page goes to movie reviewer Manohla Dargis, whose review of the new Crusades epic “Kingdom of Heaven” was headlined “An Epic Bloodletting Empowered by Faith.” (The section editors liked the headline so much they repeated it after the jump on the back of the section.)

     Dargis called the film “an ostensibly fair-minded, even-handed account of one of the least fair-minded, even-handed chapters in human history, during which European Christians descended on the Middle East for more than 200 years.” Dargis saw parallels to the arrival of today’s white Western invaders: “Given the presumed lofty price tag of the film, its global reach and the current state of world affairs, with warriors of different faiths and ideologies battling one another in the name of God and terrorism, this vision of the Crusades is not that surprising. Paint a majority religion with too damning a brush and you just may lose out on a nice chunk of the international movie market.”

For the full Dargis review, click here.