Front Page Devotes One Sentence to Hillary’s “Plantation” Comment

     Two days after Sen. Hillary Clinton stood in front of a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day to claim Republicans were running Congress like a “plantation,” the Times devotes a large front-page story to her by Hillary-beat reporter Raymond Hernandez.

     Does the Times use the quote as a jumping-off point for an investigation to unmask the liberal agenda behind Clinton’s careful centrist public persona? Or does it use the inflammatory remark to round up past controversial statements from Clinton, to suggest she’s not ready for her seemingly inevitable presidential run in 2008?

     Not quite. Although a Republican would no doubt get that treatment, the “plantation” controversy is disposed of in a single sentence in “Senator Clinton Makes Her Run While Tiptoeing Around 2008.”

     “And she has sharpened the tone of her attacks on Republicans, causing a stir on Monday, for example, by saying that the House of Representatives was run like a ‘plantation’ -- a comment that drew a rebuke from the White House the next day. While such behavior is to be expected for anyone preparing to seek the presidency in 2008, Mrs. Clinton is in an altogether different situation from other prominent Democrats who have been openly gearing up for national campaigns by establishing exploratory committees and visiting crucial primary states.”

     Although Hernandez only quotes one word of Clinton’s MLK Day speech, a fuller reading of her remark shows it’s both offensive to Republicans and patronizing to her black audience: “When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation -- and you know what I am talking about."

     Instead, Hernandez dwells on her fundraising prowess in the service of other Democratic candidates.

     “By and large, Mrs. Clinton's visits around the country have drawn the kind of reaction one would expect with a person of her immense celebrity and political stature.

     “Recently, for example, Mrs. Clinton made a trip to hurricane-battered sections of New Orleans, where she was trailed by a clutch of national reporters as she met with scores of displaced residents, many of whom spoke openly about their hope that the celebrity senator's visit would help refocus the nation's attention on their plight.

     “But for all the enthusiasm she stirs in her travels, there are plenty of signs that she remains a divisive figure in much of the country. During her trip to Kentucky, for example, local Republicans sought to cause a political ruckus, portraying her as a New York liberal and saying that she would be a political liability for Democrats in a red state like Kentucky.

     “Still, several Democratic strategists argue that the good will Mrs. Clinton is building in her travels with rank-and-file Democrats, as well as Democratic leaders, will only make her even tougher to beat in 2008, at least in the race for the presidential nomination. Mr. Fowler, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, said that "if she continues doing favors for everyone as magnanimously as she has, it's possible that she will shut out options for any practical opposition."

To read the rest of Hernandez, click here.

“Warm and Fuzzy” Front-Page Propaganda for Hamas

     A Wednesday front-page feature story by Craig Smith from Gaza has the too-cute headline “Warm and Fuzzy TV, Brought to You by Hamas.” Smith visited the studio of a children’s show at a Palestinian TV station owned by Hamas, the anti-Israeli terrorist group responsible for scores of Israeli civilian deaths, including children.

    Smith takes the light touch in his introduction: “Hey kids, it's Uncle Hazim time! Hazim Sharawi, whose stage name is Uncle Hazim, is a quiet, doe-eyed young man who has an easy way with children and will soon preside over a children's television show here on which he'll cavort with men in larger-than-life, fake-fur animal suits on the Gaza Strip's newest television station, Al Aksa TV. But Captain Kangaroo this is not. The station, named for Islam's third holiest site, is owned by Hamas, the people who helped make suicide bombing a household term.”

     He continues: “The new station is part of the militant Palestinian group's strategy to broaden its role in Palestinian politics and society, much as Hezbollah did in Lebanon. The station began broadcasting terrestrially on Jan. 7, and Hamas is working on a satellite version that would give it an even wider reach, like Hezbollah's Al Manar TV, which is watched throughout the Arab world....It will eventually feature a sort of Islamic MTV, with Hamas-produced music videos using footage from the group's fights with Israeli troops. There will even be a talent search show, a distant echo of ‘American Idol.’”

     After that PR for the network, Smith next flatters the host of the children’s show: “Mr. Sharawi, 27, wearing a long black leather coat with a hood over a green suit and tie, fixed with a pin, looks like a straight-and-narrow Sunday school teacher. In fact, he got his start working with children at his mosque while studying geology at Islamic University in Gaza. His hair is parted in the middle, his beard trimmed as neatly as a suburban lawn.”

     One of the probing questions the Times asks of this Hamas propagandist? The names of his cartoon sidekicks.

     “Through it all, Mr. Sharawi will be accompanied by animal-costumed sidekicks to provide comic relief. Hamas will rent the Egyptian-made plush costumes -- a fox, a rabbit, a dog, a bear and a chicken, already gray and matted from wear -- from a production company run by a Hamas supporter who has just emerged from two years in Israeli jails. When asked if the animals will have names, Mr. Sharawi looked slightly nonplussed and said: ‘Bob. Bob the Fox, for example.’”

     Only deep into the story does Smith indirectly address the rottenness of Hamas spreading its murderous anti-Israeli propaganda to children while killing Israeli children: “Fingering a string of bright green plastic prayer beads, a pale blue prayer rug lying on the chair beside him, he tries to reconcile Hamas's bloody attacks that kill innocent children with his role as mentor.”

     CAMERA has more about the Times’ whitewashing of Hamas.

For more from Smith on the terrorist kids’ show, click here. 

NSA Spy “Scandal” on Life Support

     Wednesday’s lead editorial, “Spying on Ordinary Americans,” is another flailing attempt by the Times to gin up controversy over the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance without a court order, using a lame front-page story from Tuesday as a hook. The editorialists apparently think the Bush administration’s surveillance of terrorist suspects without a court order is worse than the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

     “In times of extreme fear, American leaders have sometimes scrapped civil liberties in the name of civil protection. It's only later that the country can see that the choice was a false one and that citizens' rights were sacrificed to carry out extreme measures that were at best useless and at worst counterproductive. There are enough examples of this in American history -- the Alien and Sedition Acts and the World War II internment camps both come to mind -- that the lesson should be woven into the nation's fabric. But it's hard to think of a more graphic example than President Bush's secret program of spying on Americans.”

To read the editorial in full, click here.

More Faulty Niger-Uranium Reporting

     Continuing a Times trend, Eric Lichtblau files a misleading report on the whole uranium-from-Niger controversy Wednesday (“2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim -- Intelligence Analysts Found Niger-Iraq Transaction ‘Unlikely.’”)

     “A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was ‘unlikely’ because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

     “Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department's intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send ‘25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers’ filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.”

     Wait a second -- how did “unlikely” become “improbable” in the space of one paragraph?

     Captain’s Quarters has more to say on the Times’ “dishonest” coverage, which he claims conflates two separate issues:

     “Once again, the Times conflates two different questions and in doing so misrepresents the intelligence that both the British and Wilson himself found. The first question, which prompted this release of material, is whether the Nigeriens were likely to sell and transport uranium to Iraq. The second question is whether Saddam Hussein was still making the attempt to buy uranium at all, from Niger as well as anywhere else.”

For more Lichtblau, click here.

No Pat Robertson Treatment for Mayor Ray Nagin’s Comments

     So how did the Times cover New Orleans Democratic Mayor Ray Nagin’s strange comments about his city hopefully becoming a “chocolate” city once more, while claiming that “God was mad at America”?

     After all, post-9-11 the Times ran three news stories devoted to televangelist Pat Robertson’s inflammatory comments suggesting the ACLU and other liberals shared some blame for the terrorist acts, and Robertson’s remarks cropped up on several occasions in the paper in the months afterward.

     Nagin’s words, by contrast, have so far merited just today’s 90-word squib from the Associated Press, hanging off the end of a Times reporters story from New Orleans. It took a Nagin apology for the Times to notice.

     Apparently there were more newsworthy items that pushed Nagin’s comments off the news pages, such as Christopher Maag’s Tuesday report, “A Name in the Credits? Over His Dead Body,” profiling a 47-year-old computer programmer dreaming of a movie career who has set up a website, www.deadbodyguy.com, featuring photos of himself in various “dead guy” poses.

     Or perhaps more important was today’s piece by Sarah Lyall from London, “Kiss and Tell: She Kisses and the Parrot Tells,” featuring a parrot who gave away a woman’s affair by constantly saying her lover’s name.