Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 20, December 8, 2003

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The lying about Howard Dean is in full swing. He is unelectable, he is McGovern, he is leading the party over the cliff, he is remote, out of touch, won't be liked by the ordinary folk in the Midwest and on and on.

It isn't that Dean is beyond criticism, but these accusations do not proceed from reasoned analysis or actual incidents. They proceed from the media's panic that someone not totally under control of big money has a chance to be nominated by the Democrats.

Daily Howler has been doing a great job of exposing the misquotes and deceptions that lie behind the current run of stories in mass media and in the pundit shows.

We've seen this before: the media deciding what the truth is about a candidate and running that story over all opposing data. They did it to Gore. Gore, in fact, never actually claimed to have invented the Internet and he never claimed anything false about his involvement with Eric Segal and Love Story, but the media to this day repeat those falsehoods. The same media that waves off Bush's dissembling about Iraq will still call Gore a liar for these items, which would be trivial and unrelated to policy, even if they were true.

They did it to Bradley. Remember the thousand stories about how dull he was? How no one could connect with him? I actually attended a speech Bradley made in Denver. He comes into the room of about 150 people and slowly goes around the room and shakes the hand of every single person there, taking time to look them in the eye, exchange a sentence or two and pause for photos. (Yes, there is a photo somewhere of me looking stupidly at Bradley.) Then he delivers a speech: coherent, funny, inspiring. Not Martin Luther King, Jr., but not dull.

The media does this all the time. They decide what the story is, what the line is and push it. Right now they are pushing a line about the wave of "Bush hatred" that is allegedly sweeping the country. Articles all over media have appeared in recent weeks tut-tutting about extreme, unhinged, wild hatred of Bush and wondering about the new viciousness of American politics.

It would be hilarious if it wasn't likely to fool some people. Remember, during the Clinton years how people were on the TV selling videos about how Clinton had dozens of people murdered? Remember how the totally discredited, lying Gennifer Flowers is still being touted as a person who was ruined by Clinton (apparently, Flowers has never specified a single time she and Clinton were alone together, and has been proven to have lied about any number of other claims)? But none of that counts as 'extreme' hatred.

The Bush regime represents a major attempt to pull America to the right. Opposing that is not extreme.

Make up your own mind about Dean. Go to the web sites, listen to him directly, listen to data about him. Like him or not, I'm not endorsing him. But be careful when a Republican operative, or person labeled an "analyst" who actually used to work for the Republicans offers some alleged wisdom about what he can or cannot do or be. Make up your own mind.