Month: October 2004

It’s such a powerful revelation, The New York Post had to bury it in its gossip page where it pushed aside the latest on Pharell and Mick Jagger’s daughter. While the blurb itself is larded with legalistic caveats, the headline says it all: CONSPIRACY THEORY: KERRY ‘TIE’ TO OSWALD.

Conspiracy theorists are buzzing about John Kerry’s connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassina tion. While no one in the lunatic fringe has gone so far as to suggest Kerry helped kill Kennedy – yet – they make much of the fact that a cousin of Kerry’s, Michael Paine, was a close friend of Oswald who frequently had the assassin as a house guest.

Whoa. Do you really want to play this game, Page Six? Crumple up that tin-foil hat before someone reminds you that “conspiracy theorists” have been “buzzing” for years that John Hinckley’s brother, Scott, was allegedly scheduled to have dinner with Bush’s brother, Neil, the night John shot Reagan in 1981!
If we are to believe these shoddily-designed websites from people with even shoddier worldviews, the Bushes and the Hinckleys were supposedly best friends forever! (Imagine the barbecues at the Bushes: Hinckleys, Saudis, the Oak Ridge Boys: “Pass me another Coors Light, Poppy. More Ribs? You know it!”)
Some dude even went so far as to tie Hinckley’s attempt on Reagan with Kennedy’s assassination by claiming that Reagan was “shot from the Bushy knoll“!
Wow. See how fucking stupid I sound saying this stuff? Elevating these wackadoos to even the most carefully vetted legitimacy, lowers a writer to, well, a fucking idiot.
Let’s all learn from the recent obituaries for Kennedy Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, whose otherwise impeccable career in public service was marred by his late life promotion of a conspiracy theory he’d learned on the internet—that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a missile.
If the foolish promotion of an unfounded conspiracy can cling like the smell of shit to a smart man with integrity, what do you think it could do to the writers of a gossip column for a ridiculous, unprofitable newspaper?
Nothin’. You’re probably right.

What follows are excerpts from the Denver Post editorial page, endorsing George W. for president. Kind of.

Well of course, that couldn’t make any more sense, now could it? Oh wait, it could – the Denver Post’s parent company, MediaNews Group, is owned by William Dean Singleton, a major donor to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
[via, yes, fine, I admit it, The Al Franken Show]

Hey, fellas: What’ve you been listening to lately? Brian Wilson’s newly-revised and -released SMiLE? We thought so.



Frankly, it’s rather impressive that Arafat was able to get ahold of a copy of this album after being holed up in his compound by Israeli tanks for two long years. You see, there is a practical application for those smuggling tunnels everyone’s always going on about.

“W” at a Saginaw, Michigan campaign rally… The good people who drained your 401(k)
Earlier: We’ve Been Hammering Away at His War Record, But Let’s Not Forget Enron, Okay?

Rumble, Young Man, Rumble: Muhammad Ali defeats the dreaded Sonny Liston
Just five more days ’till we shake up the world…

There has been a recent rash of pieces by journalists bemoaning the nasty tone of the letters they’ve been receiving from their readers. Personally, I think the real issue here is not that the tone of discourse of people who have traditionally written to journalists has taken a turn for the worse, but rather the convergence of two issues:

• The Internet makes it very easy to send feedback to journalists.
• The issues of the day have made many more people than usual take an interest in public affairs.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that telling Adam Nagourney that you hope his son gets killed in a Republican war is a pretty nasty thing to say, although I would counter that Adam is a semi-public figure who gets to go on the Charlie Rose Show, and the unfortunate downside of being a semi-public figure is that people might write you really nasty e-mails. But I really have to take issue with today’s piece in the New York Times on the same topic:

“Most of us now realize that this is a constant conversation, and I think that largely that part of it is good,” said Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek. “Some of the stuff includes very personal and nasty things about people – they go after people’s physical characteristics, they’ll say somebody’s ugly – and you just have to ignore that.”
Still, he said, “I would be lying if I didn’t say it could be hurtful.”
[…]
Bob Somerby, a comedian who runs a Web site called The Daily Howler that often accuses the news media of being shallow, lazy, bullied by Republicans and unfairly critical of Democrats, said a more genteel approach would not be effective. (He has referred to this reporter on his Web site as “dumb” and in “over his head” for being blind or turning a blind eye to Republican spin.)

It’s certainly infantile to call people ugly and dumb when you disagree with their reportage, but I think it’s equally (if not more) infantile to use your privileged position in the paper of record to whine about it. How thin-skinned are these people? Do they go to their mamas and cry whenever the mean bloggers call them names?
‘Cause we’ve heard a few things about their mamas, too.

RELATED: MISSOURI POLL: Missouri reflects tight race, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 26, 2004: “A new poll for the Post-Dispatch shows the race in Missouri tightening. President George W. Bush’s earlier lead has slipped among the state’s voters. But the Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, has so far been unable to close the gap, in part because the poll shows a growing number of Missouri voters view him unfavorably.”
ALSO RELATED: Red-Faced: Boston wraps up sweep, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 26, 2004