Post by dgriffin on Oct 4, 2008 21:17:32 GMT -5
My heart breaks when I think of what the New York Times has become in recent years. Once the pinnacle of reporting, it's degenerated to stuff like this. Here are excerpts from a column by one Frank Rich, called
Pitbull Palin Mauls McCainl[/size]
the full text of which is at:
www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.htm
Yes, it is OpEd, but still ...
Quotes from article:
With a month to go, the 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race — about “the future,” as Palin kept saying Thursday night — and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.
The second bit of predebate news, percolating under the radar, involved the still-unanswered questions about McCain’s health.
("under the radar?" You mean, no one has seen it lately but you?
Back in May, you will recall, the McCain campaign allowed a select group of 20 reporters to spend a mere three hours examining (but not photocopying) 1,173 pages of the candidate’s health records...
(Back in May, and we haven't heard about it since.)
There was, however, at least one doctor-journalist among those 20 reporters in May, the CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta. At the time, Gupta told Katie Couric on CBS that the medical records were “pretty comprehensive” and wrote on his CNN blog that he was “pretty convinced there was no ‘smoking gun’ about the senator’s health.” (Physical health, that is; Gupta wrote there was hardly any information on McCain’s mental health.)
(And Gupta continues to stand by his observations.)
That was then. Now McCain is looking increasingly shaky,
(according to whom?)
whether he’s repeating his “Miss Congeniality” joke twice in the same debate or speaking from notecards even when reciting a line for (literally) the 17th time (“The fundamentals of our economy are strong”) or repeatedly confusing proper nouns that begin with S (Sunni, Shia, Sudan, Somalia, Spain).
(All the candidates have done such.)
McCain’s “dismaying temperament,” as George Will labeled it, only thickens the concerns. His kamikaze mission into Washington during the bailout crisis seemed crazed. His seething, hostile debate countenance — a replay of Al Gore’s sarcastic sighing in 2000 — didn’t make the deferential Obama look weak (as many Democrats feared) but elevated him into looking like the sole presidential grown-up.
(Is this guy kidding?)
...there’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.
(So, Todd has has taken a bead on McCain with his moose rifle? I'm sure I'll be hearing this folderol from my liberal lady friend I volunteer with on Tuesday.)
(Palin) offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.
(Please, help me up off the floor and turn off the laughing gas.)
After the debate, Republicans who had been bailing on Palin rushed back to the fold. They know her relentless ambition is the only hope for saving a ticket headed by a warrior who is out of juice and out of ideas. So what if she is preposterously unprepared to run the country in the midst of its greatest economic crisis in 70 years? She looks and sounds like a winner.
(Maybe she is.)
She has more testosterone than anyone else at the top of her party.
(Now, that's funny!)
Now, look. Palin is inexperienced and can be tacky. McCain is old and is promising too much, Obama is a great spokesman and his election would please Europe (did I say that?) and Ole Joe Biden is a great guy, I'm sure, after you put money in his pocket. But it isn't the candidates that are sickening me as the election approaches. And it's not the paid political operatives appearing nightly on your TV screen. It's the people in the press who are trying to help one side or the other, rather than report.
Pitbull Palin Mauls McCainl[/size]
the full text of which is at:
www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.htm
Yes, it is OpEd, but still ...
Quotes from article:
With a month to go, the 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race — about “the future,” as Palin kept saying Thursday night — and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.
The second bit of predebate news, percolating under the radar, involved the still-unanswered questions about McCain’s health.
("under the radar?" You mean, no one has seen it lately but you?
Back in May, you will recall, the McCain campaign allowed a select group of 20 reporters to spend a mere three hours examining (but not photocopying) 1,173 pages of the candidate’s health records...
(Back in May, and we haven't heard about it since.)
There was, however, at least one doctor-journalist among those 20 reporters in May, the CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta. At the time, Gupta told Katie Couric on CBS that the medical records were “pretty comprehensive” and wrote on his CNN blog that he was “pretty convinced there was no ‘smoking gun’ about the senator’s health.” (Physical health, that is; Gupta wrote there was hardly any information on McCain’s mental health.)
(And Gupta continues to stand by his observations.)
That was then. Now McCain is looking increasingly shaky,
(according to whom?)
whether he’s repeating his “Miss Congeniality” joke twice in the same debate or speaking from notecards even when reciting a line for (literally) the 17th time (“The fundamentals of our economy are strong”) or repeatedly confusing proper nouns that begin with S (Sunni, Shia, Sudan, Somalia, Spain).
(All the candidates have done such.)
McCain’s “dismaying temperament,” as George Will labeled it, only thickens the concerns. His kamikaze mission into Washington during the bailout crisis seemed crazed. His seething, hostile debate countenance — a replay of Al Gore’s sarcastic sighing in 2000 — didn’t make the deferential Obama look weak (as many Democrats feared) but elevated him into looking like the sole presidential grown-up.
(Is this guy kidding?)
...there’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.
(So, Todd has has taken a bead on McCain with his moose rifle? I'm sure I'll be hearing this folderol from my liberal lady friend I volunteer with on Tuesday.)
(Palin) offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.
(Please, help me up off the floor and turn off the laughing gas.)
After the debate, Republicans who had been bailing on Palin rushed back to the fold. They know her relentless ambition is the only hope for saving a ticket headed by a warrior who is out of juice and out of ideas. So what if she is preposterously unprepared to run the country in the midst of its greatest economic crisis in 70 years? She looks and sounds like a winner.
(Maybe she is.)
She has more testosterone than anyone else at the top of her party.
(Now, that's funny!)
Now, look. Palin is inexperienced and can be tacky. McCain is old and is promising too much, Obama is a great spokesman and his election would please Europe (did I say that?) and Ole Joe Biden is a great guy, I'm sure, after you put money in his pocket. But it isn't the candidates that are sickening me as the election approaches. And it's not the paid political operatives appearing nightly on your TV screen. It's the people in the press who are trying to help one side or the other, rather than report.
