Letters to the Editor
Reilly
Published Letters: 178
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In Pickler's piece she cites Keith Appell who was one of the Swift-Boaters
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I googled him and ran across an article entitled "The Swiftboaters are Back in the Water" by Dave Johnson which posted on July, 17, 2006 on The Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/the-swiftboaters-are-back_b_25223.html
It's a lengthy article in which Johnson quotes various republican ops. He also pulls a few incredibly blatant quotes from a Variety article about swift-boaters which certainly resonate now as the next great smear cycle begins:
"If you can construct believable stories with enough truth in them to smear somebody royally, boy, is there a pot of gold waiting for you in D.C. Spin doctors are nothing new in politics, but a certain type -- equal parts scriptwriter, opposition researcher and ruthless street fighter -- is increasingly in demand, and for good reason. Just ask John Kerry, the former Democratic presidential candidate who became the target object of a new verb: "swift-boating."
[. . .] "Modern communication isn't about truth, it's about a resonant narrative," says Eric Dezenhall, a former Reagan administration aide and now president of his own crisis management firm. "The myth of PR is that you will educate and inform people. No. The public wants to be told in a story who to like and who to hate."
As for Appell, here's him talking about the Sleaze Merchant-to-Drudge-to-MSM triple play that Glenn always highlights:
Appell was involved with CRC in the Dan Rather Forgeries story. According to the PR Week story, TWO DC FIRMS RAMP UP EFFORTS OVER LATEST PRESIDENTIAL CONTROVERSIES4:
"After the CBS story aired, [CNS] called typographical experts, got them on the record that these papers were fishy, and posted a story by 3pm Thursday," said CRC SVP Keith Appell. "We were immediately in contact with Matt Drudge, who loved the story." CRC worked with CNS and the Media Research Center, another media watchdog client, to push the story into the mainstream press."
So where is Appell now? In May, 2006, Appell joined the John Raese campaign against Senator Robert Byrd. And how long did it take for the swiftboating to begin? Not long: June, 2006, John Raese Approves Dishonest Attack Ad "accusing Senator Robert Byrd of voting against the troops."
That's Nedra Pickler's go-to guy for quotes about Obama's patriotism.
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There would be only two choices for the media if McCain's statements had been made by Senators Clinton or Obama:
[Read the article: Journalists, McCain and the false Iran/al-Qaida link]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Either the Senators would have been characterized as misspeaking out of ignorance of foriegn affairs thus highlighting their inexperience and lack of credentials, or another instance of the Senators "misspeaking" would be used to establish a pattern of deceit thereby reflecting a serious character issue. Either would be Exhibit A in the nonstop MSM Fitness for Office trial that would ensue.
As to the second: Perhaps, if Senators Obama or Clinton had, say, visited a Baghdad market a year ago for a photo-op and touted it as a casual stroll - almost like being in Indiana - and proclaimed:
"Never have I been able to drive from the airport, never have I been able to go out into the city like I did today. The American people are not getting the picture of all that is happening here."
And then immediately it had come out that they had been guarded by 100 U.S. soldiers and 20 humvees and that the market had been cleared and snipers set up on the surrounding rooftops and that three Black Hawk helicopters and two Apache gunships hovered over head to guard them.
And then all the major newspapers had various quotes from angry Iraqi citizens calling the visit propoganda, followed by a severe denunciation on a cable news show by an extremely credible and brave journalist who's been on the ground in Iraq since the beginning of the war and wonders what part of "neverland" they are refering to.
Well that would be just the kind of pattern our mainstream media couldn't possibly gloss over, as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would sure enough find out. I mean those are the kind of patterns of outright deceit that "objectivity" precludes journalists from ignoring, right?
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-- ondelette
[Read the article: Journalists, McCain and the false Iran/al-Qaida link]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Literally, the stoop to conquer strategy. Brilliant!
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The American media's script
[Read the article: What can and cannot be spoken on television]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've heard this anecdote in various forms over the years, most recently in this version by John Pilger:
One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. "I have to tell you," said the spokesman, "that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don't have to do any of that. What is the secret?"
Whether that's authentic or apocryphal, it illustrates beautifully the reality of our mainstream media.