Letters to the Editor
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Defenders of Manjoo have gone through the looking glass
The people writing in to defend Manjoo congratulate him for refusing to "pander" to the ostensibly unthinking liberals who can't countenance the possibility that the fix wasn't in in Ohio in 2004.
Nonsense.
As those objecting to Manjoo's article have stated ad nauseum, the problem with his "analysis" is not that he won't accept Kennedy's thesis (that there were too many troubling aspects to the 2004 vote to have confidence in its declared outcome) unquestioningly, but rather that he takes an absolutist position (that the election was NOT stolen and that anyone who says otherwise is a LIAR) and then tortures the evidence to "support" his predetermined conclusion.
I am quite confident that if Manjoo had taken a more reasonable and intellectually honest position -- that no one can know for sure whether or not the election was stolen but that troubling circumstances abound -- the responses would have been far less heated.
Finally, the suggestion that the fact that readers are cancelling their subscriptions somehow validates Manjoo's status as a truth-seeker can only be described as a head-first dive through the looking glass. It is entirely legitimate for readers to object to being subjected to right-wing propaganda, which any honest reader will recognize Manjoo's article to be. Salon is not supposed to be "The Limbaugh Letter." If Salon started running essays by Bill O'Reilly and readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest, would that somehow magically prove that Mr. No-Spin-Zone isn't a right-wing hack after all? Sorry, "not a con," but the world doesn't work that way. You aren't automatically proven right by the fact that people disagree with you.
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Someone else, please!
Manjoo had already made up his mind about the 2004 election by November 10, 2004 (see archived articles). He hasn't changed either his opinion or his tone. I wondered then and i wonder now, what's his motivation and whose payroll is he on? Salon should have assigned another writer to Kennedy's article--one who doesn't have to cover his ass. Manjoo is NOT an expert on this.
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Next time assign a reporter with an open mind
Manjoo has clearly made up his mind on this topic, and did so long ago.
His rebuttals make selective use of the facts, including not quoting all of the relevant Ohio law, providing statistics commentary that is unsupported by anything more than the assertion of the quotee, and choosing the smallest available voter numbers from a report that includes several sets, some of which support Kennedy's assertion.
This is very poor journalism, and not what I expect from Salon. This isn't enough to make me drop my subscription, but it's enough to make me consider it. Manjoo has done some fine reporting in other areas, but his biases seem to betray him in this area. Please continue to fact check articles like Kennedy's, but get someone other than Manjoo to do it. He's just not credible on this topic.
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Unbiased?
I agree with the others. Why is Salon only publishing one journalists perspective on this? Why is Mr. Manjoo THE ONLY one who ever writes about this topic? I know he's not the only person working at Salon. Someone whose mind isn't already made up and who is actually willing to credit and evaluate evidence from both sides would be desirable and appropriate.
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Salon, next time please assign a reporter who:
-Knows that Democrats/Liberals are always right, no matter what the topic
-Knows that Republicans/Libertarians/Conservatives are always wrong, no matter what the topic
-Knows that all elections won by non-Democratic or Green Party candidates are stolen or won under dubious circumstances (like when voters are too dumb to poke out the right chad and accidentally vote for the Republican candidate)
-Knows that the earth has seen no true vessel of evil personified than Bush & Cheney
Until then, I have no interest in reading your news reports. I'll stick to "I Like to Watch" and King Kaufman.
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Why did Kennedy need Rolling Stone to publish his "evidence"?
Rolling Stone is not exactly an unbaised publication. Why not Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, etc?
Jann Wenner would publish a report that Bush drinks the blood of Muslim children each morning if he could find a crackpot who swore he saw it.
I really don't know what happened in Ohio. But if Rolling Stone reports something first, and it's not about the new White Stripes album, then I am already skeptical.
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Sloppy Writing, Sloppy Thinking
It strikes me that Mr. Manjoo's article excoriates Mr. Kennedy for sloppy and misleading analysis, but Manjoo's own article shows only that Mr. Kennedy did not prove the 2004 election was stolen. There's a big distinction between that and proving that the election was **not** stolen, as the title's "No" suggests. The whole story on the 2004 election may never be known, and surely not for a long time.
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MANJOO RESPONSE A TRAVESTY
The head of Diebold promised to "deliver" Ohio to Bush, and he was true to his word. Manjoo, in all his ossified writings on this subject, never questions why Diebold would build into his election machine programs the options of deleting or altering votes. What possible legitimate or LEGAL consequences could such options serve? I have countless friends, many of them working for local newspapers, in Ohio who are outraged at the vote transfers, voting place lockdowns, paucity of voting machines, purposely manipulated poll delays, and all the other dirty dealing of Blackwell and the Republican Party. They jammed phones in New Hampshire to sabotage Democratic turnout; far worse crimes were committed in Ohio. Manjoo writes as if he is talking about people who follow the rules and are interested in decency and the public good. These are the same people who disrupted the vote count in Dade County Florida ion November 22, 2000. Thugs brought down from Tom DeLay's office. White House operatives. Jeb Bush writes letters thanking the so-called Swiftboaters for their contributions. They stole, not one, but two elections. RFK Jr. has tried to pry the door open onto some of the crimes involved here. And you put a reporter on the sotyr like Manjoo who has been peddling the same denials since 2004. As soon as I saw the byline of his piece, I knew it would be a hit job on Kennedy. Your "No" in the title was a nice touch. I am seriously considering canceling my longtime Salon subscription, as are members of my family. I'm sure a suitable position awaits Manjoo at FOX News, or some other "fair and balanced" enterprise, which apologizes for Bush's illegal and disastrous presidency. I expected more of Salon.