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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I am very proud of Salon's coverage of the Democratic primary. We are not pulling for any candidate, or trying to correct for any impression that we're pulling for any candidate.
You're second sentence is incoherant, but as to the first: if you're proud of your work, you really need to re-evaluate your standards.
We're reporting the news fairly, and in our opinion columns, we're asking and trying to answer compelling questions other people aren't tackling. When we all look back in 2009, I think Salon will stand out for its fairness, especially when one looks at primary coverage on the Web.
You can say this in response to a column in which you use the term "Bittergate"? That word clearly implies something along the lines of the political corruption of "Watergate," both in terms of its effect on the national pyche and its depth of political corruption. This despite the recurring information from polls that the story has no legs with the American populace, and that the original incident in itself in no way involves any sort of poltical cover-up?
Watergate was the investigation of a crime, or don't you remember? "Whitewatergate" recieved its handle because it was an investigation into an alleged crime, one that similarly involved politica corruption. Do you imply Obama has broken the law, or affiliated himself with people who have broken the law? Why would you use such a loaded term (and not balance it with a similar "Bosniagate") unless you intended to seriously impair the integrity of Obama's campaign?
After reading Carol's first question in this thread: I think it's a fair question, to ask why I'm more disturbed by Obama's more vicious supporters than Clinton's. I'll give it some more thought. On first reflection, I think it's that Obama says he stands for a new kind of politics, but his slash-and-burn supporters are the worst of the old politics.
So it's okay to be antagonistic once you acknowledge you're playing politics-as-usual? You'll forgive Hillary's deceptions and her elitism, and the antagonism of her followers, because she's known as an "old rules" candidate? You consider that a moral stance?
I also think even some of his nicer, more well-meaning supporters represent another dead-end kind of old politics: the politics of liberal self-righteousness, where we know we're better than those benighted supporters of those other guys (or gals), and that cheers us, even if we can't convince a majority we're right.
So there's no self-righteousness to Hillary's campaign? There's no sense of superiority or greater in-the-know perspective from her supporters?
And I say "we" because, honestly, they/you are my people: San Francisco by way of Madison, Wisconsin kind of people (but yes, the dad from Ireland/the Bronx sent off to the Christian Brothers does mix everyone up, including me.)
If I read this right, you see yourself (and by extention, us) as elitist. And you don't like this. So you want to attack it in others (but only in one other, not in both candidates). That's some Nixonian argument. Maybe this is "Walshgate."
I'm just trying harder this election to see the other side. And honestly, some Obama supporters are making it a lot easier to see the other side. I promise to develop these thoughts at greater length soon.
This is just embarrassing. Trying to see the "other side" would mean having to look at the "other side" of both candidates, not simply rejecting and lambasting one in favor of the other. And how "some Obama supporters" do this, but no Clinton supporters do, proves your embarrassing slanted position.
That you can really look at your work and say you're unbiased proves you wear blinders when examining the race. That you can read the letters colums here and interpret them as you do suggest you look at them wearing a sleeping mask.
Your coverage of this campaign has been a travesty.
Ms.Walsh, I don't blame San Francisco. I don't blame you. I won't vote for him because he's been revealed for what he is: just another snotty little bourgeois who will continue the dismantlement of the Bill of Rights and indulge in foreign misadventures. You worry too much about the trivial.
Obama's remarks were not a gaffe. They were true. At least many of us think so. Of course, if you think he was wrong, then perhaps you may wish to vote against him.
If his remarks were NOT true, then the good news is that the Democratic candidate, whomever it be, will win in a landslide in November, because the only people left who will vote for McCain will be business and landowners.
The term is "pandering". He was doing just that, Joan, in the City By The Bay...pandering to the wealthy, elite, liberal, and well-heeled Democrats with whom he was fund-raising.
What must be really galling to the Obamabots, however, is that he was recorded saying what he said and was blogged about...with attribution...on a much-read blog.
Barack's wounds are self-inflicted: either he was caught saying what he really meant, or, he fumbled what could have been a straight-forward motivator for his candidacy.
However, trying to do damage-control after the fact by trying to nuance or parse his words as being somehow "misinterpreted" is laughable; as a well-educated person who holds a BA, an MA and a PHD, I understand fully what he said. The problem is that he has been hoist by his own petard and his people don't like that.
Bottom line: would a President Obama have to have a Secretary of Double-Speak to run interference for him? We already have Dubya spewing double-speak; no need for another one of those.
During the campaign of Democrat Adlai Stevenson a supporter allegedly told him that he was sure to "get the vote of every thinking man" in the U.S., to which Stevenson is said to have replied, "Thank you, but I need a majority to win."
In the 1952 presidential election against Dwight D. Eisenhower, Stevenson won only nine states and lost the Electoral College vote 442 to 89.
Two quotes from George Santayana:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
"All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
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