The Best They've Got?
In the middle of a round-up piece, Howard Kurtz references CNN's ridiculous Jack Cafferty:
In a typical rant, Cafferty, a New York local anchor for two decades who now delivers his short bursts on "The Situation Room," said of the Bush administration: "Who cares if the Patriot Act gets renewed? Want to abuse our civil liberties -- just do it! Who cares about the Geneva conventions? Want to torture prisoners -- just do it! Who cares about rules concerning the identity of CIA agents? Want to reveal the name of a covert operative -- just do it!"
Before any legal charges were brought against Tom DeLay, Cafferty said of the Texas congressman: "Has he been indicted yet?" He told Wolf Blitzer that if presidential adviser Karl Rove is indicted, "he might want to get measured for one of those extra large orange jumpsuits, Wolf, 'cause looking at old Karl, I'm not sure that they'd be able to zip him into the regular size one."
And when Dick Cheney, after his hunting accident, granted an interview to Fox's Brit Hume, Cafferty said it "didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network." ("Get your mind out of the gutter," he says now. "The F-word is Fox.")
Is this the best CNN can do? To find the crazy old uncle in the attic and train a camera on him? Good luck with that strategy.
Oh, and imagine the outcry if Fox hired someone, say, Michael Savage to sit and offer the same kind of extemperaneous and unfiltered "color commentary" on the air. That's the analogue to what CNN is doing with Cafferty.
In a typical rant, Cafferty, a New York local anchor for two decades who now delivers his short bursts on "The Situation Room," said of the Bush administration: "Who cares if the Patriot Act gets renewed? Want to abuse our civil liberties -- just do it! Who cares about the Geneva conventions? Want to torture prisoners -- just do it! Who cares about rules concerning the identity of CIA agents? Want to reveal the name of a covert operative -- just do it!"
Before any legal charges were brought against Tom DeLay, Cafferty said of the Texas congressman: "Has he been indicted yet?" He told Wolf Blitzer that if presidential adviser Karl Rove is indicted, "he might want to get measured for one of those extra large orange jumpsuits, Wolf, 'cause looking at old Karl, I'm not sure that they'd be able to zip him into the regular size one."
And when Dick Cheney, after his hunting accident, granted an interview to Fox's Brit Hume, Cafferty said it "didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network." ("Get your mind out of the gutter," he says now. "The F-word is Fox.")
Is this the best CNN can do? To find the crazy old uncle in the attic and train a camera on him? Good luck with that strategy.
Oh, and imagine the outcry if Fox hired someone, say, Michael Savage to sit and offer the same kind of extemperaneous and unfiltered "color commentary" on the air. That's the analogue to what CNN is doing with Cafferty.
posted by LadybugUSA at 9:29 AM
3 Comments:
Carol wants us to "imagine the outcry if Fox hired someone, say, Michael Savage to sit and offer the same kind of extemperaneous and unfiltered 'color commentary' on the air."
You mean like good ole John Gibson saluting the British police for "putting five in the noggin" of an innocent man?
Or maybe you mean Bill O'Reilly saying that if al Quaeda bombs San Francisco that would be just fine and dandy by him?
Oh wait, you must be referring to the time Hannity & Colmes regular, Ann Coulter said (on FOX) of former President Bill Clinton, "Wait, this man raped a woman. This man molested interns in the White House, and then he lied about it and committed felonies."
Yeah, FOX is such a bastion of journalistic integrity, you hypocritical git.
This blog's DNC-assigned resident liberal, "I can see the speck in your eye but not the mote in my own" apologist has apparently received an updated DNC thesaurus, so has added hypocritical git to the usual "stupid" and "lying" name calling attacks (s)he usually employs.
But per usual, the selected examples cited tell only a part of the stories. The killing of the innocent man by London police occurred not long after over 50 subway commuters were blown to bits by terrorists who had not yet been apprehended. The man had exited a building which was under surveillance as a suspected hiding place of those terrorists, was wearing dark clothes and a backpack, had run into a subway and refused to stop when ordered by police. Mr. Gibson's comment must be considered in light of those criteria, as well as what could have happened had the man been a terrorist carrying another bomb and the police allowed him to board. Horrible things sometimes happen when split second decisions are necessary to prevent even more horrible things from happening.
Mr. O'Reilly was responding in the caustic manner he uses to criticize both the left and right of the political spectrum. In this case, San Francisco voters had just passed a resolution recommending schools ban the military from all campuses. Mr. O'Reilly was making the point that he believed doing so was trashing the military and if San Francisco banned the military, it did not deserve to be defended should terrorists drive into town.
Ms. Coulter, who, incidentally, used to work for one of the not fair and balanced Networks where I don't recall her being blasted by the left as being a flame thrower, also regularly bashes both the left and right when she believes it warranted. The comments she offered about Mr. Clinton were factual except for the portion about raping a woman. And on that portion, whom should the public believe? The woman who went on national TV to report in detail how she was raped, or the man who lied about Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Jenifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, and who knows how many others?
As has been cited before on this blog, national polls and statements by former Network heads, among others, show that Fox is seen as providing the "fair and balanced" coverage it advertises. The only segment of the audience disputing that is those who see anything but their own beliefs as biased and unworthy of being aired.
Finally, Mr. Savage's comments are substantially harsher, even cruder, than Gibson's, O'Reilly's, Coulter's, or even some of James Carville's, who sometime ago tried to paint Mr. Starr as a right-wing, Christian, religious nutcase who (horrors!) sang hymns on his daily morning jogs, and more recently suggested Vice President Cheney's blood should have been drawn to determine whether he was drunk when he accidently shot a hunting partner.
except the portion about raping a woman.
Juanita Broaderick would beg to differ. Nonetheless Ann should have said "allegedly" which would have spoiled the invective, I think.
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