Sunday, August 22, 2004
The Globe's Thomas Oliphant continues to peddle the fantasy that the Mainstream Media are the guardians of the public good with regard to the SwiftVets movement - and that's how it strikes me, as a movement. These guys are driven.
Oliphant has no problem going into full attack mode on some veterans, veterans who also served, who were also wounded and decorated (and with the latest salvo, spent years in Vietnamese prisons) while defending his own man. I'm not sure how you just blow off as a smear the fact that the friends who support Kerry are outnumbered by those who oppose him by a factor of over 20 to 1.
And that's what it's about. Take note Bush supporters, particularly non-veterans and even more particularly non-Vietnam-Era veterans: This challenge to Kerry is about respect for the Vets themselves. WE weren't there. Most of us have never seen the angry end of a rifle under any circumstances, let alone in a combat zone, even if only for four months. This is about the feelings of a couple hundred guys (and more besides) who have some very serious feelings they appear to have a damn solid right to posses. Let them make the points with us to amplify and get their backs. We need to give them the megaphone and keep them from being dishonored and written off as nothing more than profit and publicity mongers. Factual basis of events aside (and despite the press spin, those still favor the SwiftVets), what Kerry did to these guys when he got home is just monstrous and I can understand why they feel the way they feel. The latest ad is devastating.
Some on the Left will never understand why. The narrative of American troops as war criminals and Vietnam villains is far too deeply ingrained. As I said previously:
The press and the Left (loosely defined) just can't understand how SO MANY guys can't just accept the dominant war-criminal paradigm. They need to have it drummed into them. It can't be left acceptable for someone to peddle it without consequence. You come home, trash your buddies, trash your country and throw your medals over the fence (Oh, OK, it was someone else's medals) - that's fine. But you don't then get to spend the next 30+ years dining out on your war record. You left over that fence with the medals. It's emblematic of Kerry wanting to have everything in his record both ways. I don't believe the American People are going to go for it.
Oliphant wants us to believe that the MSM, guardians of truth that they are, simply hasn't reported on something the evidence was too thin to support. Is he kidding? The MSM conducted their Bush AWOL fishing expedition piece by piece and step by step (a subject they weren't concerned with during Bush's first time around - I wonder why) on the front pages of papers around the country - demanding that every last week in The President's record be accounted for and drawing leading headlines at every opportunity. Yet, what Oliphant calls "reputable organs of the national press," have remained largely silent on this new subject, until they were good and ready to find some way to wring out exculpatory headlines on behalf of their chosen candidate. Who does Oliphant think he's kidding?
Now the press is searching for any handful of witnesses they can stand behind who'll give them any handhold possible no matter how tenuous, so they can appear shedding rivers of crocodile tears in the heroic pose as protectors of the honor of vets - never mind the 250+ others they and Oliphant have had no concern over trashing. And where was the press in demanding that Kerry and Edwards repudiate some of the egregious things their supporters said - in their presence while fund raising for them, or for that matter making an issue of the fact that Michael Moore and his cargo of half-truths was an honored guest at the DNC? Over 85% of all 527 money goes to Democrat causes, but now the press is getting worked up?
Mr. Oliphant, we notice the differences.
I agree with Oliphant on one thing - the truth will out.
Boston Globe Op-ed: Smear by veterans may hurt Bush:
Discerning voters will notice that the more reputable organs of the national press have not cast doubt on Kerry's Vietnam service. That is because political attacks on it don't pass the smell test. We are influenced by eyewitnesses, not by people whose stories keep changing or are contradicted by official records. We are used to arguments over things like war records, but the burden of proof is with the accuser and Kerry's accusers cannot shoulder it with the credible evidence required of credible stories.
But there's another way in now. Raise some Bush buddy Texas money, create a TV ad, hire a right-wing loony to put together a smear book, and cable TV producers desperate for shouting matches are happy to oblige. The result then gets recycled into the serious press because "questions" have been raised about Kerry's record that couldn't survive a minute under traditional standards.
Kerry may have been nicked some at the margins by all this while he was responding via surrogates the last few weeks. Raising the profile of the smear, as well as confronting it directly and putting it at Bush's door, is overdue in the view of some Democratic Party operatives, a risk in the view of others. My own guess is that the higher the profile of this mess the more it looks like the smear it is, and the more it risks boomeranging on the president.
As happened to O'Neill in 1971, the best counter to him today is the serious press attention that his group fears most.
So where's that attention been? This reminds me of the chubby kid who starts making fat jokes himself in order to head off and blunt the inevitable, or the nerdy kids who wear the label as a badge of honor to dull the pain. "Loser Salute!" to Tom Oliphant.
People who fear attention don't write books - particularly knowing the firestorm of unfriendly press attention they're going to stir up. A press who likes a story runs it on the front page as the information becomes available.
To quote what's becoming a hackneyed phrase: Bring it on.
[As an aside, has anyone else had trouble receiving their copy of Unfit for Command from Amazon? I ordered it last weekend with three other books, and while I received those right away, the SwiftVets book is still delayed. Sold out are they?]
Update: NE Republican has been watching the way the MSM has been handling the story now that it's broken.
