Injecting Race into the California Recall - October 2, 2003
Times Watch for October 2, 2003
Injecting Race into the California Recall
Thursday's story by Charlie LeDuff, "Schwarzenegger
Lays Out Agenda for First 100 Days," attempts to make racial issues out of two
of the Republican's most popular campaign stands. LeDuff writes that
Schwarzenegger "received his strongest applause from the mostly white audience
on two points that have proven racially sensitive in California, involving
Indian casinos and illegal immigrants." Later he writes: "In a sign of how
racially divided California has become, Mr. Schwarzenegger received a standing
ovation on Wednesday when he said he would not let stand a law recently signed
by Mr. Davis that allows illegal immigrants to hold California driver's
licenses. 'I will not let California driver's licenses be turned into fraudulent
documents,' he said. 'I will give the Legislature one last chance, or I will
take it to the people.'"
Davis had
previously vetoed a similar bill in October 2002, sensibly arguing that "the
tragedy of Sept. 11 made it abundantly clear that the driver's license is more
than just a license to drive; it is one of the primary documents we use to
identify ourselves." But LeDuff spends not a word on Gov. Davis' cynical,
opportunistic and
"racially sensitive" reversal a month before the recall vote.
For the rest of Charlie LeDuff on the surging
Schwarzenegger campaign,
click here.
Gov. Gray Davis
|
Charlie LeDuff
|
Arnold
Schwarzenegger
The
Times' Anti-Choice Movement
Where are the
feminist
critics of the Times when you really need them?
The premise of Tuesday's
Health & Fitness story by Anahad OConnor, States Fail to Meet No-Smoking Goals
for Women," seems more than a bit condescending, treating women as passive
victims of tobacco, in need of state protection to prevent them from choosing to
smoke.
O'Connor's report opens
with an argument that state governments aren't doing enough to stop women from
smoking: Tobacco-related diseases are still the leading cause of preventable
death in women, and most states are not meeting the nation's goals to discourage
women from smoking, according to a report released today by the National Women's
Law Center and Oregon Health and Science University."
O'Connor continues: "The
study follows a major report from the surgeon general in 2001 that called for
tougher measures nationwide to keep women from smoking and for tighter limits on
tobacco industry advertising and promotion. Whatever happened to the
"pro-choice" movement?
For the rest of O'Connor's anti-smoking report,
click here.
Feminism |
Health
|
Anahad O'Connor
|
Smoking |
Tobacco
The
Times' Rove-ing Reporters
Playing catch-up to the Washington Post's
aggressive coverage, Thursday's Times features two stories and an editorial on
the Justice Department investigation into who in the administration told
columnist Bob Novak the name of a CIA operative, in possible violation of
federal law. But the Times seems to have already identified its prime suspect in
the "Plame-speaking" case: Bush adviser Karl Rove.
Times reporters Elisabeth
Bumiller and Eric Lichtblau put Rove in their sights in a front-page Thursday
story that comes with this triple-decker headline: "Attorney General Is Closely
Linked To Inquiry Figures-Rove Was A Consultant-Democrats in Congress Charge a
Clear Conflict of Interest in Investigation of Leak."
The story opens: "Deep
political ties between top White House aides and Attorney General John Ashcroft
have put him into a delicate position as the Justice Department begins a full
investigation into whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name
of an undercover C.I.A. officer."
Yet the actual depth of
those ties seems open to interpretation, as the next paragraph indicates: "Karl
Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, whose possible role in the case
has raised questions, was a paid consultant to three of Mr. Ashcroft's campaigns
in Missouri, twice for governor and for United States senator, in the 1980's and
1990's, an associate of Mr. Rove said on Wednesday."
For more Times' speculation on Karl Rove's possible
ties to the Joseph Wilson imbroglio,
click here.
The
Times' Geography Lesson: Niger = Africa
Thursday's Times editorial on the Joseph Wilson/CIA
controversy misreads a Wilson opinion piece published by the paper itself less
than three months ago. The editorial claims: "Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article
for The Times, published on July 6, that said he had investigated Saddam
Hussein's nuclear ambitions at the request of the C.I.A. He wrote that he
believed the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence when it
asserted that Mr. Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger, in Africa, to
foster a nuclear weapons program."
But Wilson didn't say
that. This is what Bush actually said in his State of the Union address: "The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa." Bush didnt even refer to Niger.
Wilson himself noted in
his
Times op-ed (contradicting the blanket assertion in Thursday's Times
editorial) that Bush could have been referring to another African country
besides Niger: "Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier,
repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next
day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that
if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne
out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was
speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium:
Gabon, South Africa or Namibia."
Other Times writers
have also conflated
the African country of Niger with Africa as a whole.
For the rest of the Times editorial on the Joseph
Wilson controversy,
click here.
Times
Deaf to Liberal Wilson Racket
Thursday's story on the Joseph Wilson affair by
Richard Stevenson and Eric Lichtblau lays out Wilson's history of campaign
donations: "Republicans say Mr. Wilson is a partisan Democrat with ties to the
presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and a desire to
drive Mr. Bush from office. Mr. Wilson contributed $2,000 to Mr. Kerry's
campaign and has said he might endorse him. Mr. Wilson also contributed to both
Mr. Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 election cycle. He has given money in the past
to a variety of other candidates from both parties." The reporters then quote
RNC chairman Ed Gillespie accusing Wilson of speaking "to a Win Without War
rally, one of the most radical anti-Bush groups out there."
But the Times itself has
yet to emphasize Wilson's clear liberal tilt, demonstrated in an opinion piece
he wrote for the
left-wing Nation magazine in February 2003, shortly before the Iraq War:
"The neoconservatives with a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the
Republican Party, a party that traditionally eschewed foreign military
adventures, want to go beyond expanding US global influence to force
revolutionary change on the region. American pre-eminence in the Gulf is
necessary but not sufficient for the hawks. Nothing short of conquest,
occupation and imposition of handpicked leaders on a vanquished population will
suffice. Iraq is the linchpin for this broader assault on the region. The new
imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our worldview are
implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking,
smacking of hubris in the extreme."
For more on the Times take on Joseph Wilson,
click here.
