CyberAlert -- 08/27/2001 -- "Lock Box" & "Trust Fund" Mantra
"Lock Box" & "Trust Fund" Mantra; Helms "Wonderfully Odious"; Jack White Admitted Listening to Limbaugh; Condit Defended by Maher 7) Letterman's "Top Ten Ways Gary Condit Can Improve His Image." >>> "Conservatives Use Floggings As Way to Beat Back Reforms." Now posted on the MRC Web site, a shot of that Washington Post headline as displayed by Brit Hume on his Fox News Channel show. For more about the subject of the story and to see the headline for yourself, refer back to the August 17 CyberAlert: http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010817.asp#6 <<< The incredible, imaginary Social Security "lock box" and "trust fund." All weekend-long ABC and NBC reporters insisted upon using those terms to describe sacrosanct funds even though there really is no "lock box" or "trust fund." Liberals are now advancing the spin the media are eagerly eating up because they want to discredit the tax cut and prevent any more tax cutting. And Bush operatives won't explain reality since during the campaign Bush bought into the concept of not "spending" the Social Security surplus. Until a few years ago, NBC reporter Lisa Myers pointed out after Tim Russert used the "trust fund" language, the entire "trust fund" was spent on other things and, as Brit Hume noted on Fox News Sunday, it will be again this year even if it is "saved" for Social Security. -- ABC's August 26 This Week displayed a "lock box" mantra as co-host George Stephanopoulos turned Al Gore's campaign spin into reality: Stephanopoulos to White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey, who never corrected the questioner: "After this mid-session review budget report came this week, both you and President Bush mentioned what seemed to be a new exception to taking money from the Social Security lock box. You said that when there's a recession you can dip into the lock box. What's the economic rational for that?" Of course, Bush never employed the term "lock box." Stephanopoulos followed up: "The President has also said that he thinks the Congress has to restrain spending. Are you committed now to saying the President will veto any congressional spending bills that dip into the lock box absent a recession?" Up next, Democratic Senator John Edwards, whom Stephanopoulos pushed to dump on the tax cut: "You talk about talking straight and tough choices. Are the Democrats prepared to make those same tough choices. You say there's a big problem with the budget this year. Are you prepared, as Senator Byrd has suggested, to come forward and say we have to repeal or delay parts of the tax cut to make sure we don't tap the Social Security lock box?" -- The night before, on Saturday's NBC Nightly News, reporter Campbell Brown recalled from Crawford, Texas how earlier in the week "the White House released revised budget numbers that showed the surplus, projected in April to be $281 billion, is now down to $158 billion. And only one billion is available for new spending. The rest dedicated to the Social Security Trust Fund." -- Meet the Press. A week after Robert Novak explained to Tim Russert how "there is no trust fund" (see August 20 CyberAlert: http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010820.asp#1), Russert at least added a "so-called" to his use of the term: "Last Sunday on this program, Lawrence Lindsey, the chief economic adviser to the President, said the President of the United States, George W. Bush, will never submit a budget that in any way taps into the so-called Social Security Trust Fund." Russert's NBC News colleague, Lisa Myers,
soon pointed out to her boss during the roundtable segment: "One
thing we should add about the Social Security surplus: Until two years ago
Congress and the President spent every dime of that money." Politically sacred and sacred to the Washington press corps. -- Fox News Sunday. Instead of just repeating
the "lock box" mantra to Lindsey, Fox's Brit Hume explained
its phoniness to him: "We keep hearing that the Social Security
surplus may be invaded, which is to say that these payroll tax revenues
that come in, which are estimated to be in excess of what's necessary to
pay benefits by somewhere between $155 and $160 billion this year, will
not be touched, that they're in a quote, 'lock box,' unquote. In
fact though, sir, isn't it the case that the money will be very much
touched and it will be loaned back to the government. Social Security will
get IOUs or government securities and what will happen is the money will
be used to pay down other government debt, correct?" More harangues about Helms over the weekend. Newsweek's Evan Thomas called retiring Senator Jesse Helms "wonderfully odious" and "an evil guy" as he conceded that it "was very comforting to the east coast media establishment to know that there was an evil guy out there that you could really fear." Time's Jack White proclaimed "glad he's gone" and "good riddance" to him. ABC's Derek McGinty blamed a 1990 Helms TV ad for appealing "to the worst in North Carolinians: Fear, mistrust, misunderstanding and prejudice." -- Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas on Inside Washington fondly recalled a certain Time cover: "I think liberals are going to miss him. He was so wonderfully odious. Remember that old Time magazine, Jack [White], that had him on the cover with the dark shadows under the eyes and he's this dark and menacing figure? And he was very comforting to the east coast media establishment to know that there was an evil guy out there that you could really fear." -- Time national correspondent Jack White on Inside Washington: "As a native North Carolinian, the only question I have is what took him so doggone long? Glad he's gone. He was an old segregationist. He never changed. Him and his counterpart in the state next door, Strom Thurmond, good riddance to both of them." Can we assume White will display equal hostility toward and equal pleasure at the retirements of Democratic Senators Robert Byrd, who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, and Ernest Hollings who, as Governor of South Carolina, prevented any blacks from attending the University of South Carolina? -- ABC's This Week. During the roundtable,
Derek McGinty, a former NPR talk show host who now co-anchor's ABC's
overnight World News Now, showed a clip of the 1990 Helms TV ad with the
white hands crumpling a piece of paper as the announcer intoned: "You
needed that job. And you were the best qualified. But they had to give it
to a minority." Jack White of Time mocked Rush Limbaugh's analysis that Gary Condit is just following Bill Clinton's behavior pattern. On Inside Washington over the weekend, the
weekly roundtable program shown on many PBS stations which is taped and
run on Washington, DC's Gannett-owned CBS affiliate, the Time national
correspondent reluctantly admitted listening to Limbaugh: Despite near-unanimous condemnation for Congressman Gary Condit (D-CA), some media figures were still willing to defend him after it became clear he would obfuscate and refuse to apologize: ABC's Bill Maher, joined to some extent by Alexandra Wentworth, the future Mrs. George Stephanopoulos and USA Today editor Jack Curry and, in another forum, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift. Maher insisted Condit only looks bad to those "who hate him anyway and basically hate sex." Maher sympathized: "I don't blame him for feeling like the guy in all the Hitchcock movies, the wrong guy, you know." MRC analyst Jessica Anderson caught these exchanges on the Thursday, August 23, Politically Incorrect taped before Primetime Thursday aired, but after the panel heard the audio of the interview as provided by ABC News. The panel put Charmaine Yoest of the conservative Independent Women's Forum on the defensive, questioning her every assertion of what is common knowledge about the case: Yoest: "You know what, that's another
thing, is this guy is devoid of normal human emotion." Later, Yoest asserted: "I thought it was
really striking that both of these girls [Lewinsky and Levy] had this
delusional fantasy that these guys were gonna leave their wives, they were
gonna end up having babies together-" At another point, Yoest contended: "The
way he has responded time after time after time has made him look horribly
guilty." Curry soon sympathized with Condit's plight:
"You know, I think the other thing that, you know, he's an easy guy
to kick around, you know. It's one thing when you're dealing with the
President and his infidelities -- well, we've already been there, so this
is easy. This is an easy one, to pick at him." Over on FNC the same night, the 9pm EDT Hannity & Colmes crew did not have the benefit of seeing or hearing the yet to be broadcast 10pm EDT Primetime Thursday interview, but knew the basic parameters of Condit's approach based on his letter to constituents and Connie Chung's summarization on World News Tonight of how the interview went. During one segment, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift repeatedly came to Condit's defense, claiming he had been forthcoming, an approach that even astounded the liberal Alan Colmes. MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth caught these exchanges: Sean Hannity: "But on the political
question, Dick Gephardt calls him a 'man of honor.' You know, I got to
believe, well, first of all, he is a humiliating disgrace. I've got to
believe America can to better than a man like this that has now just
orchestrated what we have witnessed before, which is a massive propaganda
and spin campaign." An appalled Alan Colmes argued: "Eleanor,
this is a sham. You seem to me to be defending Gary Condit." Colmes next read a part of Condit letter, and
asked: "'Dedicated to his family?' This is a guy who's had how
many alleged affairs? We believe they may be more than alleged, and he's
talking about being dedicated to his family. I mean, that's a sham,
that's a lie." There's little evidence connecting Clift to balanced journalism. "Gary Condit is a Republican, isn't he?" A caller to C-SPAN on Friday morning tripped up the Washington Journal host by asking to which party Gary Condit belongs. Given how closely C-SPAN staffers must follow the news, the host's confusion probably can be attributed to how infrequently the news media identify Condit as a Democrat and how frequently they refer to his district as "conservative." As a July MRC study determined, in 179 stories
on ABC, CBS and NBC during the first two month of the scandal, a piddling
14, or 8 percent, listed Condit as a Democrat, meaning he was not properly
identified in more than nine out of ten stories. That policy continued on Friday morning at the same time the C-SPAN host misstated Condit's party. MRC analysts Jessica Anderson, Brian Boyd and Geoffrey Dickens informed me that although the Condit story consumed most of the August 24 morning shows, Condit was never identified as a Democrat on Friday's Good Morning America, Early Show or Today -- though there were hints in questions about whether Democrats will rally around Condit. MRC Web page visitor Robert Peets alerted the MRC's Bonnie Langborgh to the incident on C-SPAN highlighted on the Free Republic Web site, and she passed on e-mail on to me. Just past 7:30am EDT on Friday, C-SPAN host
Connie Brod, at least I believe her last name is Brod, went to a caller,
identifying which line he was calling in on, Republican, Democratic or
independent: "Big Sandy Texas, Republican, good morning to you. Got
to turn your television set down, please." Without further comment, Brod moved on to another caller. ++ See and hear the above exchange. By late Monday morning ET, the MRC's Mez Djouadi will post, on the MRC's home page, a RealPlayer clip of this. Go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org CBS came through. The August 24 CyberAlert wondered if the CBS Evening News, after running a 35-second item on Thursday night about Condit's letter to constituents, would return with a full story on Friday night after his ABC interview. CBS did, airing its third story ever weekday CBS Evening News story and its second full report after its first one on July 18. Anchor Russ Mitchell miraculously even identified Condit as a Democrat: "After months of silence, Democratic Congressman Gary Condit of California is talking publicly about the Chandra Levy case..." But that story came too late for C-SPAN's Connie Brod. From the August 24 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten Ways Gary Condit Can Improve His Image." Copyright 2001 by Worldwide Pants. Inc. (Since the Friday Late Show is taped on Thursday night at either 8 or 8:30pm, this list was created before Letterman's writers saw the ABC interview. But it captures just the right tone anyway.) 10. New campaign slogan: "Oh, like you've never killed
anybody!" And, from the Late Show Web page, some of the "extras," the also-rans which did not make the final cut: -- Blame it all on the poorly-designed ballots Speaking of Connie Chung, she's scheduled to appear tonight, Monday August 27, on the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS -- Brent Baker
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