CyberAlert -- 12/07/2000 -- Legislature's "Hammer"
Legislature's "Hammer"; Hillary's "Deference" to Conservatives?; Geraldo Promised No Honeymoon for Bush; Gore's Loss Elian's Fault
>>> MagazineWatch, an analysis by the MRC's Tim Graham about
this week's editions of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News, is now up on the
MRC home page. The table of contents: Correction: The December 6 CyberAlert quoted Scott Pelley of CBS News referring to "Congressman Army." His name is spelled Armey. Republican legislators in Florida "brought down the hammer tonight," thundered NBC's David Bloom as NBC Nightly News led with Wednesday night with the announcement the Florida House and Senate will hold a special session and name a slate of electors if court suits are not settled. "Not surprisingly," Bloom stressed, "the Democrats are seething tonight" over the move "to take the decision away from the people." ABC and CBS offered only brief and mild descriptions of the possible action. On ABC's World News Tonight, for instance, Erin Hayes related how Florida legislators "are anxious, see too many legal fires still smoldering. Part of their motivation: Democrats determination to fight on and fight hard." Tom Brokaw opened the December 6 NBC Nightly News: "Good evening. In Florida tonight the Bush team remains confident it will prevail when the recount controversy moves back to the State Supreme Court tomorrow, but the Republican-controlled state legislature is taking no chances. It's now scheduled a special session to name electors just in case the process is stalled or the State Supreme Court rules against Governor Bush. All of this on a day when Vice President Gore did win one legal battle while continuing two others." Bloom opened the top story: "The Republicans here in Tallahassee brought down the hammer tonight, essentially telling Vice President Gore that unless he wins a clear-cut uncontested victory in the courts in the next week, they'll award this state's presidential electors to Governor Bush. Not surprisingly, the Democrats are seething tonight. A senior Gore advisor telling NBC News quote, 'The American people will not accept the decision by Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his friends in the Florida legislature to take the decision away from the people and the independent courts'... After reviewing the absentee ballot trials Bloom returned to the legislature: "So today, even as hundreds of pro-Gore demonstrators rally outside the State Capitol, Republican lawmakers announced they will hold an extraordinary special session of the state legislature beginning Friday. Unless all of the court cases are resolved, Republicans say, they will name a pro-Bush slate of presidential electors next week." Bloom ran a soundbite of State Senate President John
McKay saying he just wants to ensure Florida is counted by the Electoral
College, but Bloom countered: "Democrats charge that the
Republican-controlled legislature is effectively moving to try to deny
Vice President Gore the presidency under any circumstances." CBS adopted the language of the plaintiffs about "Republican operatives" in the Seminole County absentee ballot case as Jim Axelrod asserted it's "a case where both sides agree Republican operatives were allowed to alter absentee ballot applications." Wednesday night on CBS John Roberts took up the issue of Gore's mental state, volunteering that his advisers insist "he's not delusional" and has accepted "he could either lose or simply run out of time." For the first time since before the election, Wednesday's CBS Evening News ran its regular opening plugging a series of stories -- sans any "Campaign 2000 Battle for the White House" graphic and announcement or cold open. Nonetheless, Dan Rather still intoned: "If this extraordinary battle for the American presidency is finally moving toward a conclusion, it still may not be a swift one. Pivotal court cases are yet unfolding and the legislature in Florida has started to move." Jim Axelrod picked up and used Democratic case language: "The absentee ballots of Seminole County dominated today, a case where both sides agree Republican operatives were allowed to alter absentee ballot applications, supplying missing voter ID numbers on applications that otherwise would have been rejected." Axelrod did also take a shot at Gore: "Ultimately, Al Gore's survival may depend on a judge deciding to punish the voter, not the violator, a thin thread for the Gore campaign says Democratic election expert John French." Checking in from the Gore camp, John Roberts picked up on concerns about whether Gore is in touch with reality: "The Vice President's advisers say Al Gore strongly believes that the world may be a very different place in 48 hours, that he believes he stands a good chance to win at the Florida Supreme Court. Those advisers add, however, that he's not delusional in that thinking, that he has come to accept the idea that he could either lose or simply run out of time." Conservatives see Hillary Clinton as "a symbol of an administration they despise," maintained ABC's Linda Douglass, but Douglass relayed, "her aides believe she will win them over with hard work and, most importantly, with deference." For Wednesday's World News Tonight Douglass reviewed reaction to the reality of Hillary Clinton as a Senator as she goes through orientation. Douglass began her piece: "She is whisked into the Capitol like a visiting dignitary, but in the United States Senate Hillary Clinton is a beginner." Douglass warned: "Already, other Senators are resentful that reporters surround her. She was greeted warmly by the 12 other women Senators, but one said she had better not see herself as first among equals." After passing along complaints about her bringing
the Secret Service into the Capitol and how many Senators don't want her
on their committees for fear she will hog the spotlight, Douglass outlined
her plan to win over conservatives: From "vast right-wing conspiracy" out to smear her and her husband to respect and deference? Don't count on it. Douglass concluded: "For now she is living in two worlds -- working in a cramped basement office in the Capitol, switching back to her role as First Lady, today putting presidential books into a time capsule, including the last one she wrote about decorating and serving meals at the White House." Bryant Gumbel played "what if" with Michael Dukakis over what would have happened had he won in 1988. Gumbel soon realized that would have meant no President Clinton, but to a chuckle from Gumbel, Dukakis reminded him: "There wouldn't have been any Bushes either." MRC analyst Brian Boyd picked up on the exchange at
the end of a Wednesday interview on CBS's The Early Show about how
Dukakis handled his loss and how he now has a fulfilling life as a college
teacher: An amused Gumbel uttered a quick chuckle as he then thanked Dukakis for appearing. NBC's Today gave the Miami Herald's Tom Fiedler a platform on Wednesday to expound of his treatise that George W. Bush should show "humility" and admit that "it's probably true that more people went to the polls on November 7th intending to vote for my opponent. Because of the law, because of the rules, because of their own mistakes that didn't happen." Fiedler, the paper's former top political reporter best known for the Gary Hart/Donna Rice episode, now runs the paper's editorial page. MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens caught this exchange on the December 6 Today: Katie Couric: "Tom, you know you wrote in your
last column that if he wins George W. Bush should admit he did so by
accident. What exactly did you mean and what kind of response has that
elicited?" It is not over and we will not let it be over even when it is over. So warned Geraldo Rivera on CNBC Tuesday night in an exchange with Alan Dershowitz caught by the MRC's Geoffrey Dickens. On the December 5 Rivera Live on CNBC Dershowitz
urged: "I think it's really important that when and if a concession
comes from Gore that we not have a honeymoon, that we not put this behind
us, that this be the beginning of at least a many, many month
investigation into the circumstances that lead to this presidency." The more relevant question is, how many of Rivera's media colleagues agree? While Wednesday's Washington Post offered the calm and dispassionate inside headline, "Senate GOP Re-elects Leaders," New York Times readers were greeted with this headline across the top of the front page: "Conservatives to Lead Senate." Naturally, the Times did not tag Senate Democratic leaders as liberal. Under the December 6 headline, New York Times reporter Alison Mitchell began: "Republicans selected Senator Trent Lott and a conservative leadership team today to preside over a new Senate that will be balanced on a knife edge, and they gently but quickly rebuffed the Democrats' demands for power sharing, including co-chairmen." Mitchell first cited a Democratic Senator in her fourth paragraph, but failed to add an ideological label: "On one side were some Democrats so adamant about equal control that they refused to concede that their own newly elected leader, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, would have the title minority leader. On the other side were Republicans determined to maintain their prerogatives." Gore's loss in Florida: Elian's fault. Only the NBC Nightly News took note Wednesday night of the 7th birthday celebration in Cuba for Elian, but NBC's Jim Avila quickly moved on to how Cuban-American anger cost Gore votes in Florida. Avila zeroed in on the target of the Gore team's anger: "Who's to blame? Democratic sources say it's South Florida's former Hispanic golden boy Alex Penelas, Mayor to two million in Miami-Dade." From Cardenas Cuba, over video of Elian at one point
running up to Fidel Castro and hitting his leg, Avila began his report as
transcribed by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "Elian Gonzalez one year
later, celebrating his 7th birthday, this time on Cuban soil, serenaded by
his classmates, family and Fidel Castro, on a nationwide broadcast.
Elian's birthday now an unofficial state holiday. The lone American
invited, Joan Brown Campbell, whose National Council of Churches
orchestrated and funded his return to Cuba." A fresh edition of MediaNomics, the online publication from the MRC's Free Market Project (FMP), is now up on the MRC Web site. The two articles by FMP Director Rich Noyes: -- NBC's Today Again Promoted Wacky Tree-Climbing
Activist To read the article, go
to: -- Iron-Fisted Soviet Union Still Gets Good Press
From The New York Times For the article in full, go to: > Finally, MRC Webmaster Andy Szul has posted a RealPlayer excerpt of Scott Pelley's 60 Minutes II interview with George W. Bush, detailed in the December 6 CyberAlert, in which Pelley pressed Bush about naming his brother Jeb the Attorney General. "He didn't go to law school," Bush observed. Pelley imagined Alan Greenspan would say "an across the board tax cut is probably bad for the economy" and demanded of Bush, so "will you listen?" For the video clip, go
to:
>>>
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