William F. Buckley Guilty of "Offensive Comments," Al Sharpton Not? - July 23, 2004
July 23,
2004
William F. Buckley Guilty of "Offensive Comments,"
Al Sharpton Not?
"You have made so many offensive comments over the years. Do you regret any of them?"
"You seem indifferent to suffering. Have you ever suffered yourself?"
- Two of Deborah Solomon's questions to retiring National Review founder William F. Buckley, July 11.
vs
"I wonder how you feel about Bill Cosby's recent comment that too many African-Americans speak ungrammatical English and fail to rear their children properly. Does that strike you as racist?"
- A Deborah Solomon question to race-baiter Al Sharpton (who once called the owner of a Harlem clothing store a "white interloper"), July 18. Solomon never challenged Sharpton on that or his many other offensive comments.
And "Some Say" The
NYT Is Liberal Propaganda
"There is also an amusing, appalling dissection of the way Fox uses the phrase 'some say,' as in 'some say Senator Kerry has a tendency to flip-flop,' not to cloak a source but to camouflage a statement of opinion.Watching Bill O'Reilly's belligerent, boorish 'interview' with Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the attack on the World Trade Center and who came to oppose the administration's military response to 9/11, is enough to make you wish that the ghost of Joseph Welch would enter the studio and inquire, at long last, after Mr. O'Reilly's sense of decency. But those days-when Welch undid Senator Joseph R. McCarthy on live television, and when that medium was new enough to bring a promise of transparency and truth-telling into the public consciousness-are long past."
- Movie critic A.O. Scott praising the anti-Fox News documentary "Outfoxed," July 20.
Bush Swayed by Michael Moore Film?
"As with all decisions at the White House, politics was paramount. In a summer when Michael Moore's film 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is attacking Mr. Bush for spending 42 percent of his first eight months in office on vacation instead of worrying about Al Qaeda (Mr. Moore's calculation came from The Washington Post), the image of Mr. Bush lazing away August on his 1,600 acres was not one that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, particularly relished.Mr. Bush did not vacation at the ranch until the following August in a 27-day idyll that was attacked by the Democrats. Later it became a symbol of what critics said was the administration's sleepiness before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which occurred less than two weeks after the president returned from Texas."
- White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, July 19.
Sandy Berger Just an "Informal, Unpaid Adviser"
to Kerry-Now
"The disclosure of the investigation forced Mr. Berger to step down as an informal, unpaid adviser to Senator John Kerry's campaign on Tuesday, and on Wednesday the campaign accused the White House of deliberately leaking news of the investigation and said that Vice President Dick Cheney was involved in strategies to divert attention from the Sept. 11 report to be issued Thursday."
- Eric Lichtblau and David Sanger, July 22.
vs
"Former Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen was there, using a wheelchair because he has had several strokes, but smiling at the Texas jokes. So were two of Mr. Kerry's top foreign policy advisers: the former defense secretary William Perry and the former national security adviser Samuel R. Berger."
- David Sanger at the unveiling of the Clintons' official White House portraits, June 15.
and
"From the Democratic side, Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser under President Clinton and now a key adviser to John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, told the committee that 'more troops and more money is not a strategy.'"
- David Sanger and Thom Shanker, April 21.
Don't Be Fooled by Facts:
McCain Still Hostile to Bush-Cheney
"Vice President Dick Cheney and the man some Republicans say should replace him, Senator John McCain of Arizona, showered each other with praise on Friday at a rally here. The appearance was the first time the two men campaigned together this year, but if there was any tension, it was not evident from their words.Some attending the rally on Friday said they believed that the onstage friendliness between the Mr. Cheney and Mr. McCain belied deeply held distrust."
- Thomas Crampton, July 17.
Depends on What the Meaning of "Perhaps" Is
"Bill Clinton headed into his 1992 presidential nominating convention known-as he put it, perhaps disingenuously-for 'a woman I never slept with and a draft I didn't dodge, and facing what many Democrats feared was defeat to President George H. W. Bush."
- Adam Nagourney, July 18. Clinton later admitted to a sexual relationship with Gennifer Flowers and that he received a draft notice in 1969 but returned to England.
