July 29th 2008
Fisking NYT’s Excuse For Obama’s Cancelled Landstuhl Visit
F
acing a McCain ad that makes mincemeat of Obama’s patriotism over the candidate’s canceled visit to the military hospital at Landstuhl, the NY Times has published a fumbling excuse that emphasizes the paper’s favoritism towards Obama.
Instead of starting with the criticism that’s been directed at Obama over the decision, the paper’s Jeff Zeleny starts with a slam on McCain:
WASHINGTON — For four days, Senator John McCain has sought to keep alive a story about how Senator Barack Obama called off a visit to American troops recuperating from war wounds at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
As if McCain needed to fight very hard to keep it going. The story is doing quite well on its own, thank you.
The paper then flatly states that the assertion made by the ad’s narrator, Michael Durant, that the hospital stop “was canceled after it became clear that campaign staff and the traveling press corps would not be allowed to accompany Senator Obama” is “not correct.” NYT’s source for it’s flat-out rejection? “Obama’s advisers.”
Zeleny then goes on to promote excuse 3.1 from the Obama camp:
But two days before the visit, Pentagon officials told the campaign that only Mr. Obama would be allowed inside the medical center in his capacity as a senator. The adviser who had intended to join Mr. Obama, Scott Gration, a retired major general in the Air Force, was told he could not go along because he was a volunteer campaign adviser.
Zeleny accepts this at face value and uses it to support its position that Durant’s statement is not correct – yet there you have nearly the exact same language from both parties:
Durant: “canceled after it became clear that campaign staff … would not be allowed …”
Campaign: “only Mr. Obama would be allowed inside the medical center …”
The excuse is thin gruel but Zeleny laps it up and puts off looking at the larger point: Why didn’t Obama just go alone? Mr. Trust My Judgment blew it, even though he had two days – an eternity in terms of how quickly a president must respond to crises – to come up with the idea of leaving Gration behind and flying solo.
Zeleny does broach this subject, but it’s out of order, buried at the very bottom of the piece. The campaign’s excuse, as you’ve surely heard, is that they thought it would be viewed as political even if the candidate went alone. Really? So why did they book it at all, since it certainly would have looked political as booked.
The NYT then must protect its candidate by countering the McCain ad’s charge that Obama worked out at the gym instead of going to the hospital. Here’s all the nation’s foremost newspaper come up with for the mission:
The McCain television commercial, which asserts that Mr. Obama chose to go to the gymnasium over visiting troops, is not entirely accurate.
OK, why is it not entirely accurate?
Instead of going to Landstuhl on Friday morning, Mr. Obama also conducted an interview with CNN in his hotel in Berlin.
Zeleny couldn’t bring himself to even type the words. What he was supposed to type was “Instead of going to Landstuhl on Friday morning, Mr. Obama went to the gym and also conducted an interview with CNN in his hotel in Berlin.”
Since when does doing two things make doing one of the things “not entirely accurate?” Pathetic!
Posted in 2008, McCain, Media bias, Obama | 2 Comments » | |
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July 29th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
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July 29th, 2008 at 6:57 am
A good article.
The New York Times should get used to the fact that their Obama has no class: this non-visit and the Jerusalem prayer are only two more examples showing that this candidate does not even know the basic rules of etiquette. For balance so to speak Sarah Wheaton wrote a fairly balanced article, but for the Caucus blog.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/new-mccain-ads-attack-obamas-canceled-troop-visit/index.html?ref=politicsWheaton’s article should have been on the newspaper, and Zeleny’s in the Caucus.