Strip Everything Away.
October 31, 2005
At the very bottom of his column today, Howard Kurtz says of the Libby indictment:
bq. Strip everything else away, though, and Libby, like Clinton, is accused of lying. [ "Howard Kurtz":http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html ]
Yes. And if you strip everything else away, Howard Kurtz and “James Guckert”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gannon are both journalists. What’s the point?
Posted in What The...?!?
content rss
October 31st, 2005 at 10:43 am
I’d say Libby’s lie is much more significant. Clinton’s lie was based obviously on not wanting his wife and family (much less the entire world) to know that he’d had an affair with an intern. Libby’s (alleged) lie was based on a potentially administration-wide attempt to smear a critic of Bush’s march to war. Both men done wrong, but sheesh, but a little perspective is in order.
And is it just me, or are these two statements in Kurtz’s article sort of mutually exclusive:
“What happened to the normal journalistic skepticism toward a single-minded special prosecutor, as was on display when Ken Starr was pursuing Bill Clinton?”
“Many people forget how much antagonism there was between the Clinton White House and the press corps, and how polls showed considerable public anger at journalists for obsessing on a sex scandal that a majority had decided was tawdry but not worthy of impeachment.”
So, which was it? Was the press skeptical about the investigation into Clinton, or did they latch on to it and drag him through the mud? From what I remember, I’d say it was probably more the latter, and the press isn’t displaying or less or more restraint than it did back then.