The American Spectator

Media Matters

The Tax Return Crack-Up

By Jeremy Lott on 4.10.08 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 2)

One possibility is that most upper middle class Democrats, and therefore most editors and reporters of our nation's big papers as well as television producers, are Obama supporters who think that Hillary should hurry up and drop out of the race already.

Whom elite liberals are pulling for really does shape political coverage in ways great and small. Anybody that tells you otherwise is selling something -- probably a New York Times subscription. Their views play a great role in shaping what's considered news and what isn't ("old news").

FOR INSTANCE, THE OTHER week it came out that Hillary Clinton's people had been distributing a piece by one Robert M. Goldberg that had been published on The American Spectator's website.

The substance of Goldberg's article was the foreign policy views of an Obama advisor, retired General Merrill McPeak, who made headlines accusing Bill Clinton of using "divisive tactics" and of "question[ing] Barack Obama's patriotism." The general also likened the former president to Joe McCarthy.

Goldberg recalled some even more controversial statements that the blunt speaking McPeak had made in an old interview with the Oregonian in 2003.

When they were talking about how to get the U.S. government to help resolve the ongoing problems with Israel and the Palestinians, one of the interviewers asked him the very opposite of a loaded question: "So where's the problem? State? White House?" McPeak answered, "New York City. Miami. We have a large vote...here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it."

McPeak then advocated that Israel make certain concessions and put the cherry on top with a semi coherent rant about how, well, I'll just quote the man: "There's an element in Oregon, you know, that's always going to be radical in some pernicious way, and likely to clothe it in religious garments, so it makes it harder to attack. So there's craziness all over the place."

Realizing he might have dug himself in there, the general emphasized that he had spent some time as a junior officer working "very closely with the Israeli air force" and that he had found that "more cosmopolitan, liberal version of the Israeli population" to be just chock full of that sort of "goodwill" necessary to give a bunch of land back to the Palestinians.

GOLDBERG POINTED THIS OUT and the Hillary camp rightly decided this was a story worth passing around to raise serious questions about an Obama advisor who had laid into them. How did the press respond to this?

They went nuts. At the Atlantic, former Jimmy Carter speechwriter James Fallows produced a representative response. He called it a "hit piece" and claimed that the Clinton camp passing it around was "simply disgusting."

Fallows huffed: "That the Clinton family would dignify The American Spectator, of all publications, is astonishing to anyone who was alive in the 1990s."

And he puffed: "That they would bless this attempt to paint Merrill McPeak as an anti-Semite is grotesque."

And he blew a deep sigh: "I can easily believe that the Spectator would publish such an article. That the Clinton team would circulate it I'm still trying to deal with."

There you have it. The Spectator published an article that was relevant, accurate, and hard hitting enough that even Hillary Clinton couldn't ignore it. That's driven some refined folks, who are used to being able to write these things off as "old news," right around the bend.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Foreign Policy, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Television, Law, Iraq, Israel, NATO