Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Not very swift

The whole "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" thing has served at least one useful purpose: nobody can credibly claim anymore that the broadcast media is liberal. Period, end of story.

Consider: a group funded by Karl Rove's pal spends a relative pittance buying commercial time in three markets, and then gets millions of dollars of free airtime courtesy of the punditocracy on Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Hardly anyone on television will point out that the commercial itself is full of misleading crap and outright lies:

Al French: "I served with John Kerry." No, you didn't. You were on the same river at the same time, but you didn't serve with him. You signed a sworn affidavit regarding events of which you admit you had no first-hand knowledge, which an attorney really should know is a violation of the Code of Professional Responsibility.

Bob Elder: "I served with John Kerry." No, you didn't either.

George Elliott: "John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam." Huh. 'Cuz at the time, you regarded Kerry as "unsurpassed". See page 22 of the linked doc, where you call Kerry "the acknowledged leader in his peer group." Today, you say you "wouldn't have awarded Kerry a Silver Star if [you] had known the details" -- but the details you "know" now were supplied to you by people who weren't there and didn't know.

Louis Letson: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Yeah, maybe, except your signature isn't on the reports, bub. And even if you did treat him, and did so with a band-aid, why would you remember such a trivial event 35 years later?

Van O’Dell: "John Kerry lied to get his bronze star ... I know, I was there, I saw what happened." Yes, but your account is contradicted by Kerry, the man he rescued, every man on Kerry's boat, all of the contemporaneous documentary evidence, and the physical evidence that showed that another boat involved in the same skirmish took multiple bullet hits that day.

And so forth. I don't have the patience to finish this now; maybe I will later. They're all liars. The fact that they continue to appear and be talked about on cable news and Sunday morning talk shows demonstrates quite effectively where control of the media is concentrated. Hint: it ain't the left.

posted by MeanMrMustard @ 3:14 PM