The Tentacle Who is Max Cleland? Kevin E. Dayhoff December 21, 2005

The Tentacle Who is Max Cleland? Kevin E. Dayhoff December 21, 2005

The Maryland Democratic Party’s election campaign website, otherwise known as Baltimore’s Sun (BS), ran a “news story” December 10 on Bo Harmon, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich’s selection to be his campaign manager.

In an attack ad that was offered as news, the BS cherry-picked convenient quotes to bestow partisan opinions upon unwitting readers – and to trash Governor Ehrlich. It is an old and tired trick in what the BS would like to pass as journalism.

The BS quickly promulgated the moon bat logic that Mr. Harmon is a craven campaign manager who ran “one of the most despicable campaigns in the history of Georgia, if not the nation," according to Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Kahn – “in the successful attempt to unseat Democrat Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia in 2002.”

Sounds like sour grapes more suitable for the National Enquirer or a partisan political newsletter, but hardly a news story.

Indeed, the article makes for an interesting study in the practice of political rhetoric. It has all the ingredients of a coherent political campaign. But, wait – isn’t the BS a newspaper that represents itself as adhering to the high journalistic standards of an impartial purveyor of the news?

[…]

Meanwhile, another coordinated attack by Michael Olesker was then conveniently published at the end of the first news cycle to reiterate the BS campaign platform planks promoted December 10.

The column reiterated what Rich Lowry referred to in a February 20, 2004, National Review article; as the “trumped-up mythology based on the idea that Republicans ‘questioned Cleland's patriotism’ in 2002.”

It all has to do with rehashing the 2002 senatorial election in conservative Georgia in which incumbent political moderate Senator Cleland, a disabled Vietnam veteran, lost to conservative U. S. Rep. Saxby Chambliss. Desperate Democrats claim Senator Cleland lost because Senator Chambliss’ campaign manager, Mr. Harmon, questioned Senator Cleland’s patriotism by lumping him together in an attack ad with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Olesker continued: “We already knew Ehrlich gave us the Prince of Darkness, Joe Steffen, and we already knew Ehrlich's attacks on hate radio, and we already knew the history of dirty tricks secretly orchestrated against Ehrlich opponents in a series of political campaigns. But we didn't suspect the smiling governor of Maryland would bring in the likes of Harmon, who gave new meaning to the term ‘gutter politics’ when he went after Cleland…”

Ya da ya da ya da.

Then there is the matter of a few curious sentences – that looked familiar. Mr. Olesker wrote that Senator Cleland: “On one of his first trips out, an old girlfriend pushed his wheelchair around Washington. Near the White House, the wheelchair hit a curb. Cleland pitched forward and fell out, flopping around in dirt and cigarette butts in a gutter.”

Compare this to the following written by Peter Carlson in The Washington Post, on Thursday, July 3, 2003, on page C01: “On one of his first trips out, an old girlfriend pushed his wheelchair around Washington. Near the White House, the wheelchair hit a curb. Cleland pitched forward and fell out, flopping around in dirt and cigarette butts in a gutter.”

Hmmm. Okay. Who among us has not missed a proper citation?

Then Mr. Olesker wrote, after he forgot to properly cite words that were not his own: “It took Harmon to put him back in the gutter, three years ago.”

Oh! Pleeeze!

[…]

Read the entire column here: Who is Max Cleland?

http://thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=1395

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