CT Blue

I’ve been away most of the day. Just got back and saw this article in my newsreader:

A Minnesota man named Larry Sinclair has been going around the country spreading unfounded rumors about Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). Among other claims, he alleges that he and Obama used cocaine together and participated in homosexual acts in 1999. Sinclair’s claims are completely without any merit. He even took — and failed — a polygraph test.

Nevertheless, Sinclair will be speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on June 18. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has pointed out that an event such as Sinclair’s is in keeping with neither the NPC’s purpose nor its ethics:

This is more evidence of the even handedness of our national media. They will give a forum to anyone who has anything scurrilous to say about any Democratic candidate for public office. Equal opportunity for all. What could be wrong with that?

Firedoglake has a petition up to pressure the Press Club into withdrawing its invitation. Giving someone the opportunity to speak at that forum implies that they are worthy of a respectful hearing. This guy is a demonstrable liar and should be treated as such.

Can’t stop myself from commenting on this morning’s Times which tells us that 2 New-Style Candidates Hit Old Notes on Economy.

The headline is repeated twice in the printed edition.

Like him or not, no one can deny that Obama is a new style candidate, at least in terms of the way he has organized his campaign and raised his money. But how, exactly, is McCain a new-style candidate? Was it the stirring speech he gave on the 3rd, or is it the legions of dedicated grass roots supporters that he has called up almost from nowhere? Is it the fact that he may be the first candidate in history to blaze new trails by selling golf gear on his website? Precisely how has McCain deviated from the tried and true Republican playbook: appealing (perhaps unsuccessfully, but still trying) to the ignorant and biased while obscuring his corporate friendly policy behind empty slogans.

In fact, the appellation is never really explained in the article, which itself makes the rather trivial point that Obama prefers economic solutions that involve government intervention (the traditional Democratic approach), while McCain prefers diverting more of our money to the rich and to large corporations (the traditional Republican approach). So what accounts for denominating McCain a “new style candidate”? Maybe the answer is in this paragraph:

Over all, the two candidates’ approaches — which come from one candidate who has been described as a maverick, and another who is often called “post-partisan” — each hew pretty closely to his party’s traditional economic playbook. And that is increasingly forming the basis of their attacks on one another as each links his opponent to unpopular presidencies.

That’s right, it appears that McCain gets to share in Obama’s glow because he has “been described as a maverick”. In fact, that’s true. The press has labelled him as such for years, on the strength of long ago minor apostasies from Republican fundamentalist teachings, each and every one of which he renounced years ago. But by calling him a new style candidate now, the Times implies that he is in fact a maverick, a proposition for which there is absolutely no evidence. Is this yet another example of the evenhandedness of the press? Why is it that evenhandedness always seems to have a rightward tilt?

Note: This piece was edited to add the funny golf link above. I highly recommend checking that out.