Time to Move On?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 10:04 AM

The fact that we're all debating the MoveOn ad two weeks after it ran suggests that the organization more than got its money's worth--even though the price just jumped from $65,000 to $142,000.

That's because, as I noted yesterday, MoveOn agreed to pay the higher rate to the New York Times after the paper acknowledged that it had made a mistake in granting the group what was clearly a big fat discount.

From a PR point of view, the Times has handled this rather badly, allowing the "discount" debate to rage for two weeks before dropping its insistence that MoveOn had paid the usual standby rate, and then because ombudsman Clark Hoyt successfully pressed for answers.

Beyond that, why has this turned into a two-week dust-up? Some thoughts:

-Nearly everyone who defends the war or hates MoveOn welcomed the opportunity to shift the debate from the carnage in Iraq to a controversial liberal group.

-The fact that Democrats were uncomfortable with the headline's frontal assault on a military man -- 'General Betray Us' -- provided bonus points for the Republicans.

-The argument that the NYT aided and abetted an alleged smear provided triple bonus points for the right.

-The Dems, understandably, wondered where the GOP's selective outrage was when ads questioned the patriotism and courage of such veterans as Max Cleland and John Kerry.

-Liberals also fought back because they were disturbed by suggestions that a general running a war should be exempt from criticism, despite a long American tradition to the contrary.

-Things reached the point where liberals felt the conservative noise machine had totally bamboozled the media over a non-issue.

In short, the battle over the ad became a proxy war for the war itself. And the Times inadvertently kept it alive by not straightening out the facts for two weeks, sparking yet another debate about whether the paper is now being honest in saying this was just a mistake by the advertising department.

Robert Stein at Connecting the Dots chides the Times:

"Should the Times have accepted the ad? Not without a change of headline. The executive in charge says he was influenced by the question mark, but that won't wash. He discloses rejection of a previous MoveOn ad until a doctored photo of Dick Cheney was removed. Tacky, insulting, libelous word play on anybody's name is just as unacceptable . . .

"Ordinarily, all this would be marginally interesting to media people, if the Republican attack machine had not jumped on it to divert attention from the real Iraq debate, exactly as they did in 2004 with Dan Rather's reporting on George Bush's evasion of combat service in Vietnam."

Michelle Malkin doesn't allow for the possibility that the Times simply screwed up:

"The last few, lefty defenders of the New York Times continue to delude themselves that its liberal bias is relegated to its editorial pages. No, the bias has reached full-blown metastasis."

At Pajamas Media, Roger L. Simon also sees this as ideologically driven:

"It's not often I underestimate the stuck-in-time, fuddy-duddy sixties traditionalism of the New York Times, but in this case I did.

"Not in my wildest dreams was the paper capable of deliberately giving a fifty percent advertising discount to the George Soros-supported Moveon.org for a juvenile advertisement calling General Petraeus General Betray-us, of all things.

"Despite what many had said, I had just assumed it was a business decision. The Times had ad space left over and, as everyone knows, they have economic problems . . . Quite clearly the Times' favoritism to Moveon was deliberate."

Black Five trots out an old Commie term with the headline "NYT Admits Fellow Traveler Rate":

"Nobody involved in the selling or buying of political ads is naive enough to have oopsed this. There is real money on commissions and bonuses in play and there is no way the $80-100k discount would have been left on the table. Somebody else had a client who would have paid more or split the page up and you have tons more revenue. Nope this was not a mistake, that is simply the easiest cover for the NY Times. Oh we're sorry, in the midst of a huge drought in print ad revenues, we threw away money to serve our liberal agenda."

Now for the left's counterreaction, starting with John Bruhns at Americablog:

"For the past couple weeks MoveOn.org's ad 'General Betray Us' has dominated the news and even managed to be condemned by the U.S. Senate. It has gone so far as having almost every Presidential candidate put to the 'patriotism test' by the media with questions related to their feelings toward the ad. It even got the President on record saying 'I think it's disgusting.' As if it's treason -- well America, it's not.

"This is a quite common tactic used in modern day politics, and some might argue that it originated with the Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign when they ruthlessly attacked John McCain in the South Carolina primary . . . To me that is 'DISGUSTING.' Then it went on to Senator Max Cleland who gave up most of his body in service to his country. We all know how they despicably attempted to put a true American patriot like Max Cleland into the same category as Bin Laden in a campaign ad for one of their fellow draft dodgers -- Saxby Chambliss. That is just as low as you can go. To me that is 'DISGUSTING.' Then came the presidential campaign of 2004 with the notorious 'swift boat veterans for truth.' . . .

"The ad from MoveOn.org against Petraeus finally woke America up to the reality of what George W. Bush has done for the last 7 years of his tragic presidency. It's just sad that no one came out on the national level in a similar manner in which they did to MoveOn.org to condemn Bush for his attacks on Cleland, Kerry, Murtha, The Democratic Party, and other patriots who wore the uniform in service to our great nation."

Hunter at Daily Kos raises the hypocrisy issue as well:

"I used to think that the Republicans were primarily little more than marvelous opportunists. Their effectiveness at 'catapulting the propaganda' over the last two decades have been astonishing, and never more so than in the last six years.

"Case in point, obviously: the MoveOn ad. The horrible, mean, cruel MoveOn ad that questioned the integrity of an Army general simply because he had a proven history of making, you know . . . intentionally misleading statements based on transparently manufactured statistics. It's still the talk of the news cycle, because Republicans are outraged -- yes, outraged! Offended! Disgusted! Repulsed! Exclamation points!! -- that such a thing would happen in politics. Not the manipulation of numbers and of evidence, mind you, that long being the standard currency of unpopular wars: no, the offense was the ad.

"The irony has not been lost on anyone, I imagine. For six years, opponents of the war have had their patriotism, their integrity, their very status as Americans questioned by Republican administration officials in their public statements, by Republican senators on the floor of the Senate, by Republican congressmen in the House, from the White House press office, in the pages and websites of every conservative and Republican rag out there, by Republican activist groups, on Republican radio programs, by Republicans holding up signs on street corners, and so on."

Melissa Ryan at MyDD can't believe the Senate voted to condemn the MoveOn ad:

"In a sea of defeats why does MoveOn stick out like a sore thumb for me? Because it was so damn pointless. What a complete waste of the Senate's time. We don't elect senators to publicly condemn statements they don't agree with. We elect them to govern."

Reviews are still pouring in about the GOP candidates who spoke to the National Rifle Association. The New Republic's Noam Scheiber"Rudy's sale seemed somewhat less than complete when I surveyed a dozen or so NRA members at lunch time. (Actually, the sale seemed less than complete even during the speech. Rudy received several rounds of polite applause, but nothing remotely approaching rapturous--or even the general warmth Fred Thompson enjoyed during his comparatively glib remarks.) Most of the people I spoke to respected Rudy for showing up, but most also found him a little weaselly. (Though one couple from Indiana did say he put them at ease enough to support him should he become the nominee.) Two things stood out to these people in particular: The first was Giuliani's repeated invocation of strict-constructionism--in Rudy's telling, the idea that it doesn't matter what he or anyone else personally thinks about guns, since the Constitution very explicitly protects the right to own one, and since a strict-construction[i]st judge--the kind he'd appoint--would affirm that right. Several people told me this sounded like a convenient fig leaf for someone who was distinctly un-passionate about gun-rights, and that they weren't particularly reassured by it.

"The second stumbling point was the lawsuit Giuliani initiated against gun manufacturers in 2000, which has just now reached a federal appeals court. When asked about this during the Q&A that followed his speech, Rudy said the lawsuit had subsequently moved in a direction he didn't agree with. He then retreated to the safer terrain of the D.C. gun-ban decision and 9/11, stressing again that they'd influenced his thinking since 2000. What he didn't do was concede that the lawsuit had been a mistake. To the contrary, Giuliani defended his initial decision to pursue it, framing it as just another instance of him using every method at his disposal to reduce crime. This, too, stuck in the craw of a lot of the NRA members I talked to. Several told me they wished he'd just admit the lawsuit had been misguided, rather that rationalize it and distance himself from it after the fact."

TPM's Steve Benen is puzzled by the good press that Newt Gingrich has drawn recently as a Big Thinker:

"Sure, some of us may think of the former Speaker as the ethically-challenged, unhinged conservative who shut down the government (twice) and was driven from Congress by his caucus. Or who includes among his 'big ideas' getting laptops for the homeless. Or who raised concerns about women in combat roles because, 'males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.' Or the man who was so outraged by President Clinton's personal ind[i]scretions that he sought impeachment during his own extramarital affair.

"But that's apparently all in the past. Now he's the GOP Savior of the Week."

There's a substantive debate about the Democratic move to expand the children's health program from covering 6 million kids to about 10 million--you know, the bill that Bush threatened to veto last week. But Time's Karen Tumulty says he is losing the symbolic battle:

"When Republicans try to prove their conservative bona fides by taking on a program aimed for children, the outcome is usually the same. Remember the Reagan administration trying to declare ketchup a vegetable? And the House Republicans deciding to 'curb the growth' of the school lunch program in 1995?

"That's why I'm mystified as to why President Bush is standing behind his veto threat on legislation that would expand SCHIP, the state health insurance program for children. After House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise yesterday, Bush faces opposition not only from Democrats but Republicans on Capitol Hill--enough, sources tell my colleague Jay Newton-Small, to override a veto. Given how averse this President has been to using his veto pen, he is under pressure from conservatives to take a stand. But this one strikes me as a fight he is going to lose, and one that will haunt his party right through 2008."

Is Bush really offering Hillary advice, as this new Bill Sammon book says, or just trying to box her in?

"President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president. In an interview for the new book 'The Evangelical President,' White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has 'been urging candidates: "Don't get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically." '

"Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that 'even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there. Especially if it's a Democrat," the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. 'He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.' "

A peek inside the world of pro basketball:

"A former Knick intern took the stand in the sensational sexual-harassment trial that's rocking Madison Square Garden and copped to having sex in a truck with hoops star Stephon Marbury -- but denied she told a female executive she felt pressured," reports the New York Post.

" 'Stephon Marbury is parked outside the strip club. He asked me, 'Are you going to get in the truck?' and I got in the truck,' Kathleen Decker said in the explosive testimony, her voice quavering. . . . 'I was in control.'

"Decker contradicted claims by plaintiff Anucha Brown Sanders that the former intern was distraught over her encounter with Marbury -- and told her boss she was drunk when she left the strip club and felt she 'had to' have sex with the point guard because of 'who he was.' "

Hollywood image-makers often try to deep-six unfavorable magazine pieces by promising access to some other movie star in their stable. Politico's Ben Smith finds the technique being used, quite effectively, by a presidential contender:

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president learned that the men's magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

"So Clinton's aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton. Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign's demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton's spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said.

"GQ writer George Saunders traveled with Clinton to Africa in July, and Clinton is slated to appear on the cover of GQ's December issue, in which it traditionally names a 'Man of the Year,' according magazine industry sources. And the offending article by Atlantic Monthly staff writer Josh Green got the spike."

Not exactly a profile in journalistic courage. And there's no denial in the piece.