Brent Bozell smears Nina Totenberg of NPR

[Eric J in MN]

From SpeakSpeak News


Brent Bozell

Brent Bozell is president of both the Parents Television Council and the Media Research Center.

In his latest column for the MRC, Bozell smears National Public Radio's Legal Affairs Correspondent, Nina Totenberg.



Nina Totenberg


Bozell first asks, "Who Started The Supreme Court Circus? " (his dubious phrase for confirmation battles.)

He answers his own question with:

Republicans have been willing to grant Democratic presidents their right to select nominees of their choice, while Democrats have used an explicitly ideological standard since the 1987 trashing of Robert Bork: if you’re conservative, you’re disqualified --- period.

Bozell ignores that the first filibuster against a Supreme Court nominee was of President Lyndon Johnson's (D-TX) nomination of Abe Fortas.

Bozell also ignores the blue slips used by Republican Senators to block some of President Bill Clinton's (D-AK) judicial nominees. (Bozell isn't only referring to the Supreme Court. He refers to nominations for Attorney General previously in this column.)

Later in the column, Bozell says about Nina Totenberg:

These Democrats are emboldened because on high-profile, non-electoral fights like this, liberal bias flies fast and furious in the newsrooms. A classic example can be found in the work product of staunchly liberal National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg, who has tried to ruin two conservative Supreme Court bids.

In 1987, she took a bitter ex-girlfriend’s diary and ruined Douglas Ginsburg’s nomination by forcing him to admit marijuana use at Harvard in the 1960s and 1970s, after which a parade of politicians from Gingrich to Gore admitted the same, with no career damage. (The Didn’t Inhale President came later.) In 1991, Totenberg took a bitter former employee (and according to some, wanna-be girlfriend) named Anita Hill and forced a new set of hearings around Hill’s unsubstantiated tales of sexual harassment by Thomas. But when Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick came forward with their (far more serious) charges against Bill Clinton, Totenberg’s compassion was nowhere to be found.

What does "compassion was nowhere to be found" mean?

It's her job to report, not to show on-air compassion.

Is Bozell saying Nina Totenberg never filed a report about any woman who made an accusation against Bill Clinton?

If so, Bozell is lying.

Is Bozell saying she did report on Paula Jones, but did so unfairly?

If so, he should give us the airdate of at least one allegedly unfair report, so that we can judge for ourselves.

This column shows the sliminess of Brent Bozell.

It does nothing to diminish Nina Totenberg, one of the greatest reporters in radio.

[hobbit709]

1. Maybe his last name

should be Bozo since he's such a clown.

[fudge stripe cookays]

2. And how nice of him....

to call her a lesbian too. That whole "whisper campaign" thing they're so good at.

"Well, some people say they were GIRLfriends."

What a slimy piece of shit.
FSC

[Eric J in MN]

4. I think he meant that Anita Hill may have wanted to be Clarence Thomas'

girlfriend.

I don't think he's calling anyone a lesbian in that passage.

[TacticalPeek]

7. Right, although I first read it the same as FSC.

Just piss-poor writing, probably. Unless he meant to create the ambiguity, which would certainly be in keeping with his character.

[trumad]

3. Get use to it

it's only beginning. Big dif this time around is thousands of internet activists who will go after this kind of shit.

[phaseolus]

5. She didn't report on Paula Jones et al. because ...

...IT'S NOT HER BEAT. She reports on THE SUPREME COURT, AND NOTHING ELSE. The ONLY time she would report on a President is if there was a case directly affecting him/her in the Supreme Court docket (such as Bush v. Gore,) or like now, when a President is nominating justices.

It's obvious Bozell doesn't listen to Totenberg's reporting, or he would know that. He's an idiot.

[Eric J in MN]

8. Nina Totenberg did report on Paula Jones.

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/archives/1998/980401.atc.html

Bozell is trying to mislead people about this with his slimy language.

[bribri16]

6. He's just another "rightie" obsessed with Clinton's privates. n/t