Media whore Joe Klein will be on Al Franken's show tomorrow, no doubt to pimp his new book. I assume most readers on this forum are aware of Klein's corrupt participation in the worst media performance in any presidential campaign in modern American history. I'm referring, of course, to campaign 2000. Klein was part of the mob that sainted that scumbag John McCain and spread relentless lies and spin about Al Gore (invented the Internet, Love Story, Love Canal, Naomi Klein, etc., etc.). I include one example of the dissembling of Klein below, who aren't aware of the work of this ethically challenged, faux journalist.
Al Franken has a tendency to be a little naive about the past sins of some MSM reporters who appear on his show. For example, the McCain-doughnut-eating/Koolaid-drinking Howard Fineman, another media whore of the first order.
Please contact Al Franken's show and encourage him to read dailyhowler.com on Joe Klein and confront him about it:
http://shows.airamericaradio.com/alfrankenshow/feedbackA taste of Klein's misdeeds:
Joe Klein's recent book has been critiqued for the revisionism it is, by Bob Somerby. Here is a relevant sample of Klein's hucksterism, from dailyhowler.com, discussing the Klein book:
KLEIN (page 157): Ah, the research! Gore seemed all tangled up in the polling data. If sighing and body language in the debates seemed a way to defy his consultants (don’t even ask), he was slavishly devoted to their numbers with every word he uttered. A particularly dreadful moment came midway through the second debate (with Bush), when the discussion turned to the murderous rampage by two students toting a small arsenal of weapons into Columbine High School, in Colorado.
SOMERBY: There you see the perfect expression of our millionaire pundits’ great script. This fake and inauthentic Democrat was “all tangled up in the polling data.” In fact, he was “slavishly devoted” to these data, “with every word he uttered. And this led to a “perfectly dreadful moment” when this Democrat debated with Bush. According to Klein, this “perfectly dreadful moment” occurred “when the discussion turned to” Columbine. And now, Joe Klein lets us look at his ethics. Continuing directly from above, here is the clip he provides:
BUSH: Let me say something about Columbine. Listen, we've got gun laws. He says we ought to have gun-free schools. Everybody believes that...But there seems to be a lot of preoccupation on—not only in this debate, but just in general—on law. But there's a larger law, love your neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself. (Klein’s ellipses)
GORE: I also believe in the Golden Rule, and I agree with a lot of the other things that the governor has said.
Pitiful, isn’t it? You’d surely think several things from this passage. You’d surely think “the discussion turned to” Columbine when Candidate Bush took it there, and that Gore just offered meek words of agreement. Continuing directly, Klein essentially lies in your face as he explains why this shows how fake this Dem is—as he proves his Great Theme:
KLEIN (continuing directly): Gore had given one of the most passionate speeches of his life at the memorial service for the murdered Columbine students (in April 1999). For more than a year, he had attended town meetings across the country where Columbine had been a topic of great concern, often the very first issue raised. Bush had signed a law—speaking of laws—that allowed Texans to carry concealed weapons into church. The vast majority of Americans agreed with Gore on this issue—but his consultants wanted him to lowball gun control because there were lots of gun lovers in Pennsylvania and Michigan, crucial states he needed to win if he wanted to be elected president.
Well, he won Michigan and Pennsylvania. But he lost the election, even though the public agreed with him on most issues. He lost the election—actually it was a dead heat—because he did not seem like a credible human being. And he did not seem like a credible human being because he had shoe-horned himself inside the Message Box that had been created for him—because he had been polled and focus-grouped and dial-grouped and market-tested literally to the point of distraction. (emphasis by Klein)
Yes. As if to issue a cry for help, Klein did use—and italicize—the word “literally.” This Dem had “literally” been driven to distraction by his devotion to polls!
Klein was driving home his Great Script. Gore was simply a slave to the polls—and this was the “dreadful moment” which proved it. The “dreadful moment” occurred when discussion turned to Columbine—and Klein, essentially lying in our faces, lets us think that Bush took it there, and that Gore just mumbled agreement. But in fact, that’s nothing like what happened in that part of the Bush-Gore debate. As his cohort did throughout Campaign 2000, Klein is simply deceiving his readers. He’s displaying the fallen ethics of his daft cohort. For the record, this is the ethics to which Peter Beinart signed on when he penned Sunday’s fawning Post piece (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/1/06).
What actually happened in this part of this Bush-Gore debate? In fact, this discussion on guns lasted for over eight minutes—for eight minutes and forty seconds, to be exact. Each candidate spoke three separate times (Gore/Bush, Gore/Bush, Gore/Bush). And when did the “discussion turn to Columbine?” The discussion “turned to Columbine” when Gore took it there, in his second statement (also mentioning Paducah); what Klein has quoted is part of Bush’s second statement (in which he responds to Gore’s Columbine reference), and the tiniest part of Gore third statement—a statement in which Gore quickly returned to his demand for more gun laws. (We post the complete discussion below.) In fact, this dreadful part of Politics Lost constitutes perfect deception by Klein. Essentially, Klein lies in his readers’ faces to construct a “perfectly dreadful moment”—a dreadful moment which would prove his great theme, about how poll-driven this dreadful Dem was. Gore was the “apotheosis,” Klein says. And he invents a fake moment to prove it.
By the way, how absurd is Klein’s overall claim about Gore’s handling of the gun issue? As early as December 2000, Dem strategists had largely come to agree that Gore’s stance in favor of gun control had likely cost him the election in states like West Virginia and Tennessee. (Especially in Tennessee, where the NRA ran an extensive, widely-discussed TV ad campaign, slashing Gore for his pro-gun control stance.) As everyone on earth except Klein surely knows, that’s why you’ve seen virtually no gun control campaigning by national Dems from that day to the present. Is it possible that Klein doesn’t know these things? It seems a bit hard to believe, but frankly, the author of this book is so daft, so inane, so divorced from reality that this may even be possible. But make no mistake—this grand culmination of Klein’s chapter on Gore is an act of outright deception, in which Klein cherry-picks from this debate in a way which is plainly designed to deceive. Understand: To “prove” that this Dem was so deeply poll-driven, Klein was forced to invent a moment—a “dreadful moment” that didn’t exist. But this has long been the noxious ethics of the Millionaire Pundit Corps—the empty gang of empty graspers who now have control of our discourse. And worthless young climbers—young climbers like Beinart—have accepted this ugly ethics for years. Ten years from now, Beinart will be a Millionaire Pundit too—and as we’ll discuss in more detail tomorrow, he seems to have no plans to blow his chance to rake in that lucre. He’s been ducking this issue for years.
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