The Chris Green Rule: With a big shout out to Sen Feingold....

[WCGreen]

The next time any democrat comes face to face with some republican or some ass hat, like Wolf Blitzer, uses the McCartyesque term "Some People", they should stop the conversation and say name them...

If they are just figments of your imagination then say so...

If they are really people, then name then...

Who is your source...

Name them...

It's time the Democrats step up and ask that simple question, name those people you are always "quoting"...

I'm sick and tired of simplistic, violent and very dangerous rhetoric being let slide and unanswered as racists, bigots of all stripes, and just plain ass holes get away with all sorts of disgusting language just because they say "Some People"...

Russ, it's great that you wrote a letter, but next time, say it out loud...

In this culture of visceral stimulation it's imperative that we fight back on the same playing field or else we still lose the game...

[annabanana]

1. Bingo! "It's been said". . .

By Whom?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Sounds good to me...

That's one of the rules of true journalism, isn't it?

The who, what, when, why and how of a good story?

We simply cannot afford to lose this time...

We just can't.

[WCGreen]

3. It's not the candidates job to do the work of journalists...

But unless they speak up, it just slips by and further denigrates the whole process...

[warren pease]

4. Normally, that's true, but...

... here in the fact-free dreamland created by corporate mass media, an actual journalist is as rare as a dodo egg on Mauritius. "Some people say..." that the real ones are blacklisted, exiled, working online or writing novels and premature memoirs.

The frauds are named Blitzer, Stossel, Zahn, Roberts, Russert and the rest of the feather-headed "on-air talent" trying to pass themselves off as driven, hard-nosed reporters digging for the inside story and slaves to the facts. On the real side, they wouldn't know how to cover a story that demanded subtlety and context any more than I'd know how to tune up a Ferrari.

So when they make shit up and cover themselves by doing this phony "some people think..." acknowledgment of a supposedly popular opinion that may not even exist, they're just defaulting to their inherent laziness, lack of journalistic skills, innate cluelessness and absence of respect for their interviewee, their audience and their profession.

If politicians don't smack them around every single time they get a question that begins with "Some say that...," they'll just keep doing it.

The pols should take a lesson from the way Michael Moore handled Woofie when the latter tried a little character assassination because he couldn't rebut the basic thesis or the facts that made "Sicko" so hard to watch. And everybody watching knew that Blitzer had just been exposed as the small-minded little pissant and monumental fraud that he is.

"Some people say..." Blitzer is still seeing his proctologist to repair all the damage incurred in his ceremonial reaming.


wp

[WCGreen]

5. They have to speak up...

Or no matter how clever we campaign or govern, we will lose...