Howie My-Wife-Is-A-Republican-Operative Kurtz: Despicable Victim-Blamer

Howard Kurtz, your presstitute of the day.

Mr. Sherri Annis contributes this vile opinion to Predatorgate:

WaPo Media Notes: Cone of Silence

Among the many depressing aspects of the downfall of Mark Foley--who has now done the inevitable checking-into-rehab thing--is that a number of young people could have blown the whistle on this deceptive congressman in recent years, but didn't.

The Washington Post tracked down a couple of them. Former page Patrick McDonald said that at a 2003 reunion he learned of sexual messages that Foley sent three or four ex-classmates and thought, "if this gets out, it will destroy him."

Matthew Loraditch says he has known for years about the "creepy" messages the Florida Republican sent three of his 2002 classmates. But no one wanted to come forward. "You take down a Congress member, and you can't end up trying to do something later," Loraditch said.

Now I don't want to come down on 16-year-old kids (though some are now as old as 21) who must have been intimidated by the whole thing. Indeed, the power imbalance between a big-shot member of Congress and a lowly page is part of what makes this infuriating.

But did they really think that if they told the outside world that the co-chair of the Exploited Children's Caucus was sending them, or their friends, graphic sexual messages, that their future careers would be ruined? That they would be washed up in politics? Isn't it more likely that they would be hailed as brave for doing the right thing?

You fucking sheltered moron, they would be humiiated in the eyes of the world as the targets of a sex predator. All their friends asking, why did he target you? And some of these kids may be gay, and that may be why Foley with his practiced gaydar targeted them. Maybe they're not ready to talk about that yet. Look at Lindsey Graham. He's been in the military and the U.S. Senate, and he's still not ready to talk about being gay.

Howard Kurtz makes me sick. Who could write such drivel? Doesn't he have an editor? Oh, that's right, he works for the Post.

The Dog Ate My Homework

Remember that old Reader's Digest feature, "Was My Face Red?" WaPo isn't there yet, but it will be:

Howie "Married to a Republican Strategist Who Currently Works for John McCain" Kurtz, WaPo: Some Readers See Red Over Post.com's New Blogger

Late yesterday, the liberal Web sites Daily Kos and Atrios posted examples of what appeared to be instances of plagiarism from Domenech's writing at the William & Mary student paper. Three sentences of a 1999 Domenech review of a Martin Scorsese film were identical to a review in Salon magazine, and several sentences in Domenech's piece on a James Bond movie closely resembled one in the Internet Movie Database. Domenech said he needed to research the examples but that he never used material without attribution and had complained about a college editor improperly adding language to some of his articles.

All his editors were in a giant conspiracy to scour the web for better writing to pass off as his? Balderdash.

Update: Roger Ailes (the good one) has the funniest Box Turtle Ben headline yet:

Bitch Set Himself Up

Presstitute of the Day: Deborah Howell

Pissy, pissy, pissy little Deborah Howell.

Howell, you will remember, is the new ombudsperson at the Washington Post. (I'm a feminist. I refuse to call a woman an ombudsman, as the Post does. So sue me.) Howell's been wrong a few times now -- saying the answer to Bob Woodward not telling his editor about his involvement in the Plame case is for Woodward to get an editor, for example.

But her lowest moment (until today) was Sunday, when she published this statement of "fact":

a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money.

As though it were fact. However, it is not. As it is not a true fact, it is, in fact, a lie. A very big lie, as this is the Republican Talking Point of the moment, intended to confuse the public.

For the Abramoff scandal is a Republican scandal. Abramoff gave all his campaign money -- $172,933 -- exclusively to Republicans. His clients, the Indian tribes, continued to give political contributions to Democrats, as they always had, but in lower amounts than before they hired Abramoff. Those same tribes, however, suddenly more than tripled their contributions to Republicans, at Abramoff's urging.

So it is a lie to say that Democrats have gotten Abramoff campaign money. They didn't get one thin dime. And it is a pernicious lie, as it is intended to mislead the public into thinking the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. It is not. It is about Republicans cheating, stealing, and pigging out at the trough of political corruption. No Democrats participated in the K Street Project.

Well, blogtopia (yes! skippy coined the term!) was not happy to see a lie masquerading as the truth in the Washington Post. Bloggers, egged on by Jane Hamsher at firedoglake, began bombarding the Post's new blog, post.blog, with comments. (The comments were placed on the most recent post, entitled "New Blog: Maryland Moment", so the uprising of the readers on this issue will ever be known as The Maryland Moment.) Most of the comments were quite civil, pointed out the error, and asked for a retraction and a correction.

The Post's reaction was instructive. No correction has ever been made. Comments were deleted, first just a few, then en masse. (While the Post later blamed the disappearing of the comments on their blogvendor, Typepad, I have my doubts.) After an outcry, comments were reinstated. A Post reporter, Derek Willis, posted a comment in essence defending Howell's lie as truth. That reporter's comment was bombarded with angry denunciations. Then, Presstitute Howie Kurtz got in on the action, declaring Howell's statement had been "inartfully worded", and pushing the lie that
Abramoff was an equal opportunity giver if you looked at the contributions of the tribes. More derisive comments followed.

Still, as of this morning, no correction, no retraction.

Finally at 11:30 a.m. this morning, more than five days after the offending lie appeared in her column, Deborah Howell posted this on the post blog:

Posted at 11:30 AM ET, 01/19/2006
Deborah Howell Responds

I've heard from lots of angry readers about the remark in my column Sunday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. A better way to have said it would be that Abramoff "directed" contributions to both parties.

Lobbyists, seeking influence in Congress, often advise clients on campaign contributions. While Abramoff, a Republican, gave personal contributions only to Republicans, he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

Records from the Federal Elections Commission and the Center for Public Integrity show that AbramoffÂ’s Indian clients contributed between 1999 and 2004 to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats. The Post has copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with specific directions on what members of Congress were to receive specific amounts.

One of those lists can be viewed in this online graphic, while a graphical summary of giving by Abramoff, his tribal clients and associated lobbyists can be viewed here. The latest developments in the Abramoff investigation are available in this Special Report.

-- Deborah Howell, Washington Post Ombudsman

So, she has (1) refused to admit that her original statement of "fact" was, indeed, a lie; and (2) offered yet another version of "everybody does it". But she's wrong. One of firedoglake's commenters deconstructs her statement and the skewed evidence she uses. In essence, she used an Abramoff document that doesn't match up with actual amounts contributed by the tribes. Nothing like a little misleading on a lovely Thursday morning.

This afternoon the Washington Post shut down its Comments. Indefinitely, they say. Forever, I predict.

So, for lying in print, refusing to correct that lie, replacing the lie with another lie, then shutting down the public's access to their spokeswoman, I award today's Presstitute of the Day award to Deborah Howell.

I have a feeling she'll win more than one of these.

Presstitute of the Day: Howie Kurtz

For relentlessly flogging the Republican effort to Swiftboat Jack Murtha. His Media Notes Online article is front paged on the WaPo website today, giving life to a story that a real journalist would have ignored and let die its own pathetic death. But Howie is a presstitute through and through.

A Swift-Moving Story

Howie whines in response to Murray Waas's criticism of his original article:

I would welcome a deeper examination, as I had three hours to write the story on deadline. But I provided the needed context about Cybercast -- which was formerly called Conservative News Service -- and I'd note that the military, after all, decides when to hand out the medals.

Howie: If you didn't have time to research the story adequately, you shouldn't have submitted it for publication. Why were you in such a rush, anyway? Was Mrs. Kurtz, Sheri Annis, Republican operative, on your case? Maybe I should buy your cell phone records to find out.

The real story on Murtha is on the op-ed pages of the New York Times today, by "James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, [] a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam."


Purple Heartbreakers

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

Notorious House of Presstitution

This week's Notorious House of Presstitution Award goes to ..... drum roll, please ..... The Washington Post!

The Post triumphs over the rest of the fawning corporate media by having two blatant falsehoods trumpeted in its pages.

Article No. 1: On Saturday, Republican House Organ Howie Kurtz and Shailagh Murray published this little gem:

Web Site Attacks Critic of War
Opponents Question Murtha's Medals

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), the former Marine who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, has become the latest Democrat to have his Vietnam War decorations questioned.

In a tactic reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 presidential campaign, a conservative Web site yesterday quoted Murtha opponents as questioning the circumstances surrounding the awarding of his two Purple Hearts.

David Thibault, editor in chief of the Cybercast News Service, said the issue of Murtha's medals from 1967 is relevant now "because the congressman has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement." Thibault said: "He has been placed by the Democratic Party and antiwar activists as a spokesman against the war above reproach."

Here, Republican operative Sheri Annis' husband "reports" the hysterical allegations of a right-wing propaganda machine whose most prominent client is GOPUSA, the group that owned Talon News and pimped Jeff Gannon/Jimmy Guckert into a coveted seat in the White House pressroom.

Yes, Virginia, in this article the Washington Post cites Cybercast News Service (CNS). A Republican website that works for GOPUSA.

And then the Post runs a quote from Harry Fox from 1996.

The article included a 1996 quote from Harry Fox, who worked for former representative John Saylor (R-Pa.), telling a local newspaper that Murtha was "pretending to be a big war hero." Fox, who lost a 1974 election to Murtha, said the 38-year Marine veteran had asked Saylor for assistance in obtaining the Purple Hearts but was turned down because the office believed he lacked adequate evidence of his wounds.

However, the Post leaves out the very salient fact (which was in the original CNS article) that Mr. Fox is now 81 years old and because of health reasons can no longer communicate whether or not this quote is accurate.

The Post article also leaves out the extremely salient fact that Saylor, who the now incommunicative Fox is trying to quote, has been DEAD since 1973.

Murray Waas deconstructs this steaming pile of horsepucky.

And that's not all, folks, because on Sunday the Washington Post's ombudsperson, Deborah Howell, continued the Post's Republican talking points journey.

Getting the Story on Jack Abramoff

Several stories, including one on June 3 by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, a Post business reporter, have mentioned that a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money.

This is a stupid and demonstrably false statement by Howell. No Democrat received money from Jack Abramoff. They did receive money from Abramoff's clients: The Indian tribes who were ripped off by Abramoff. There is no evidence that the tribes were attempting to bribe the Democrats. There is ample evidence that Abramoff was stealing from the Indians to bribe the Republican officials to funnel the money back into the coffers of Republican-owned businesses by passing legislation to do just so. That's why Abramoff just took a plea, you idiot.

Firedoglake did the best send-up of Howell: The Naked Lies of Deborah Howell

So, for these two shining examples of naked presstitution, we give the Washington Post the coveted Notorious House of Presstitution award. For this week, at least.

Presstitute of Day: Nina Easton

Play the exciting corporate media game "Name That Source" with Nina Easton in today's Boston Globe as she channels all sorts of Bushco spinners:

Kinder, gentler Bush seen as '06 style
Seeks to boost GOP with compassionate conservative return

WASHINGTON -- Climbing his way out of low public ratings and facing a bruising battle to maintain Republican control of Congress, President Bush is seeking to resurrect his early reputation as a compassionate conservative who reaches across the aisle, according to officials close to the White House.

[]

''We learned our lesson last time," said one GOP strategist close to the White House, referring to the president's ill-fated Social Security plan.

In the coming weeks, the president will continue to advertise progress in Iraq, and the war on terror, as well as highlighting good economic news.

''This White House is conscious of historical trends," said the same strategist. ''You're going to see a focus on legacy items -- war on terror and the economy, focus on creation of jobs."

But the public will also hear the president talk more about education initiatives to bridge the wage gap, as well as conservative ideas to address poverty, especially as New Orleans recovers from Hurricane Katrina, according to officials close to the White House.

[]

President Bush, strategists say, needs to be careful not to anger his conservative base, as he did when he proposed a guest-worker immigrant program. Immigration, officials say, is an issue he will continue to approach gingerly, mostly talking broadly about border security.

Fiscal conservatives remain angry about high deficits and the levels of government spending, so the president is unlikely to make any expensive policy proposals in his State of the Union speech, officials say. Sweeping tax reform plans could also splinter the base and will probably be avoided, they add.

[]

Republican strategists, mindful of the upcoming November election, will also look for opportunities to trap Democrats on Capitol Hill into potentially embarrassing votes, just as they did when Republican House leaders forced a vote after Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Marine veteran, proposed a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

One area where the White House believes it has staunch public support is the disclosure that the administration, in pursuing terrorists, has wiretapped Americans without a court order. Republicans say they will win any vote that pits physical security against privacy concerns.

Democrats, meanwhile, will try to use the burgeoning ethics scandals to undermine the Bush agenda. ''On the ethics stuff, there's nothing Bush can do. He has no control," said one Republican lobbyist. ''But what he can control and needs to work on is the war. That's the more critical thing for him."

Why let yourself be used to put out spin? This is journalism? Or it just pillow talk?

Because Nina Easton is from the Howie Kurtz School of Journalism. Keeps it in the family, where they all, in baseball parlance, bat right and throw right.

Here's the announcement of her wedding to Russell Schriefer from the New York Times.

Mr. Schriefer, also 46, is a Republican strategist and a founder of the Stevens & Schriefer Group, the Washington-based political consulting firm; he has helped advised numerous Republicans, including Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. This year he served as the program director for the Republican Convention and was a media adviser to President Bush. The bridegroom graduated from Manhattan College.

Nina Easton, Presstitute.

In Charge of Rebuilding the Gulf: Traitor Karl?

So George Bush's great idea of his big speech is to put....Karl Rove....in charge of the rebuilding effort?

Traitor Karl?

Isn't this like putting Helluva Job Brownie in charge of FEMA? When the rebuilding goes horribly wrong, is the MSM going to trot out Karl Rove's resume and tell us that all Karl ever did before he got this job was run campaigns for the Bushes?

How's it going to work when he gets indicted in a few months? Is he busy now giving every member of the grand jury a no-bid contract to rebuild something?

Desert Rat Democrat: And to think Carrot Top Was Available...

Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo): the Gulf Coast reconstruction effort is going to be run as a patronage and political operation.
and
He's put his chief political operative in charge of running the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast.

Dan Froomkin, Washington Post: Who's in Charge? Karl Rove!

Even Howie "My Wife's a Republican Operative" Kurtz seems skeptical: Conservative War on Poverty? (first sentence: Well, the choreography was pretty impressive.)

Even Howie Kurtz sez: SCOTUS Nominee is Hard Right

A great post on dailykos.

The Failure of the Media

The Media's failure in the runup to the Iraq Debacle is well documented. DSM, "mushroom clouds," Plame, et al. make this abundantly clear.

History repeats itself, now on the Roberts nomination, as Howard Kurtz observes:

As you plow through the blizzard of memos he wrote as a government lawyer, you get the sense of a man who is more conservative, more combative and more sarcastic than he has been portrayed in these walk-on-water profiles. It's no surprise that this Harvard man clerked and lawyered his way to a Supreme Court nomination.

You will, by the way, hear almost none of this on TV. Understanding the memos requires walking through the background and legal context of each controversy at the time, and television has no inclination to do that unless there's an inflammatory phrase that the pundits can argue about. (TV people keep talking about the battle over the documents while saying very little about what's in them.) It is, in short, a classic newspaper story.

Roberts is quite familiar with bureaucratic dodges and the art of Washington insincerity, the documents suggest.

Kurtz misses something though, the utter failure of the New York Times, AGAIN. The Administration line is repeated practically verbatim in their Roberts coverage. A classic newspaper story this may be, but the New York Times has proven it is no longer a classic newspaper.

I'm on the Washington Post (online)

I don't know how these things happen, but last night while I was reading the Washington Post I read words that seemed very familiar to me: my own!

Howard Kurtz excerpted my post on the baseball hearings in his Media Notes Extra column on Friday!

Here's how Howie (or more likely, one of his minions) cut and pasted my post:

The MainSt.USA blog: "Conveniently, Sammy Sosa has lost his ability to speak English . . . Jose Canseco is an idiot, but he's the only honest player on this panel...Mark McGwire has shrunk a great deal from his playing days . . . Congress is full of cowards. No one has even managed to make McGwire take the 5th Amendment, although it's clear that the 5th is his fallback position. They're letting him get away with "I'm not here to talk about the past" and offering to become a spokesperson against steroids which is just ridiculous. So we know: McGwire was juiced. Roger Maris still owns the single season home run record as far as I'm concerned. The only guys who have exceeded it are Bonds, McGwire & Sosa, The Juice Boys."

I wonder how they found me?

And if you're reading again, Howie, or as one of the players might have addressed you during the steroid hearings, Mr. Kurtz, a real journalist would identify himself as married to Sheri Annis, a Republican media strategist who runs a company called "Fourth Estate Strategies" selling her right wing media expertise. A real journalist would say that before every column, kind of like "I approved this message", so we'd all know where you're coming from. In baseball terms, the Kurtz/Annis family bats right and throws right. Right, not left, not center, right. Just so we're clear. I know I'm just a lowly pajama-wearing blogger, but we like to know these things up front.

If you're reading this blog after clicking on the link in the Post, leave a comment, please.

The Corporate Media "Finds" Gannongate

In the New York Times today:

Frank Rich
The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Maureen Dowd
Bush's Barberini Faun

And the Washington Post covered the story yesterday, albeit on the first page of the "Style" section:
Howard Kurtz
Online Nude Photos Are Latest Chapter In Jeff Gannon Saga

I'm waiting for an article by one of those pathetic "journalists" who sat in the White House press room with this fraud for two years & never even googled his name. Reporters? They hardly deserve the moniker.