Left spins as much as the right
THE POLITICAL left should really stop whining about the right-wing spin machine. Despite the likes of Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh, advocates of the left get away with more hypocrisy than they should.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry recently groused into his microphone that ABC News is "doing the work of the Republican National Committee," by asking him to explain conflicting statements he made about the battle ribbons or medals he tossed in Washington 33 years ago. Blaming tough questions on a right-wing conspiracy is now standard operating procedure for Democrats, who refuse to acknowledge the left-wing conspiracy that indulges their self-righteous bleating.
Consider these examples:
Democrats were rightly outraged when President Bush refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission and then insisted on sitting down with commission members behind closed doors, with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side. For weeks, headlines mocked the arrangement, and the liberal spin of an uninformed, disengaged president helped promote book sales for terrorism specialist Richard A. Clarke.
When Bush and Cheney finally met with the commission, two members left early to tend to more important business. Former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey and former Indiana representative Lee Hamilton -- both Democrats -- said they had prior commitments.
Kerrey was off to lobby for money for his employer, the New School University in Manhattan, and Hamilton was scheduled to introduce the Canadian prime minister at a ceremonial event at the Woodrow Wilson Center, which he heads. Afterward, Kerrey apologized to the families of terror victims but insisted he did not insult the president. Obviously, both Democrats did insult Bush.
Karen Hughes, Republican adviser to President Bush, said: "The fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life." Hughes was giving an interview about the March for Women's Lives and making an obvious connection between terrorists and prochoice advocates. Terrible, isn't it?
Yet the Associated Press account of the April 25 march contained this paragraph: "Feminist Gloria Steinem accused Bush of squandering international good will and taking positions so socially conservative that he seems -- according to Steinem -- to be in league with the likes of Muslim extremists or the Vatican." How different is that from the sentiment expressed by Hughes?
On April 1, Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut praised Senator Robert Byrd on the floor of the US Senate on the occasion of the West Virginia Democrat's 17,000th vote. Dodd said Byrd would have been right for the country "at any time" during his career, overlooking Byrd's prior membership in the Ku Klux Klan and vote against civil rights legislation. More than a week after the incident, Dodd said he was sorry, explaining "I was not thinking of the KKK or his vote against the Civil Rights Act." Byrd has repeatedly apologized for his membership in the KKK and has said he regrets his vote against the Civil Rights Act.
However, being sorry was not enough for Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who made controversial remarks about Senator Strom Thurmond at a birthday party for the elderly South Carolina Republican, who has since died. Lott said that if Thurmond had been elected president of the Dixiecrat party, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." The words were interpreted as racist, and with a push from Democrats and the media, Lott lost his position as Senate majority leader.
These events are not entirely equal: Lott had a long history of troubling statements regarding race, and his ouster was aided by an independent White House agenda to replace him. But the parallels are strong enough to wonder about the outrage -- discrepancies in the reporting of incidents such as those cited above.
Both the political left and the mainstream media lose credibility when they are outraged only by the language and transgressions of the political right. People are smart enough to know that truth is rarely found at either extreme. It is usually somewhere in the middle.
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.
