Should It Have Been Published?
By JOHN W. DEAN
Recently, I finished writing a book about the late Senator Barry Goldwater, co-authored with the senator's son Barry Jr., and to be published in mid-April. In 1986, Goldwater helped John McCain win his Senate seat. However, as I learned in my research for the book, Goldwater's thoughts on McCain were not always positive - and his analysis has led me to also be less than a fan of McCain. Indeed, as the diplomats say, I hold McCain in minimal high esteem. As a result, I have very conflicted feelings about the brouhaha McCain is currently embroiled in with the New York Times.
The conflict I feel comes from personal experience. I have great empathy for any public figure who is unfairly attacked by any segment of the American media, because I have been there, and I know how difficult it is to keep one's detractors honest. The American media (and those who know how to employ it) can easily hide behind laws that enable them to publish misleading - not to mention false and defamatory -- information with near impunity about public people. Thus, I know well that officials like John McCain confront a body of law that is stacked against them if they seek to use the courts to right a wrong, or to find a remedy for hurt and damages, from a published story.
Often, too, the innuendo is the worst part. After carefully reading and re-reading the New York Times story linking Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman with McCain, I believe it is quite clear that the story suggests a sex-for-favors-relationship - albeit one that is denied by both Iseman and McCain in the story.
If McCain and Iseman are to be believed, they have been unfairly attacked. But their denials are, in many ways, quite weak.
The Gravamen of the Story: McCain's "Inappropriate" Behavior
The Times put no less than six reporters on the McCain/Iseman story, yet it relies on old news and innuendo. Did they find nothing more? Unless the Times has more information than it reported, it is a real head-scratcher why the story was published at all.
Moreover, if the Times believes, as it has reported, that McCain acted inappropriately, then why did it endorse him as the GOP nominee at a time when it already possessed this information?
Notwithstanding the headline - "For McCain, Self-Confidence On Ethics Poses Its Own Risk" - the story opens with "waves of anxiety" sweeping through McCain's "small circle of advisers" at the outset of his prior run for president in the late 1990s. Unnamed sources told the Times that lobbyist Vicki Iseman had been turning up with Senator McCain "at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client's corporate jet." So pervasive was her presence, it convinced these unnamed sources that "the relationship had become romantic."
Accordingly, some of McCain's top advisers "intervened to protect the candidate from himself -- instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him."
More on the story.
2 comments:
Oh there's more on that story:
http://www.madcowprod.com/
Lobbyist plane flew Saudi royals after 9/11
SPB the way things go in the USA, no Republican should have his indiscrestions, child molesting, pervert or hiring prostitutes with taxpayers money, made public it should not be brought to the attention of the American people. As Republicans are the example of Christian Moral Family Values that we all should follow.
Now if a Democrat or even Bill Clinton looks at a woman or thinks about a woman it's an out right sin and that person should be removed from office. Yes print the headlines and let the public know they have committed a sin. With no forgiveness ever.
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