Chris Matthews, of the misnamed “Hardball” on MSNBC (it should be “Blowhard” in honor of its host or “Softball” for when he fawns all over people he likes), is catching flak for letting former Sen. Alan Simpson* get away with another unsubstantiated slur.
“In four months of service,” Simpson said in reference to John Kerry, “it’s very difficult for this cowboy to understand how you get three purple hearts. Just mark it down, that’s all I’m saying.” It was the equivalent of a Democrat going on the air and saying, “Well, I’ve heard George Bush used to do a lot of cocaine 30 years ago, and I know it’s tough to stop doing drugs, so it’s just difficult for this American to understand how it could be that he’s not still coked up to the gills every day. Just mark it down, that’s all I’m saying.”
Matthews, to his credit, pounced, asking Simpson, somewhat incredulously, “You don’t think he would have inflicted those wounds himself?” A little bit after backing off slightly in response to that question, Simpson changed course and gave us his imitation of a crystal ball reader:
I think what you’re going to find, they’re going to go into his records just as they would yours or mine or anybody else’s. They’re going to go into Edwards, and guess who will do that? The media. They’re going to pick the leaves off the onion and they’ll go goofy with these two guys in the next two months.
Simpson seems to be implying, first, that there are somewhere copious records detailing Kerry wartime indiscretions that the media has so far ignored, and second, that John Edwards has something to account for about his own Vietnam era behavior. Whereas in fact, thanks to the media’s belated investigation into the dubious allegations of the creatively-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Kerry’s war records have already been examined more closely than a urine sample from Marion Jones; and Edwards didn’t even enter the draft lottery until 1972, a year at the tail-end of the war and, more importantly, a year in which no one was called up.
So how did Matthews respond? He grinned at Simpson and exclaimed, “Sounds good to me!”
Well, Chris, it didn’t sound so good to us. To us, it sounded like an on-air reporter letting a ludicrous hypothetical speculation, meant to tar a candidate, go unchallenged.
As noted earlier, The Washington Post today put on page 1 above the fold and under a picture of George and Laura a story that takes to task the GOP for its distortions of Kerry’s position.
I sense that journalists are reaching a point where we may see more of these stories. I don’t think you’ll see it as much on broadcast news and cable talk shows, especially when it comes to challenging the GOP. First, broadcast news is limited by time; nothing lasts more than five minutes before the talking heads feel compelled to move on to another topic. Besides, I’m convinced that most of them just aren’t that bright. More precisely, they are ignorant of the issues. They don’t know when they are being fed a bunch of crap.
But The Post, the New York Times, the LA Times, USA Today and a few other major papers could provide more reality checks. What would help is if we all start pestering them for such pieces.
My suggestion is send emails to reporters covering the campaigns as well as editors and ombudsmen. Tell them you’d like them to compare the rhetoric with the facts.
Here are some contacts below, though I’m not sure of all the emails. In some cases, I’m using the conventions the papers use to guess at email addresses. It really won’t take that many requests to get some results.
The Washington Post
Glenn Kessler – kesslerg@washpost.com (He co-wrote today’s Post story)
JimVandHei – vandeheij@washpost.com
Dana Milbank whitehouse@washpost.com
Dan Balz – balzd@washpost.com (He writes a lot of the campaign analysis pieces)
ombudsman@washpost.com
The New York Times
Dan Okrent – public@nytimes.com (Ombudsman)
National Desk – national@nytimes.com
Washington Desk – washington@nytimes.com
Managing Editor – managing-editor@nytimes.com
Executive Editor – executive-editor@nytimes.com
Adam Nagourney is a key reporter but does not reveal his email address, and the Times doesn’t use an email naming convention consistently.
Jodi Wilgoren’s email address is wilgoren@nytimes.com
David E. Sanger – dasang@nytimes.com
Elisabeth Bumiller doesn’t provide her email address.
LA Times
The email convention for the LA Times is simply Firstname.Lastname@latimes.com
I’m not as familiar with the specific reporters covering the campaign but Don Frederick is the 2004 political editor – Don.Frederick@latimes.com
A complete LA Times staff directory can be found here.
USA Today
Susan Page and Jill Lawrence are two reporters but the paper doesn’t provide email addresses. You can provide a comment here.
If we can get these papers to do more fact checking, other journalists may follow.
*Editor’s Note: Thanks to an alert reader, I’ve changed Cranston to Simpson in the first sentence. I guess I was just longing for the good old days.