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Party ID

Sunday, February 15th, 2004

Noticed the following two paragraphs in <The Washington Times’ “Inside Politics” column, which is a sort of bullet-point roundup of happenings in the politico world. First sentence from one item:

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, California Democrat, has apologized for seeking a lenient sentence for a convicted rapist who is the son of one of her staffers.

Now here’s the first sentence from the next item down:

Two lawyers who served President Clinton during the scandal that led to his impeachment have been hired as part of the investigation into reported corruption by Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland.

In author Greg Pierce’s effort to point out how sleazy ex-Clinton aids are helping out a corrupt governor, he forgot to mention that Rowland is a Republican. But his memory served him well in pointing out the Woolsey’s Democratic Party affiliation.

Hmm…

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2004 at 12:37 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “Party ID”

  1. #1 |  Skip Oliva |  February 15th, 2004 at 3:48 pm

    I’m not convinced there’s anything to this. The Times’ editorial style generally provides the state and party affiliation after the name of a member of Congress, but often leaves out the party label for a state governor. Nor does the text of the Rowland paragraph strongly suggest the ex-Clinton aides were “sleazy”, only that they happened to have worked on the Clinton impeachment. The message I got when I first saw the item in the Times was that there’s now a sub-market for impeachment advice.

  2. #2 |  Lonewacko |  February 15th, 2004 at 5:41 pm

    This is shocking, truly shocking. It reminds me of the time I was reading all of those articles in Wapo, NYT, LAT, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, AP, CNN, (insert 10000 other media orgs here) about human rights groups like the International Action Center, but those extremists from the far-far-right FreeRepublic.com kept getting quoted.

  3. #3 |  Jeb |  February 15th, 2004 at 9:58 pm

    I can’t tell if Lonewacko’s post is satire, but I’ll respond as if it’s not.

    A quick 2-minute browse of the “International Action Center” shows that it is a organization with certain specific opinions on issues, issues about which many people believe otherwise (I realize that’s a very obvious statement, but trust me, I’m going somewhere with this). Now, the media organizations you list all attempt to strive for objectivity, and the way to objectivity is to explain both sides of an argument. Since, as demonstrated above, the International Action Center represents only one side of the argument, another group is quoted in order to present an opposing viewpoint. This leads to something which is called debate.

    “Debate” is where free-thinking people are able to, in an adult manner, discuss issues about which they have varying opinions, in order that others may be able to form opinions of their own. This is the basis of our democratic system, and the reason for the First Amendment. The opposite of debate is “indoctrination” (apparently your preferred system) where only one side of the issue is presented as truth. This is very un-healthy, very un-democratic, and very un-American.

  4. #4 |  Lonewacko |  February 16th, 2004 at 12:29 am

    Heya Jeb. I want to assure you that my comment above was not satire.

    I truly believe that the International Action Center should be identified as a “human rights group” or an “activist group” or a group “advocating against the Iraq war” or some such.

    I also truly believe that anyone who’s even a millimeter to the right of center should be identified as “right-wing” or “far-right” or “reactionary.”

    These things I believe, and none are satirical I assure you.

  5. #5 |  Richard |  February 16th, 2004 at 4:21 am

    Where exactly IS the center? I’ve been looking and can’t find it.

  6. #6 |  Anonymous |  February 16th, 2004 at 9:44 am

    Richard, look right.