Getting a free pass 101

November 11, 2007

In noting the relative political insignificance of presidential candidate endorsements, the NYT’s Michael Powell reported today:

So the most unlikely pairing of the presidential campaign is unveiled, with the Rev. Pat Robertson flashing a television-practiced smile at Rudolph W. Giuliani, the thrice-married, pro-abortion-rights former mayor of New York.

This same preacher once said that the terror attacks of Sept. 11 proved that God was lifting his protection from an abortion-giving, gay-loving nation. But whatever …

The “but whatever” was no doubt intended to be ironic, but it was nevertheless a subtle reminder of the attitude the media took to this week’s biggest campaign endorsement.

Pat Robertson, a crazed TV preacher who has spewed hate at everyone that is not exactly like him, endorsed Rudy Giuliani, and the vast majority of political reporters overlooked the obvious questions that were given to them on a platter.

In the question-and-answer portion of the November 7 press conference in which Pat Robertson announced his endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, no reporters asked Giuliani to comment on Robertson’s history of controversial statements. Further, a Nexis database search shows only two news outlets that, in their reports on the endorsement, appeared to have questioned Giuliani or his campaign about Robertson’s past remarks.

Two news outlets. That’s it. What’s more, the two weren’t the New York Times and CNN; they were The State of Columbia, South Carolina, and the New York Sun.

It’s not like the media simply didn’t cover the Robertson endorsement. On the contrary, it was a fairly big deal this week, and drew quite a bit of coverage. But for all the ink, bits, and hours spent on the story, the media managed to avoid asking the candidate about the anti-American lunatic whose support apparently meant quite a bit to him.

How can news outlets be blowing their campaign coverage this badly?

Indeed, I suspect more of the Giuliani campaign staff worked furiously to prepare for the onslaught of questions from reporters about Robertson’s rhetorical record. Media Matters highlighted some of my favorites:

* In 1998, Robertson issued a warning to Orlando, Florida, after city officials voted to fly rainbow flags from city lampposts during the annual Gay Days event at Disney World. Robertson stated: “I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you. … [A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”

* During a September 13, 2001, appearance on The 700 Club, Falwell reportedly said of the 9-11 attacks: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’ ” Robertson, as reported by The New York Times, replied: ”Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government.” […]

* On the August 22, 2005, 700 Club, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying: “You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. … We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.” Robertson later claimed, falsely, that he “didn’t say ‘assassinate,’ ” and then apologized, claiming he “spoke in frustration.” […]

* On the September 12, 2005, 700 Club, Robertson linked legalized abortion to Hurricane Katrina, which had made landfall just two weeks earlier, saying: “But have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected in some way?”

* On the January 5, 2006, 700 Club, Robertson suggested that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was the result of Sharon’s policy, which he claimed was “dividing God’s land.” Robertson called the 1995 assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin “the same thing.” Robertson reportedly issued a subsequent apology to Sharon’s son. And in an appearance on the August 9, 2006, edition of CNN’s The Situation Room, Robertson claimed that he had been “misquoted.”

* Robertson has described Islam as a “bloody, brutal type of religion” and claimed that “Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant on domination.”

It didn’t occur to reporters — who could have found similar lists of Robertson quotes after two or three minutes on Google — to even ask the campaign about one of these? The candidate running on a 9/11 platform stood alongside a man who blamed 9/11 on Americans, and no one thought to ask about the conflicting worldviews?

If someone could explain this to me, I’d appreciate it.

So the most unlikely pairing of the presidential campaign is unveiled, with the Rev. Pat Robertson flashing a television-practiced smile at Rudolph W. Giuliani, the thrice-married, pro-abortion-rights former mayor of New York.

They’re so more an apropos pair than this sentence makes it appear. Scuzz, meet scuzz. Hack, meet hack.

  • It didn’t occur to reporters — who could have found similar lists of Robertson quotes after two or three minutes on Google — to even ask the campaign about one of these?

    Amen, CB.

  • The State of Columbia editorial is really a scathing piece on Giuliani and Robertson — excerpt:

    It’s been quite a busy time for Giuliani, who recently tried to establish himself as the toughest dude on the anti-terror block by making fun of torture victims, drawing the wrath of John (Actually Tortured) McCain. Let it be known that nothing, including the extensive evidence that prisoners being tortured confess to things that aren’t true, is going to stop a President Giuliani from wringing every last drop of inaccurate information out of the evildoers.

    “They talk about sleep deprivation. I mean on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly,” he said at a town hall meeting in Iowa. You would really think after all the trouble Mitt Romney got for equating life in the Mitt Mobile with service in Iraq, people would be a little careful about comparing the perils of the campaign trail with military service. It also gave McCain the opportunity to remind the nation that Rudy got a deferral from serving in Vietnam by convincing his boss, a federal judge, to pull strings and have him declared an “essential” civilian employee for his critical work as a law clerk.

    But we digress.

    Robertson’s backing will surely give Giuliani a leg up among voters who believe that God sends natural disasters to punish Americans whose school board members believe in the theory of evolution, or who have the bad luck to live near an inclusive amusement park. (He warned Orlando that when Disney World welcomed gay patrons it was letting them in for terrorist attacks, “earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”)

    On Wednesday, Robertson said America’s Mayor had won him over because “to me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists.” (So much for judicial activism.) “Our second goal should be the control of massive government waste and crushing federal deficits.”

    Now this is the part that I have never been able to get. When did government spending become part of the divine agenda? Is there something in the Bible about smiting down federal bureaucrats?

    Even within the ranks of the social conservatives, Robertson is regarded as a tad over the top. Who among us will forget the time he claimed that the special protein shake he was marketing had enabled him to leg-press 2,000 pounds? Or the time he said God had given Ariel Sharon a massive stroke because he let the Palestinians run Gaza? (He did apologize for saying the United States should assassinate the president of Venezuela.)

    Still, the endorsement must have been a blow to Romney. He has gotten a couple of social conservatives on his side. But given the way he’s prostrated himself before the right wing, renouncing every position he’s ever held, all the way down to stem cells, you’d think he’d do better. It’s a mystery why even someone as loopy as Robertson would pass up the exhaustingly virtuous family man for a longtime hound dog like Rudy, who has been qualifying his liberal social positions but never really retracting them.

    “Persuasion is an important part of politics. It may be for some leaders, Giuliani is more persuasive, particularly in private,” suggested John Green, who studies conservative religious movements for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

    It does seem true that miraculous things happen when conservative leaders meet with Giuliani behind closed doors. Maybe they just find Romney extremely irritating. Maybe Rudy has a secret grip, like the Vulcan mind-meld or one of those sleeper holds they used to have in professional wrestling, that fills his victims with an irrational degree of trust. Or maybe his leadership is so powerful that people exposed to it find it impossible to doubt the sincerity of his every word.

    In which case I’ve got a protein shake I’d like to sell you.

    Ms. Collins is the former editorial page editor of The New York Times.

  • The media is ignoring the Robertson endorsement because it is outside of the narrative that they’ve created for Giuliani.

    Maybe in the distant past, the media asked the questions, discerned the facts, and then wove the results into a narrative. Now, the narrative comes first and anything that doesn’t fit it is ignored.

    Remember the narrative on Bush? He was “strong,” “plain-spoken” and “a popular wartime President” in the press long after the rest of us had concluded that he was a stubborn, lying, incompetent, empty suit.

    That’s why we hear more about Edward’s haircuts, Hillary’s tipping, Huckabee’s folksiness and Giuliani’s toughness than we do about their actual records and their policy positions. It’s all about The Narrative, Baby!

  • “Two news outlets. That’s it. What’s more, the two weren’t the New York Times and CNN; they were The State of Columbia, South Carolina, and the New York Sun”.

    Slight correction to your otherwise good post, Steve. The column printed by the State of Columbia was actually a reprint of Gail Collins bi-weekly column in the NYT. So, the NYT was heard from.

  • What I see happening is “Guiliani is our man” in MSM because he will be conroversial and that will sell air time. Without wars, scandals and disasters, what would the media do? They’ve lost the ability to research and analyze that research. I agree with someone on this site who wrote that MSM should just admit they are an adjunct to Entertainment Tonight and stop pretending to be serious news coverage.

  • I’ve come to the conclusion that the media does not necessarilly have a conservative bias, but rather that they are painfully lazy, or that they think the average American is a complete moron who could not possibly understand the subtleties of most news pieces.

    Yesterday on CNN there was a story on the stage hand strike in New York. There was no mention of what the causes of the strike were, or what the union and management were asking for. Instead, the focus was on the cancellation of the Broadway production of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, and what griches the striking stage hands were because of all the disappointed children. Later in the afternoon, I was on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations web site where there was a story on the strike. Lo and behold, the focus was on the actual issues.

    The only conclusion is that the major American media outlets have died a slow death, and the corpse looks like a giant infotainment conglomorate.

  • A quick google search on “Pat Robertson South Africa” reveals some other
    lovely tidbits going back a ways further. Let us not overlook his “business
    interests” in diamond mines in Africa, and that he believed the whites
    should have had more than “one man one vote” when apartheid was
    abolished. But perhaps one of his best quotes was about women, saying:

    “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a
    socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave
    their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism,
    and become lesbians.” — Pat Robertson, fundraising letter, 1992

    which I found at

    http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/11/7/94151/5157

    He is also quoted there as saying:

    “You say you’re supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the
    Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing.
    Nonsense. I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can
    love the people who hold false opinions but I don’t have to be nice
    to them.”–Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991

    So, if you are not the RIGHT kind of Christian, you’re part of the Spirit
    of the Antichrist. I believe “Pot calling the Kettle Black” comes to mind.
    Certainly this is the voice of reason in America today. Um hmmm.

  • To all the soldiers in Iraq Happy Veteran’s Day

    Hey, maybe 9/11 was God’s way of chastising Protestants for abandoning His message of tolerance and love.

    There’s no place in the Bible that says “zero tolerance for pagans.” Sure, it says “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” but it doesn’t say “Don’t have any pagans among you.”

  • Let’s give Tom Toles at the WaPo a little credit too. His Friday cartoon had Rudy and Robertson posturing for the camera, with Robertson saying, “I’m willing to overlook his Pro-abortion and Pro-gay beliefs and endorse him, because he’s the toughest on terrorism, even though abortion and gays are why we deserved to be attacked on 9/11.” Rudy then adds, “Close enough.”

  • “If someone could explain this to me, I’d appreciate it.”

    Sure, no problem. Rudi Guliani is a candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination to stand for President, and the MSM does not, under any circumstances, say anything that might cause problems for the Republican Party.

    All you have to remember is, everything a Republican does is good politics based on a sound understanding of the American psyche, while everything Democrats do is a potential mistake and/or an outrage based on a deep-seated misunderstanding of the American psyche.

    Easy.

  • Joe Biden had a great quote from Iowa’s Jefferson Jackson dinner:

    “I should start with an apology to Rudy Giuliani,” he said at the start of his remarks. “I said every sentence Rudy utters has a noun, a verb, and 9/11 in it. I was wrong. He called me to tell me after Pat Robertson’s endorsement, there’s an Amen in every sentence he says too.”

    Sa-lam!

  • Something is definitely amiss here and it’s extremely noticeable. The press gives Guliani a pass on nearly all of his actions. More than any candidate in recent American politics. You could fill pages of what the press failed to call him on. Could it be the mob has been threatening reporters or what because this is honestly gone way past being coincidental. Seems Rudy can lie at will, and hire serial killers and no one in the MSM would ever mention it. Go figure…

  • Like Putins’ free pass, thanks to the Russian Mafia. Guiliani has all the same qualifications.
    Face it folks, we are frolicking in Fascism.
    When the government favors organized crime over democracy, we have been doomed.

  • I am firmly convinced that most people working as political reporters on the national scene today do not know what Google is. My assumption is that they used to have more support staff but don’t anymore due to budget cuts and they have yet to figure out how to type their own search strings into search engines.

  • Wow… so Pat Robertson is a “real” Christian?

    Rudy must be, by extension, a “real” Politician

    Here’s the funny bit… Neither of them are anything but self-serving power grasping hypocrites.

    but wait, there will be more of this kind of wonderful candidate coverage soon, as the mainstream media try desperately to find relevance.

    Come lol ur pols and reduce your stress with the cats at loliticz.com
    propogate the meme.

  • It is easy to get a free pass.

    Just be a Repug.

    But if you are a Democrat, forget about it. Every controversial statement by anyone who might ever endorse you, will get hung around your neck like the corpse of a dead goat. And you will be destroyed.

    That is what America.

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