{"id":10649,"date":"2007-04-28T10:25:49","date_gmt":"2007-04-28T14:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10649.html"},"modified":"2007-04-28T10:25:49","modified_gmt":"2007-04-28T14:25:49","slug":"tnrs-cheap-and-dishonest-hit-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/tnrs-cheap-and-dishonest-hit-job\/","title":{"rendered":"TNR’s cheap and dishonest hit job"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Kirchick, writing for The New Republic’s blog, directed readers<\/a> last night to Michael Kelly’s infamous hit job, “Ted Kennedy on the Rocks<\/a>,” which Kirchick describes as “one of the best pieces of political reportage I have ever read.”<\/p>\n

Kirchick features a couple of paragraphs from Kelly’s article about Kennedy and Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd “carousing” and acting like “two guys in a fraternity.” Kirchick’s excerpt describes a disturbing incident, the validity of which is completely unknown, about Kennedy assaulting a waitress in a private room at an exclusive DC restaurant. Dodd is characterized as a guilty bystander and a letch, dating a younger blond. <\/p>\n

Kirchick concludes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The two Senators, men of privilege and heirs to political dynasties both, were notorious in Washington for such antics. I am not one to make an issue out of politicians’ personal lives, but I think the Democratic party is crossing a line by tolerating this sort of old-school, old-boy D.C. misogyny.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TNR’s standards should prohibit such dishonesty. Notice that Kirchick’s criticisms of the Democratic Party are entirely in the present tense: the party is<\/i> crossing a line; Democrats are<\/i> tolerating misogyny.<\/p>\n

Kirchick’s hit job, however, neglected to mention to readers that the alleged incident was 22 years ago. His evidence of ongoing Democratic irresponsibility comes from 1985.
\n
\nJust to be clear, if Kennedy sexually assaulted a woman (Kelly’s article describes an alleged incident in which Kennedy “throws” a waitress onto Dodd and “begins rubbing his genital area against hers”), it’s inexcusable. Period.<\/p>\n

Kirchick, however, appears to be intentionally misleading readers by omitting the date. He wants to characterize Democrats as “tolerating” disgusting antics among lawmakers when, in fact, they are doing nothing of the sort. It’s political reporting at its most sleazy — accusing Dems of accepting abhorrent, decades-old conduct that may or may not have occurred before most of them were even elected.<\/p>\n

What justification is there for writing an item like this without alerting the reader to when the alleged incident took place? There isn’t one — it’s fundamentally irresponsible and dishonest. Kirchick wants to smear current Dems, so, apropos of nothing, he dredges up an alleged incident from 1985<\/i> in order to conclude that “the Democratic party is crossing a line.” Had he included the date, Kirchick wouldn’t have been able to draw the conclusion, so he left it out, apparently hoping the reader wouldn’t notice.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen irresponsible writing on blogs before, but this is truly dismal.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it’s not altogether clear exactly what the point of Kirchick’s blog post is. To re-smear Kennedy for the fun of it? To accuse Dodd, who was single in 1985, of living a playboy lifestyle?<\/p>\n

I’m not a reflexive TNR-basher. There are a lot of terrific writers at the magazine whom I respect and enjoy reading. But Kirchick’s item is a bad joke. TNR should be embarrassed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Kirchick, writing for The New Republic’s blog, directed readers last night to Michael Kelly’s infamous hit job, “Ted Kennedy on the Rocks,” which Kirchick describes as “one of the best pieces of political reportage I have ever read.” Kirchick features a couple of paragraphs from Kelly’s article about Kennedy and Democratic presidential hopeful Chris […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}