{"id":14857,"date":"2008-03-11T14:23:27","date_gmt":"2008-03-11T18:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14857.html"},"modified":"2008-03-11T14:23:27","modified_gmt":"2008-03-11T18:23:27","slug":"fox-news-connects-spitzer-and-vitter-controversies-incorrectly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/fox-news-connects-spitzer-and-vitter-controversies-incorrectly\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox News connects Spitzer and Vitter controversies &#8212; incorrectly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not <i>too<\/i> often that high-profile political figures elected to statewide office are caught buying the services of a prostitute, but as luck would have it, we&#8217;ve seen two major examples in the last nine months &#8212; Louisiana Sen. David Vitter (R) and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D).<\/p>\n<p>There are some interesting similarities. Both held public office while hiring prostitutes, both are married, and both are subject to charges of hypocrisy (Vitter for touting &#8220;family values,&#8221; and Spitzer because he prosecuted prostitution as a state Attorney General). But the controversies are hardly identical &#8212; most notably, the statute of limitations had run out for Vitter, while Spitzer may still face charges.<\/p>\n<p>But on &#8220;Fox and Friends&#8221; this morning, Fox News&#8217; Steve Doocy tried to make a different kind of connection. <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2008\/03\/11\/doocy-vitter-hypocrisy\/\">TP has the video<\/a>, which is painful to watch.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Speaking of hypocrisy, when David Vitter, the senator from down South, was caught up in the D.C. madam scandal, of course, the mainstream media said, &#8216;Look, this is just part of the culture of corruption with the Republican Party,&#8217; and, in fact, that led to steep losses in the 2006 congressional elections. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, you&#8217;ve got to wonder whether or not the Democrat [<i>sic<\/i>] Party is going to take a hit with this and also, nationwide not just in New York State, but also nationwide, will the mainstream media talk about this as being a big scandal in the Democrat [<i>sic<\/i>] Party, which it is &#8212; he&#8217;s one of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s superdelegates &#8212; or will they just say, &#8216;Look, it&#8217;s a story about a single governor in one state and he had a problem and now his wife is really mad at him.'&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s been no shortage of analysis and discussion of the Spitzer scandal over the last 24 hours, but this is arguably the dumbest.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nLet&#8217;s count the ways.<\/p>\n<p>1. Doocy insisted that the &#8220;mainstream media&#8221; connected Vitter&#8217;s sex scandal to the Republicans&#8217; culture of corruption. I wish that were true, but it&#8217;s false. In fact, I searched Nexis from the day the Vitter story broke to one month later. The number of mainstream media outlets to use the words &#8220;Vitter&#8221; and &#8220;culture of corruption&#8221; in the same article\/broadcast is <i>zero<\/i>. Doocy&#8217;s imagination is impressive, but he&#8217;s remembering news coverage that didn&#8217;t exist.<\/p>\n<p>2. Doocy was adamant that the Vitter story &#8212; or, more accurately, the media&#8217;s coverage of it &#8212; led to &#8220;steep losses in the 2006 congressional elections&#8221; for Republicans. That, of course, is impossible. The Vitter story broke on July 10, 2007 &#8212; eight months after the elections.<\/p>\n<p>3. Doocy believes this is a &#8220;big scandal&#8221; for Democrats because Spitzer is a Clinton superdelegate. This doesn&#8217;t make any sense. What does Spitzer&#8217;s status as a Clinton superdelegate have to do his sex scandal? Why would one superdelegate&#8217;s personal\/legal controversy reflect badly on Democrats &#8220;nationwide&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>4. If Doocy hasn&#8217;t learned that it&#8217;s called the &#8220;Democrat<i>ic<\/i> Party&#8221; by now, one might be inclined to suspect that he&#8217;s a Republican hack.<\/p>\n<p>Poor Fox News. It must get tiresome to be so wrong so often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not too often that high-profile political figures elected to statewide office are caught buying the services of a prostitute, but as luck would have it, we&#8217;ve seen two major examples in the last nine months &#8212; Louisiana Sen. David Vitter (R) and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D). There are some interesting similarities. Both [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14857","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=14857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}