{"id":7330,"date":"2006-05-05T12:53:39","date_gmt":"2006-05-05T16:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7330"},"modified":"2006-05-05T12:53:39","modified_gmt":"2006-05-05T16:53:39","slug":"patrick-kennedy-is-in-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/patrick-kennedy-is-in-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Kennedy is in the news"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t have anything terribly insightful to add to the [tag]Patrick Kennedy[\/tag] story, though I think this summary sentence<\/a> from The Note sounds about right: “If Congressman Kennedy’s unambiguously described [tag]version[\/tag] of events is accurate, he will be fine. If his version is not the whole truth in some meaningful way, he will be significantly less than fine.”<\/p>\n

It is interesting, however, to see how quickly the story has become a media favorite. You don’t suppose this has anything to do with the fact that it involves a [tag]Kennedy[\/tag], a [tag]car[\/tag] [tag]accident[\/tag], and possible [tag]alcohol[\/tag] use, do you?<\/p>\n

Josh Marshall captured<\/a> the broader dynamic quite nicely:<\/p>\n

But here’s what does get my attention. There’s another pretty tawdry story that’s out there — one about members of Congress getting sauced up at rollicking parties and set up with hookers by crooked defense contractors in exchange for help bagging pricey defense contracts.<\/p>\n

That’s pretty salacious too. You’d expect the press to be all over it. As Justin reported yesterday, the legendary Watergate Hotel has already received multiple subpoenas from federal investigators investigating the hotel’s role in ‘Hookergate’. So this thing’s for real.<\/p>\n

Yet, I’m not seeing any morning show’s running with it.<\/p>\n

And, while the Kennedy story is ‘newsy’ it doesn’t really have any greater policy implications. And the public trust implications are minor. Wilkes-Watergate-Hooker story, on the other hand, is both. It’s salacious, which the press loves. And it’s also directly tied to crooks ripping off taxpayers, probably allowing our service members abroad to have shoddy equipment or defense dollars going to worthless projects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have to admit, I’m a little surprised the prostitutes story isn’t getting bigger play, at least as much as the Kennedy story. The WaPo ran one big item on Wilkes\/Cunningham\/prostitutes last weekend, and the WSJ and the San Diego Union Tribune helped break the story, but considering we’re talking about a story that includes sex, corruption, and possibly several member of Congress, Kennedy’s car accident pales in comparison. For now, it’s getting a lot more ink.<\/p>\n

Just to clarify, I don’t know about Kennedy’s innocence or guilt. He says he was on some medication that made him drowsy, which led to a car accident in which no one was hurt. If that’s true, it’s a non-story. If it’s not, Kennedy has a real problem on his hands.<\/p>\n

But if his last name wasn’t Kennedy, would this be the lead story at CNN.com<\/a> right now? Among others<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t have anything terribly insightful to add to the [tag]Patrick Kennedy[\/tag] story, though I think this summary sentence from The Note sounds about right: “If Congressman Kennedy’s unambiguously described [tag]version[\/tag] of events is accurate, he will be fine. If his version is not the whole truth in some meaningful way, he will be significantly […]<\/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-7330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7330","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=7330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}