NYT's ADAM NAGOURNEY MORAL EQUIVALENCE WATCH

[babylonsister]

I love to see reporters called out for their nonsense. I think it's really important, too, because there's way too much of this going on.


http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2010/03/adam-nagourney-moral-equivalence-watch.html

ADAM NAGOURNEY MORAL EQUIVALENCE WATCH


Adam Nagourney in today's New York Times (emphasis added):

Passage of the health care legislation challenges the heart of the Republicans' strategy this year: To present a unified opposition to big Democratic ideas, in this case expressed in a stream of bristling anger and occasional mischaracterizations of what the bill would do

Yeah, "occasional." I'd say the mischaracterizations of the bill have been "occasional" the way property damage from Katrina was "sporadic." But then, I'm not Adam Nagourney, so what do I know?

Posted under the link for the Nagourney article at Memeorandum right now is a story from the New York Daily News, which quotes Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who wants to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand for her Senate seat:

"This legislation is nothing more than a socialistic power grab of an estimated sixteen percent of our total gross domestic product and comes on the heels of federal intervention in the banking and automobile industries," Blakeman continued. "Where will it end?"

I don't even know why I'm quoting this. Some Republican or other says precisely this every few hours, and that's been true ever since health care legislation started to go through Congress last year. It would take less time to compile a list of Republicans who haven't mischaracterized the legislation this way than a list of who have.

But to Nagourney, the mischaracterizations are "occasional."

He has to say that. He needs to believe it. He couldn't live with himself if he didn't. He has to persuade himself, as do the vast majority of reporters and pundits in the mainstream press, that there's no real difference between the two parties in terms of honesty of rhetoric and willingness to demagogue, even though it seems impossible to imagine that he's unaware of the tsunami of lies we've heard for the past year about health care and other aspects of the Democrats' "socialist," "fascist" agenda.

Much easier to live in denial than to feel he might be under some vague obligation to report the plain truth.

[FrenchieCat]

1. I can't stand that ADAM WHORENAGOURNEY

[elleng]

4. Ditto, Frenchie!

Been that way since ´last´ election.

[FrenchieCat]

5. Yep! Stinky then, and stinky now!

[Teaser]

2. ADNAGS BABY!

.

[Cha]

3. Exactly! Reporters, pundits..mediawhores all have the

same stripes.

Steve Benen calls "occasional" the euphemism of the day.

[depakid]

6. Nagourney belongs on the editorial page

except that no one would particularly care what he had to say there....

Aside from that, the guy's so transparent you can tell the pieces he authors by a quick look at the headline (or a couple of words in a paragraph).

Strange that a gay man would spent so much energy enabling Republicans and disparaging Democrats... but he's been at it for years.