A more modern example of this came in 2004, when Dan Rather, a yellow journalist if there ever was, attempted to derail the reelection of George Bush by bringing up 30 year old allegations that the then Texas Air Guard lieutenant didn't go to his drill's one time. Oh, what a scandal.
Well a more classic example of this comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, by way of this morning's Houston Chronicle. Basically the same, owned by Hearst publishing.
The article was a review of HRC, the recently released bio of the Mrs. Bill Clinton. Most of it was tripe, but I found this part somewhat interesting:
...The book begins with Clinton and her team’s response to defeat in the bitter 2008 presidential primary against the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. It describes the process of her erstwhile campaign aides meticulously rating Democratic members of Congress on their helpfulness in the race, on a scale from one to seven. There was, Allen and Parnes wrote, “a special circle of Clinton hell” for those who stayed on the sidelines or endorsed Obama after the Clintons had helped them raise money, attain a political appointment or get their kid into an elite school.
Yet her us-versus-them approach to patronage and retribution was accompanied by equally old-school graciousness: Clinton made a point of sending 16,000 personalized thank-you notes in the summer of 2008....
Now that is a large number of thank you notes and Mrs Clinton only gave up her election campaign on June 8, 2008. Now an objective, unbiased, journalist would probably find that number a bit large and question it. Of course not in this case, but I did and I ran the numbers.
Assume Mrs Clinton is writing for 90 days and takes a minute to write a single "thank-you note...", then how many minutes a day does it take to do this. Well 16000 divided by 90 equals 177.78. That's just under three hours a day writing thank you notes (assuming they are only one page, she takes a minute and she has an aide address/mail them). Or she uses an auto-pen to write and sign the note, but that's not very personalized. Either the quote from the book and this review is very questionable. Why then wasn't it questioned? I mean, it's not like someone said she shut down a bridge for payback to an opponent.
One of the greatest quotes from one of my favorite books and movies, Inherit the Wind, was when the reporter covering the trail, E. K. Hornbeck, informs the prosecution, Matthew Harrison Brady, "Mr. Brady, it is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." I think that has been forgotten by the likes of the NY Times, Washington Post, et all. Too bad. They have a critical function in a republic, keeping the politicians honest. And now they have shirked it.
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