It's MoveOn Money That Matters (updated)

I apologize to everything in the universe for continuing to post on that ad, but alas, it is necessary.

I can’t think of a word to describe how pathetic it is that, in the ongoing effort to avoid actually analyzing and debating the contents of the “General Betray Us” MoveOn ad (though the Washington Post did try to do that here – I think their suppositions against MoveOn are ridiculous, but at least this was an attempt), we are now at a point where we are arguing about the cost of the ad!

To be fair, though, I should point out that the New York Times is merely responding to a request from Freedom Crock, who complained that they didn’t get the same terms for “the response ad” that MoveOn got.

A freeper front organization that placed a $15 million ad buy is complaining about a difference of a few thousand dollars. All to run their commercials for the war.

Are you as repulsed by that as I am?

As Times public editor Clark Hoyt notes here…

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

…

The Times bends over backward to accommodate advocacy ads, including ads from groups with which the newspaper disagrees editorially. Jespersen has rejected an ad from the National Right to Life Committee, not, he said, because of its message but because it pictured aborted fetuses. He also rejected an ad from MoveOn.org that contained a doctored photograph of Cheney. The photo was replaced, and the ad ran.

Sulzberger, who said he wasn’t aware of MoveOn.org’s latest ad until it appeared in the paper, said: “If we’re going to err, it’s better to err on the side of more political dialogue. ... Perhaps we did err in this case. If we did, we erred with the intent of giving greater voice to people.”

For me, two values collided here: the right of free speech — even if it’s abusive speech — and a strong personal revulsion toward the name-calling and personal attacks that now pass for political dialogue, obscuring rather than illuminating important policy issues. For The Times, there is another value: the protection of its brand as a newspaper that sets a high standard for civility. Were I in Jespersen’s shoes, I’d have demanded changes to eliminate “Betray Us,” a particularly low blow when aimed at a soldier.

In the fallout from the ad, Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a Republican presidential candidate, demanded space in the following Friday’s Times to answer MoveOn.org. He got it — and at the same $64,575 rate that MoveOn.org paid.

I should emphasize that a big part of the brouhaha is the fact that the standby rate didn’t guarantee a day that the ad would be placed, even though it was placed immediately. The only way to get the guaranteed placement on the day of the Petraeus/Crocker testimony would have been to pay the full rate.

And as this story notes, MoveOn will now pay the full rate, and is quite fairly insisting that Giuliani now pay the full rate also.

And how ridiculous of Hoyt to admit he’d tell MoveOn to change the word “Betray” in the ad, though I grudgingly admit that that decision is up to them (gosh, what delicate sensibilities).

However, I would take Hoyt more seriously on this if he voiced the same objections to ads depicting plaintiffs as monkeys or an ad in which Rudy! decried politicians “spewing political venom” even though he said this country “will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001” if a Democrat wins the White House next year.

Oh, and by the way, as I noted earlier, I guess it's OK for Flush Limbore to refer to Chuck Hagel as "Senator Betrayus" (here), but don't even imagine casting aspersions on the General, doing his best Ollie North impression for the cameras.

Update 9/25: This is worth it just to see the look on Marsha Blackburn's face at the end of the video when Shuster is thanking her.

Update 9/28 (sorry it's out of order): So of course Shuster did such a good job that MSNBC had to sit on him for a factually incorrect reason (here and here - sigh and sigh...and, unsurprisingly, sigh again, with kudos to Mike Farrell).

Update 9/26: John Ridley at HuffPo has written some borderline stuff as far as I’m concerned, but I haven’t taken issue with any of it until now.

If he wants to accuse the Times of some kind of a double-standard in running the ad…well, I may not agree with him, but I’ll cut him some slack. However, when he starts citing percentage numbers showing a decrease in readership and revenue as a signal that the paper is ready for the bone yard, he starts to sound as ridiculous as Marsha Blackburn.

All newspapers are trending downward in terms of readership and revenue; it really doesn’t make me happy to point that out, but I’m merely stating a fact (Brian Tierney’s laughable “flying pigs” campaign notwithstanding). And to say that the paper stinks now because “Pinch” Sulzberger has supposedly never had to work for anything is childish.

For all its flaws (reporting issues with Ad Nags and “Kit” Seelye from time to time, Michael Powell just about all the time, Leslie Wayne and Sheryl Gay Stolberg on occasion – David Brooks now, forever and always…of course, it’s definitely a stretch to consider him a “reporter” in any way, shape or form), the paper still “raises the bar” above all others. Nobody else touches it.

Update 1 9/27: Oh, and by the way, regarding "the ad," the "Big Dog" gets it (of course - h/t Kagro X at The Daily Kos).