Monday Inky Lowlights

The Philadelphia Inquirer has provided more ammunition for yours truly, so I’d better start loading up again, beginning with this laughable Letter to the Editor…

Return Hsu money

I am perturbed that both Gov. Rendell and U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy have decided it is appropriate to donate to charity campaign money they received from a convicted felon.

By donating money given to them by Norman Hsu, who pleaded guilty to felony theft charges in 1992, both Murphy and Rendell are attempting to make themselves look like philanthropists on the earnings of a criminal.

This is extremely poor judgment on their part. To try to use this money to influence public opinion by donating it to charity is unethical. I request both to return Hsu's money to him. It appears he will need it for his legal defense.

Robert L. Ciervo
Newtown, PA

Ciervo is a chronic offender on the pages of the Bucks County Courier Times when it comes to lamenting any single thing whatsoever that Democrats do.

I really have nothing to add here, but I’m only pointing out the mind-numbing stupidity of Ciervo for trying to manufacture yet another non-controversy.

And yesterday, the Inky ran this commentary on the Dan Rather lawsuit which featured this choice item (concerning the Bush National Guard story of course, which the paper and others have dubbed “Rathergate” – ugh)…

Rathergate often is used as ammunition to argue that "bloggers do better than mainstream media." But it really illustrates the very opposite point. Highly placed, responsible officers at CBS made a huge error and were fired. That's called accountability. MSM have it and the Internet doesn't - and doesn't even seem to care.

Ha ha ha – too funny, Inky (let’s see, I’ve been “subscription free” from you guys for about a month, and I’m absolutely lovin’ it). And how funny is that considering that the Inky still doesn’t allow comments to its online opinion columns?

And in your quest to jump on the bandwagon of your ideological brethren who obsessed about broken characters in letters on memos pertaining to Dubya’s national guard antics with said memos being at least 30 years old, you are as guilty as anyone for failing to state categorically that the content of the memos outweighed the other less important issues about the chain of custody of the memos themselves.

Simply put, you’re giving the Malkinites who raised the fuss over the Burkett memos more credit than they actually deserve in your editorial, assuming they deserve any at all. I guess that’s the reason for that petulant, broad-brush remark about bloggers not caring about accountability.

I linked to this a few days ago when the story of Rather’s lawsuit first broke, but I’ll do so again here; it is a HuffPo column by Mary Mapes, the former CBS News producer who shared responsibility for the Bush National Guard story with Rather and others.

In it, she explains pretty well the dynamic of how the freeper sites engorged themselves in triviality that was reported with a straight face by our corporate media, as well as the fact that these same vermin engaged in their usual ugly personal attacks against Mapes and others involved in the story.

And get a load of the so-called internal “independent panel” headed by former PA governor Dick Thornburgh that was assembled by CBS to investigate the story; our former Repug PA governor got himself all exercised by the swear words present on internal memoranda relevant to the story (gee, as if that had anything to do with the charge that the story was bogus).

I think there’s an element of “kiss and make up” here with Rather and Mapes, since Mapes, Besty West (former senior vice president for prime time news programs), Josh Howard (former vice president for 60 Minutes Wednesday), and former senior broadcast producer Mary Murphy were all canned as a result of the story, and the only punishment meted out to Rather was his decision to step down as the anchor of the evening news, and I can recall a bit of resentment over that (again, I don’t think any punishment was deserved upon anyone at all).

But the important thing is that Rather is standing up. As a result of this, I don’t know if he’ll ever work in broadcast journalism again. However, he’s one of the few people with the clout to push back against the right-wing knuckle draggers and the corporate types who think interfering with our right to know constitutes good business.

And he should be applauded for doing so.