Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

First Draft collates lies told by GW & Laura Bush on one single TV program. There was a time when our newspapers would have treated this as at least an interesting matter, and possibly a serious one. That was the past. I don't expect to read about this in the papers tommorow, do you?

Update: Actually, I should mention that there is one news source that caught at least one of these things earlier today — see this column by one Dan Froomkin, noting that the same Bush now touting the 9/11 commission had previously opposed it. But even if family counts, and even if he works for washingtonpost.com, that's still not print journalism.

I think the lastest MoveOn ad featuring former US Marine Lee Buttrill is superb in terms of content and effectiveness. But I'm somewhat concerned about the way the ad skirts the campaign finance laws. As I understand it — and I'm in no way an expert — the ads can't endorse a candidate, although they can talk about them.

If that's the rule, this ad comes very close to the line. Rather than say “Vote for Kerry” the ad no doubt accurately indentifies the speaker as “Voting for Kerry”.

If the statement is accurate, it's just descriptive. So perhaps technically it's not an endorsement and thus within the letter of the law, maybe brilliantly so. But it can't be consistent with the spirit of the campaign finance rules.

PS. There are a lot of good runner-ups on the MoveOn page, although I'm especially partial to Kenneth Berg

The Daily Howler is almost always at least good. Today, though, the Daily Howler is great: Brit admits that Bush is 'stretching.' But at the great Times, he's just “shrewd”.

Bob Somerby's discussion of Kerry's comments about his Vietnam service, and about Kerry's views on Iraq are so much more straightforward than most of what one sees elsewhere that one wonders what part of the Unthinking Depths inhibit many parts of the major media.

Yet, what Bob Somerby does isn't really rocket science. It's called “basic research”, and “reading”, and “spotting the obvious”. So here's the mystery: why is this sort of relatively simple exposition so rare? And why when it happens is the rest of the world so resistant to it?

I have no idea if the women I had lunch with today are representative of anything, but they were not part of the University and they thought that this ad was very effective and described it to me in some detail. Having now found it on the Internet, I'm surprised — it seems a little heavy-handed to me. But based on this unscientific sample, one target audience seems to love it…