The race for the Republican nomination for president has a long way to go, but the winner of the title of Republican Contender Most Unfairly Abused By The Media has probably been wrapped up. It’s Texas Governor Rick Perry, in a romp.
I’m not sure why, exactly. I suppose the combination of a southern, gun-carrying, capital punishment-supporting, openly religious, conservative Republican just has too many characteristics that the typically Democratic, liberal atheist, gun-hating journalists who overwhelmingly populate the newsrooms instinctively want to destroy. They still have an obligation to do it fairly and honestly, however. Where Perry is concerned, fair and honest seem to be forgotten.
Last week I heard David Letterman say that Perry “is starting to look like someone who crawled out from under a painted rock.” This was a reference to the Washington Post’s unconscionable front page “expose” about a hunting lodge where Perry either did or did not hunt before the name “Niggerhead” had been painted over on a rock that bore the longtime name of the area. Most fair commentators have pronounced that story weak and badly conceived, but as the Post no doubt knew it would, the story has attached itself to Perry, creating fodder for cheap-shot artists like Letterman and Bill Maher, and scarring his reputation.
The enmity toward Perry has not abated. Checking the web over the weekend, I found links to stories proclaiming that Perry had come out as a “Birther,” challenging the validity of President Obama’s citizenship. Amazingly, after all these years and all the lies, I still automatically assume that such headlines are accurate. “What an idiot!” I thought. “How could Perry be so stupid as to dive back into that cesspool?”
He had not dived, however. He had been pushed, and then, having gotten out as cleanly as possible, the media lied about what happened….even though the words of Perry’s interview could not reasonably be read to suggest that he was questioning Obama’s citizenship in any way.
Gov. Perry’s alleged “Birther” statements came in this section of an interview with Parade’s Lynn Sherr:
Sherr: Governor: Do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
Perry: I have no reason to think otherwise.
Sherr: That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Perry: Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.
Sherr: But you’ve seen his.
Perry: I don’t know. Have I?
Sherr: You don’t believe what’s been released?
Perry: I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.
Sherr: And?
Perry: That came up.
Sherr: And he said?
Perry: He doesn’t think it’s real.
Sherr: And you said?
Perry: I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.
Perry’s first and last statements are unequivocal. “I have no reason to think otherwise” regarding Obama being a legal citizen, and “It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.” This does not mark him as a Birther, or place him in sympathy with Birthers. Birthers challenge Obama’s legitimacy as president on the ground that he is not qualified under the Constitution. Perry does not. Birthers insist that Obama is not a citizen and demand to see proof sufficient to change his mind. Perry says he has no reason to doubt Obama’s citizenship, and which means he doesn’t doubt it, not that he does.
In between those two statements, the interviewer tries to get Perry to assert what is beyond his ability to know, and indeed beyond Obama’s ability to know. I agree with Perry: I don’t know Obama is a natural born citizen; I don’t even know if I am. I was just a baby. I assume I am, and I have no reason to doubt that I am. I assume Obama is, and I assume he believes he is, and that’s good enough for me. Perry is also right not to debate the issue with Donald Trump. “It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected.” It doesn’t matter. Correct. He’s the President of the United States. Exactly. He’s elected.
End of story. End of issue. Or it would be, if there was a sufficient decency and fairness in the news media.
But no: this interview means that Rick Perry is a Birther, or “flirting with Birthers” or “again raising questions about Obama’s citizenship” in the objective judgment the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, ABC, CNN, The Huffington Post, MSNBC, Reuters, and many more. (And yes, Karl Rove has called Perry a Birther too.)
Disgusting.
It is the American journalist establishment that is beginning to look as if it crawled out from under a rock.
Ethics Alarms 
On the money, Jack. The amazing thing is that even Drudge was splashing this yesterday.
Perry could have just said, “I believe President Obama is an American.”
I don’t disagree with that. Hillary Clinton could have said that too,when she was asked the question in 2008 and essentially phrased her answer like Perry did…yet nobody’s calling her a Birther, and nobody should be. He should have said that. He also shouldn’t have said “distractive”, but we don’t pronounce someone as holding a view that his words explicitly contradict—“I have no reason to believe otherwise”—because he wasn’t more assertive. The key point of the Birther’s slander is that Obama isn’t a legal president. Perry was as clear on that as you would like: He is the President. He was elected.
Do you have a link to what Hillary Clinton said? I looked, and can’t find it. (There are a lot of people claiming that Birthers originated among Hillary supporters, but I was looking for a direct quote from Clinton herself on the matter.)
Perry was very obviously trying to have it both ways — kow-towing to the Birthers by refusing to simply say that he believes Obama is an American, but also trying to avoid seeming like an idiot.
You’re bending over backwards to make excuses for him — in a way you’d never do for a Democrat — but Perry is cannier than your argument gives him credit for. He could have easily put the issue to sleep if he wanted to; instead, he weaseled, so that Birthers could see him as an alley while intelligent conservatives like you could deny that’s what he’s doing.
By the way, Karl Rove has been criticizing Perry for coddling Birthers. Is Rove part of the liberal media conspiracy, too?
No, Rove is just a slimebag.
And your comment about my reluctance to defend Democrats is untrue, and demonstrably so. I have defended Democrats many times against sliming attempts, such as here , when I defended one of my least admired Democrats, Sen. Kerry, against an unfair innuendo by a blogger whom I generally respect, James Taranto (arousing his ire about it too.) You’re a fair guy—I’ll presume an apology.
Accepted.
I see nothing weaselly about Perry’s response whatsoever. On the contrary, you have to be seeking to slime him to find support for Birthers in what he actually said. You can’t get much more dismissive than “it’s not an issue.”.You want him to assert the genuineness of a document he hasn’t seen in person, that even Obama couldn’t vouch for. Why? The birth certificate doesn’t prove (or disprove) anything, as the persistence of the Birther enthusiasm shows. Perry says, “I don’t know if it’s genuine, and I don’t care. He’s the president.”
Be fair.
And by the way, documents aren’t China. China can’t be faked. You are bordering on Ratherism.
The point, which you don’t seem to understand, is that to say “we don’t know that Obama’s birth certificate isn’t a forgery” is getting the burden of proof wrong, just as saying “you can’t prove that China/moon landing isn’t a fake” is getting the burden of proof wrong.
No one can ever prove that Obama’s birth certificate, or any other document, isn’t a perfect fake. It’s not possible to prove a negative.
But there’s no rational reason to believe Obama’s birth certificate is fake. The claim that it’s a fake shouldn’t be treated as credible without strong evidence. The burden is on birthers to provide strong evidence, and they haven’t done so.
And a politician who uses slippery wording to avoid saying the obvious truth — that Obama is a born American, and birthers are idiots — is a deceptive weasel. For the media to truthfully report the implications of Perry’s statements, rather bending over backwards to make excuses for Perry, isn’t dishonest in the least. And it’s certainly not biased to report on the controversial statements said by a major presidential candidate.
In contrast, your method of analysis — putting all your focus on a couple of sentences to avoid explicitly endorsing birtherism, while ignoring that Perry also said things calculated to appease birthers — distorts the story.
Barry, that’s just plain nonsense. If Perry had raised the birth certificate, you might have some point, but he didn’t. It was raised by the interviewer, after Perry said all he needed to say: “I have no reason to think otherwise” regarding Obama being a legal citizen. “No reason” should be taken as no reason.” In that context, the question required Perry to vouch for a document that he factually cannot vouch for. Should he have just said, “I have no reason to doubt that, either.”? Sure. But we read his statements together, “I don’t know whether the birth certificate is authentic or not” and I don’t regard it as a reason to doubt Obama;s citizenship–SEE STATEMENT A. This combined with his conclusion ends the controversy. “It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.”
At worst, what Perry did is in the same ballpark as what Obama did in refusing to condemn outright—as he should have—James Hoffa Jr’s violent and offensive rhetoric about “taking the sons of bitches(meaning Republicans) out.” He didn’t ratify Hoffa’s statement, but he pandered to it—and he IS President. What Obama did was worse than what Perry did, and the msm, except for Jake Tapper, gave him a pass.
Obama definitely should have explicitly criticized Hoffa’s rhetoric, if he was asked about it. (Although generally speaking, I don’t consider that sort of rhetoric, either from the left or the right, to be a big deal — I thought it was kind of silly when liberals made a big fuss about target graphics being used on a map, for instance.)
And Perry should have explicitly criticized the birther nonsense, when he was asked about it.
Taken as a whole, Perry’s statements are an obvious, two-faced attempt to coddle the birthers while not actually agreeing with them. (It’s irrelevant that he didn’t bring the matter up himself; it’s about what he’s said once he had been asked.)
I also think that now that a bunch of right-wingers have criticized Perry’s statement, it’s unfair of you to stick by the claim that the criticism of Perry is just based in liberal bias. Maybe the criticisms are unfair (although I don’t think they are), but they’re clearly not coming just from partisan bias.
There’s a LOT to dislike about Perry, but this isn’t it. As Perry says, it’s a distraction.
Since you presume an apology, I’ll presume you admit that you can’t back up your claim about what Hillary Clinton said.
When I was in college, I’d amuse myself by wondering if China really existed at all; maybe there is no China, and it’s all faked footage and textbooks. Hey, and maybe they faked the moon landing, too. It’s not like I was there and saw it with my own eyes, right?
But the truth is, outside of late-night bull sessions at college, we know China is there — and the moon landing took place — because the conspiracies necessary to fake these events are too implausible to believe in. The idea that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii — which would have require not only forging a birth certificate, but also forging birth announcements in a newspaper and eyewitness reports — isn’t credible to anyone with an ounce of common sense.
A non-weasel answer would have been “I believe that President Obama is a born American, and saying otherwise is ridiculous.” That doesn’t require claiming to be an expert on birth certificates, or examining the certificate in person.
It does require, however, having the guts and honesty to speak the truth, rather than using weasel words to try and avoid the anger of your base.
I personally heard Hillary’s similar answer to the citizenship question. I was struck by it at the time…in fact, the first thing I thought of when I read Perry’s interview was that it reminded me of Hillary’s. I don’t have time to sift through the reports.
All side issues. If you want to say Perry is a weasel, that’s OK…I actually think that’s fairly accurate. But he’s not a Birther. That was the post, and that’s the point. You’re changing the subject. The reports are misleading and dishonest. Choosing not to directly oppose the Birther’s is not the same as endorsing them, and his words preclude that.
And sometimes weaselly =lawyerly. He is literally correct that he does not know what the interviewer wants him to say he knows. Neither do you or I. He could and should have phrased his answer as you suggest—that he didn’t does NOT make him a Birther.
Jack, we’ve been over this before. That you “personally” recall something isn’t proof of anything; Memory isn’t reliable.
If there’s actually a reporter out there saying that Perry has explicitly endorsed Birtherism, then that report is wrong or dishonest. But you don’t link or quote anyone claiming that, and I doubt that any consequential media source has made that claim.
I don’t think he’s a birther, and haven’t claimed he’s a birther. I just think he’s deliberately phrasing his answers to avoid clearly saying the truth, because he’s trying not to alienate birthers.
1. I thought everyone remembered it. I made the reference in passing—you don’t have to believe me. I didn’t imagine it. It’s not worth the time to track down.
2. “Rick Perry goes birther”—The Examiner. Here’s the link: http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/rick-perry-goes-birther What would you call that? ‘Morning Joe’ Mocks Rick Perry Over Birther Statements (VIDEO)” Huffington Post. Perry made no “birther statements.” “Rick Perry Offers Birther Speculation” : ABC. There are others.
3. I agree with your overall assessment. But it was the interviewer, not Perry, who “revived the birther controversy.”
And seriously, I am disappointed and dismayed with your suggestion that I wouldn’t defend a Democrat under similar circumstances. I regard that as a cheap shot, un supportable, and demonstrably untrue. Find me a Democrat that gets mugged and I’ll write about it—and I have. Not the Media Matters type “unfairness”, as in “Fox News says Biden is fearmongering about rape, but doesn’t mention Cheney and the WMD’s”-, which is a typical MM complaint,–real hatchet jobs, like Paul Krugman linking Sarah Palin to Gaby Giffords’ shooting. My critiques are almost exactly balanced between Republican and Democrats; I keep score. Check my 2010 campaign commentary. I have biases, but wanting to shill for jerks like Rick Perry isn’t remotely one of them. It’s an insult, especially to someone in my field, and uncalled for.
1. Jack, I’m not suggesting you imagined it; I’m suggesting you misremembered it. You are a human being; the scientific literature on human beings is overwhelmingly on how unreliable human memory is.
2. Point well taken. On this narrow point, you’re right, I was wrong.
3. Huzzah for us agreeing on something!
4. Although you do (to your credit) criticize both sides of the aisle, I do think your views display a generally conservative bias, Jack.
You tend to criticize liberals and democrats with much more heat, and I think it’s fair to say, contempt, than you do conservatives. (Not 100% of the time, but generally.)
Furthermore, when you do criticize conservatives — as in the post about an unfair attack on John Kerry that you pointed to earlier this thread — you often go out of your way to specify that you think the Democrat you’re defending is contemptible, or to otherwise bring up how awful you think liberals are. Compare that to this post, in which you didn’t criticize Perry at all (although you did criticize him after a lot of pushback in comments.)
For that matter, compare your reaction when NPR dismisses a right-wing employee, versus when they dismiss a left-wing employee.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a standpoint that you write from. I certainly have a left-wing bias, although it hasn’t prevented me from harshly criticizing Obama and other Democrats. But I think your belief that you don’t have any bias, if that’s what you believe, is mistaken.
I completely disagree with your take on this. Why?
Sherr: But you’ve seen his.
Perry: I don’t know. Have I?
Sherr: You don’t believe what’s been released?
Perry: I don’t know.
That’s the epitome of birtherism.
You also completely misrepresent what he said.
Perry’s first and last statements are unequivocal. “I have no reason to think otherwise”
When in the quoted exchange, he explicitly says he isn’t sure: “Well, I don’t have a definitive answer”
I don’t believe that Perry actually believes Obama is not a US citizen, but his statements are pure pandering to the birther crowd. He had the opportunity to shut it down and be unequivocal. He chose not to. Don’t give him credit when its not due.
No, it is NOT “the epitome of Bitherism,” and you know it. The epitome of Birtherism is to claim that Obama was NOT born in the US, and thus isn’t qualified to be President. It is not a document verification debate. You are more precise in your reasoning than this, t. Is he pandering to the birther crowd? That’s wildly overstating it—not when he said, in essence, “This is silly. It doesn’t matter. Who cares?” I’ll concede that it isn’t the ringing rebuke that the Birthers deserve—as Clinton rebuked the Truther—but not rebuking is not the same as endorsing. The headlines were misleading, and that was the post. Questioning the birth certificate is not the same as questioning his citizenship—which Perry explicitly says he does NOT, and it certainly isn’t questioning Obama’s legitimacy in office, which IS the epitome of Birtherism.
Perry says he has doubts about the birth certificate and doubts that Obama is President. That’s birtherism. Do we have to have 2 subsets of birtherism: those that believe and want impeachment vs. those that believe but don’t actively do anything about it? If so, the latter is unethical on top of stupid.
The interview broke down to this
Interviewer: Do you believe true statement X?
Perry: maybe
Interviewer tries to get a definitive statement.
Perry casts aspertions on X
Perry: …but it doesn’t really matter
Perry didn’t say “This is silly. It doesn’t matter. Who cares?” He said “I agree with the faulty premise, but it already occured, so it can’t be changed”
[Perry]explicitly says he does NOT [question Obama's citizenship]
Again, quite the opposite:
Sherr: Governor: Do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
Perry: I have no reason to think otherwise.
Sherr: That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Perry: Well, I don’t have a definitive answer
He explicitly says that he does have questions about his citizenship.
No, it’s the epitome of talking out of both sides of your mouth rather than birtherism. I’ve heard it called “dog-whistle rhetoric”: Saying one thing for the benefit of the masses, but including weasel words and ambiguity to make small factions think you’re talking to them. Very clever. Very dishonest.
Well, I’ll agree it’s attempting to have it both ways, but one of those ways is birtherism.
I don’t really think this classifies as “dog-whistle rhetoric,” as he’s clear in saying that he doesn’t definitely believe Obama was born in the US. He’s not using language X that a portion of the audience will read as Y; He’s actually saying Y.
Personally, I think the media is just being sour over not having Sarah Palin to kick around. If Palin were in the race for the nomination, I think Perry would eventually win (which I have no reason to believe he won’t do anyway*) because there would be SO much focus on her instead.
–Dwayne
* That one just was for you, tgt….
Yes, if Sarah was in the race, she would take the “most abused” title from Perry. Easily.
You know Jack, I dont think I have ever seen YOUR birth certificate.
This undoubtedly influences my views on the topic. I have one, but it sure looks fake to me. Still, I have no reason not to believe I was born here….
I have no reason to think that Jack is not bald.
–Dwayne
Thank you. In fact, I am an elderly Asian woman with the Elephant Man’s disease.
Perry embarrasses himself in every debate. So do most of the other Republican candidates. I’m not a Romney fan, but he seems to be the only one who doesn’t consistently put his foot in his mouth (note I said consistently). Palin looks sane when compared to Bachmann. 9-9-9 makes me want to scream no-no-no! Unfortunately, I think the sad reality is that most truly qualified, highly intelligent, patriotic leaders would NEVER consider public service because they would not expose themselves or their families to the media circus surrounding politics in America today. I don’t blame them. I just wish it were different. So I could watch a national presidential debate without wanting to throw up a little bit in my mouth wondering why the people I’m watching are really all we have to choose from.