innuendo

Unethical Quote of the Week: WSJ Blogger James Taranto

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This werewolf attack on Nazi soldiers doesn't weaken the case that Sen. Kerry didn't deserve his medals.

Alternate title:  “Smearing John Kerry”, Part II. The quote:

“The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth disputed whether John Kerry deserved some of his five medals. A large part of Kerry’s defense was an appeal to the authority of veterans who supported him–one of whom has now been revealed to have received a medal he doesn’t deserve. This doesn’t prove the Kerry detractors were right, but it certainly doesn’t weaken their case.”

–—James Taranto, the usually astute and witty author of the conservative Wall Street Journal blog, “Best of the Web.” He is referring to the child porn conviction and retraction of the Silver Star of  Wade Sanders, who rose to Sen. Kerry’s defense during his 2004 race against President Bush, when The Swiftboat Veterans for Truth claimed that Kerry had lied about his war record.

A pure slime-job, this…well beneath Taranto’s standards, though he does dip low now and then, and as reprehensible an example of attack by unfair innuendo as you are likely to find, from McCarthy to Olbermann to Beck.

“It certainly doesn’t weaken their case.” No, because it has absolutely nothing to do with their case (which was weak and unfair to begin with), and since Taranto is undoubtedly smart enough to know that, this sentence, and the post containing it, was only written to suggest otherwise. Let’s see…what else “doesn’t weaken” the case of those who claim that the honors bestowed on Kerry for wartime valor by the United States of America were undeserved? Hmmm. We have… Continue reading →

To Wisconsin Unions, a Depressed Woman’s Suicide Is Just Another PR Weapon

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

"Oh, no. Poor ..hey, wait a minute! We just might be able to use this!"

“The ends justify the means,” for better or worse, has always been the modus operandi of the American union movement. Back at the beginning of the 20th Century, this often translated into violence, as union leaders used bombs and murder to counter equally vile tactics—or worse—by their industry foes. Union violence is more common today in the threatening than in the actual execution, but the public unions battling Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin have made it increasingly clear that ethics, fairness and truth are not going to stand in the way of their objectives, particularly the objective of winning the battle for public support.

A new low may have been reached with the effort to blame Walker for the suicide of Jeri-Lyn Betts, a 57-year-old teacher suffering from chronic depression, who apparently committed suicide last week.  Continue reading →

Daniel Schorr’s Ethical Legacy

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It was interesting, though a little jarring, to read and hear the outpouring of admiration for the late CBS and NPR journalist Daniel Schorr, who died last week at the age of 93, even as the same sources were decrying the biases of Fox News. For Daniel Schorr was the herald of ideologically slanted journalism, though he never admitted it and was notable for his self-congratulatory dedication to what he called journalistic ethics. His legacy is what we have now: self-righteous journalists who refuse to separate fact from opinion, and whose definition of “fair and balanced” is “expose the bad guys—that is, those who we think are the bad guys.”

Some of the odes to Schorr’s career themselves defy any reasonable definition of objective reporting. During his 25 years at NPR, Schorr comfortably settled into reliably pro-liberal, pro-Democrat reporting, calling, for example, the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, “a judicial coup” by “the Gang of Five, philosophically led by archconservative Antonin Scalia.”

“Some critics of Schorr and NPR felt his analysis veered into opinion — that he had a profoundly liberal take on the world that became more evident over time,” said NPR in its obituary of Schorr.

Gee…How could they think such a thing? Continue reading →

Photo Ethics: Kagan at the Bat

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The Wall Street Journal is being assailed by some gay and lesbian advocates for running an old photo of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, bat raised, waiting for a pitch in a softball game. “It clearly is an allusion to her being gay. It’s just too easy a punch line,” said Cathy Renna, a former spokesperson for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation who is now a consultant. “The question from a journalistic perspective is whether it’s a descriptive representation of who she might be as a judge.”

What???? Continue reading →

Conan on “60 Minutes”: Failing His Own High Standards

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Conan O’Brien went on CBS’s “60 Minutes” this week, and managed to carefully trash NBC and Jay Leno without crossing the boundaries laid out in his agreement with NBC, which prohibited him from “disparaging” the network that treated him so abysmally and paid him 30 million dollars in the bargain. I sympathize with Conan. A “60 Minutes” softball interview (CBS is a competitor of NBC, remember, so it likes Conan, an NBC casualty and victim; “60 Minutes” only does tough interviews with people they don’t like) is good for Conan’s image, helps him publicize his national comedy tour and his new deal with TBS, and best of all, allows him to stick it to the people who did him dirt. This would be hard for anyone to resist, and obviously Conaa couldn’t. Still, it would have been better if he had. Continue reading →

Unethical Questions, Anti-Semitism, and Greenberg’s Chase

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I first encountered the device of the unfounded accusatory rhetorical questions when, as a teenager, I became fascinated by the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. A best-seller at the time was Web of Conspiracy, an over-heated brief for the theory that Lincoln’s War Secretary, Edwin Stanton, and others were in league with John Wilkes Booth. The author, a mystery writer named Theodore Roscoe, was constantly suggesting sinister motives by asking questions like “The sealed records of the official assassination investigation were destroyed in a mysterious fire. Was the War Department afraid of what the documents would prove? Would they have implicated Stanton? We will never know.”  This tactic is on view regularly today, used generously by the purveyors of modern conspiracies, but it is also a regrettably common tool of journalists and historians. Now the eclectic sports journalist Howard Megdal (who also edits a terrific website, The Perpetual Post)  has found a new use for it. His question: “When Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers made a run at Babe Ruth’s season home run record, falling two short with 58 in 1938, was he pitched around because he was Jewish?” Continue reading →