Later this morning I’m heading to New Haven for a day of research and reporting. I don’t think I’ll be anywhere near former future senator Richard Blumenthal, who is preparing to tell Connecticut voters they should believe him rather than their own lying eyes and ears.
The poor man has spoken “thousands” of times to veterans groups. I sympathize. Under those circumstances, I could totally imagine myself slipping up once or twice and mistakenly saying I’d served as a reconnaissance officer during the first Gulf War.
Nate Silver nails it. Josh Marshall swings and misses. My personal prediction: Blumenthal won’t make it through the Democratic state convention, which is being held in Hartford this weekend. If he can somehow manage to hang on as state attorney general, he’ll be able to count himself very lucky indeed.
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Neil Sagan
Meanwhile Paul Levy is telling the public he won’t resign (nor unlike the believe me not your own lying ears and eyes) despite coping to two admission of heartfelt regret about his own poor judgment (hiring his former student girlfriend and having her report directly to him) which went on for two years.
Why have two trustees resigned over the issue?
L.K. Collins
Notice that the word Democrat is buried in the last paragraph.
In the non-story allegations against Rep. Perry, the (R) had a prominent place in the first paragraph.
Notice too, that the “brilliant” Blumenthal is apparently not going to resign for the misrepresentation of his resume.
Are we looking at a double standard here or no standard at all?
Sean Griffin
I”m confused, L.K…the last paragraph of which story? In the New York Times story that Dan is linking to, the word “Democrat” is “buried” in the third paragraph. And I just did a search for Jeff Perry on the New York Times website and didn’t come up with anything related to his current “scandal.”
Meanwhile, is Joe Lieberman’s “Connecticut for Lieberman” party fielding a candidate?
Duke Briscoe
I’ve had trouble understanding the size of the uproar about this. I think it illustrates two things about current media and public interpretation of the media. First, I think it illustrates the inability of newspaper reporters to write complete factual stories due to time and financial pressures. Second, I think it illustrates the way the public interprets news through their own cognitive biases, particularly in the current partisan and untrusting atmosphere which has been increased by the economic disruption of recent years.
From the CT Mirror story linked above in the main post:
||| One defense, however, is likely to be his long record of accurately referring to his military record. This is not, even as described by the Times, the case of a lifelong fabulist suddenly unmasked. Rather, he is accused of inaccurately describing his record at least twice and leaving a misimpression several other times.
The only reference to his military record on his campaign web site is the second-to-last sentence of his bio: “He served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, honorably discharged as sergeant.” |||
I posted the following comment to the latest NY Times article at their site:
“What does this controversy say about the quality of reporting? I read all the NY Times linked articles, looked at the Times video clip, and the only incident they actually quote and show him saying is a speech where he says “served in Vietnam” versus “served in the Vietnam era”. Weren’t there any other quotes to show a bigger pattern of deceiving the public – or is this just a slip in public speaking or an undesirable but not egregious self-serving vagueness. The NY Times has not published anything showing that he was claiming to be a hero or a pattern of making in-country military service a key selling point of his political campaigns. It is clear that he has done a lot for veterans (according to the Times reporting). Why didn’t the Times provide direct quotes showing an extensive pattern of problematic utterances. This seems like lousy reporting, or as other have suggested it could be a lazy reporter taking advantage of Republican opposition research that was handed to them.”
Bob Gardner
@l.k. collins–
Can you show us what you mean? How about rewriting the first paragraph or two of the Blumenthal story to show us what a non-biased story would look like. Maybe you could do the same with the Perry story.
L.K. Collins
The comment was on Dan’s placement of the political affiliation, not the NYT’s.
I’m quite sure that Dan understood what I was saying….and still does.