Hoyt says Times erred on MoveOn ad

Talk about lip service. More like a monologue than a “dialogue”. This whole thing will blow over, unless Pinch Sulzberger is suddenly seized by an attack of fairness. Compared to keeping the Duranty Pulitzer, this is nothing.

I agree. I don’t think political ads should be banned at all. I also think this was a misstep, albeit minor for MoveOn. Generals are no different than CEOs, are no different than political activists, are no different than news directors or newspaper editors, are no different than professors: They all tell it like they think it is.I’m not on the ground in Iraq. I don’t know if it is actually as bad as we all think it is. I believe it is. But I don’t actually know for sure if Gen. Petraus betrayed us.

Generals are no different than CEOs…They issues orders that send people to their deaths; that result in the deaths of a foe and at times the innocent caught inbetween.It’s a pretty unique job and the sense of duty and honor instilled in those who carry it out a key to keeping something inherently barbaric within some kind of bounds.Destroy that trust at great risk.

Exactly. Meanwhile we get procrastination as policy.No, the policy is the “surge” which is a lot more than more troops, and Gen P says it’s working as of the moment.Dems want Bush to call the retreat so they won’t have too (too placate that left, not because the surge didn’t work).Giuliani or McCain get’s elected it’s a different story. They’ll keep fighting a war that will last a long time. Hillary and Obama will fight too, but only after retreat, attack upon us, and then retailiation with brutal vengence: no Democracy or Nation Building talk from Dems when they lead America into the War-of-last-resort.Back to the NYT, the real story there is not that they gave Moveon.org a discount and violated their own rules on advertizing… it’s why they just didn’t put this instead on the Editorial Page as the paper’s stand… it’s really where it belonged.

Peter Porcupine — MoveOn is not the DNC, so I don’t see why the RCN, of all parties, is the aggrieved one. In addition, there’s been no implication that MoveOn didn’t pay up, so your comment that in your history of placing ads you always paid cash upfront doesn’t really have anything to do with this. – geoff

I don’t see why Hilary needs to repudiate MoveOn…She ought to embrace it just as NYT should have carried it as editorial instead of ad.It would have been more honest for both of them. Hiding behind Moveon.org is deceptive.From Real Clear Politics, “No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV,” noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. “The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us.”That’s the kind of Party Dem’s have become.

Steve, Hell of a point (if they were in fact “liars”.) Some of us have actually interacted with the Senator.

Steve, I predicted it! I belonged to the Grinnell College Alum listserv. Many of the alums had been active with the Dean Campaign in Iowa and they were really a glum bunch when they lost to Kerry.Then they started posting that Kerry wouldn’t be all that bad a candidate because of his war record.Geez, I had remembered sitting in the living room as an anti-war activist teen, with my WWII Vet Dad as tears streamed down his face watching Kerry’s testimony to Congress on TV. I told the alums we would be stuck with that video over and over again during the election…. didn’t they remember it and the impact it had?If they did remember it, they thought it would be received favorably today! All I could think of was my Dad holding back tears, and thought these activists hadn’t learned a thing in 30 years.Kerry would be indicted by his own words……the other thing I remembered was the anonmosity towards Kerry within VVAW. They were using each other back then and Kerry was detested as Kennedy wanna-be… there is a reason why Barry Romo remained silent during the swift boating… that none of those people from Winter Soldier stood besides Kerry in the election. Kerry didn’t want them, and they didn’t want him.That was more telling to me than anything about the anti-war movement. Kerry wouldn’t get help from either side from those years….at least those who knew him well.

Bill,So your dad’s tears justify the Swifties LYING about their serving with Kerry? Interesting…Let’s try another one:Robert Willington, new Executive Director of the Mass. GOP and campaign manager of the VoteOnMarriage anti-gay marriage signature drive, once described gays as the “forces of evil.” Now, the boards and executive leadership of Vote On Marriage and MassResistanceare registered Republicans.Peter Porcupine is a Mass. GOP State Committee member, yet claims to not be anti-gay. Is she just hiding behind VoteOnMarriage and MassResistance?

I thought he was the absolute worse choice because all the stuff he said then was going to get played back, and I didn’t think it was going to replay very well.So, if I read this correctly, you’re saying the Swift Boat smearing of Kerry was OK because you happen to dislike him? Doesn’t that kill your entire argument about MoveOn?

Peter Porcupine said… Too many people scorn the experiences of our fathers. I had one ‘Progressive’ tell me that they were dying off, and weren’t worth ‘courting’ for votes. It is a somewhat pervasive attitude from the far-left towards the military, and entirely misses the honor with which they served and the respect they deserve.Thanks for the reminder of another great real world example: Kerry Healey. You worked on her campaign. Did you repudiate her for this comment:”To extend tax breaks to seniors in order to keep them overhoused and isolated in the suburbs is not necessarily the right answer.” Off topic – it fascinates me that my varied detractors all choose to remain ‘anonymous’. If they are trying to convince me they are legion, they have only succeeded in convining me they are – one or two.The RSC example at 11:30 was meant as an example, not a detraction. Me, I think you and the folks over at RedMassGroup and HubPolitics are the Mass. GOP’s own worst enemies, so are to be encouraged. I just can’t seem to get past the blogger log-in these days.However, you are well known for threatening to sue your detractors, especially ones who reveal your “secret identity.” Aaron Malloy springs to mind. I can see why real detractors would remain anonymous.

Regarding your update, Dan, MoveOn only costs Giuliani if his campaign decides to not be hypocritical.It looks like they’re not taking that road. After all, if you’re a Republican, no one calls you on your hypocrisy.Lane Hudson at FireDogLake gives it a try. Unfortunately, “When Mr. Giuliani’s campaign was called on to pay the difference, therefore avoiding a violation of law, his campaign declined to do so.”

So, if I read this correctly, you’re saying the Swift Boat smearing of Kerry was OK because you happen to dislike him? Doesn’t that kill your entire argument about MoveOn?The SwiftBoaters replayed video of Kerry from Winter Soldier and the Congressional Hearings. I could see that coming and knew the wounds those videos would reopen.If Moveon.org had used Petreaus own words against him it would be comparable maybe but there really two very different kinds of political ads.Kerry’s Winter Soldier stuff with Jane Fonda played alone without any comment would have been devastating enough.My Dad was long passed by the time of the election by the way. I just recall him because it’s a memory of the emotional turmoil from those years: the long haired radical anti-war teen, and the patient Father holding back tears.My Dean, and then reluctant Kerry supporters, friends thought recalling Kerry’s military past was going to be a big plus for Democrats. My recollections of Kerry were just a lot of painful emotions.Besides that, I saw VVAW guys at Vet events, (Romo used to cook sausages at StandDown for Homeless Vets in Humbolt Park) who had been with Kerry, and they didn’t have a kind word for him….for that matter Kerry didn’t seem very inclined to call Barry Romo or VVAW for their support either.Here’s an excerpt from Stacewicz’s 1997 Winter Soldiers – An Oral History Of The Vietnam Veterans Against The War Having read the book and having bumped into some of the players here in Chicago, I new if Kerry’s friends from that time felt like this about him, imagine what a foe would do… frankly this sounded worse than what the Swift Boat guys put out.[Stacewicz:] What did you think of Kerry and his contributions to the organization? SR: Kerry was to me a mainstream politician basically. He was kind of using us. I said, “Go for it you’re welcome to take our venue and go for it.” Linda Alband: lt was mutual use. There was a lot of validity that John brought to the organization: being a Yale graduate, his looks, and he had access to a lot of people we wouldn’t necessarily get in [with]. lt was good for both him and the organization. I always heard all the guys that I worked with talking about him. It wasn’t anything bitter. They didn’t think he used anybody any more than he got used, so it was like this mutual proposition. No one resented that. Barry Romo: We didn’t dislike him. He’s an equivocator. He’s a liberal. He’s a politician. He was liberal, he was rich, he was from Massachusetts, he talked like a Kennedy, he had people cleaning his house that could have been our parents. So, I’m not particularly bent out of shape by the Moveon.org ad either. I think it’s an accurate reflection of what many Democrats and the NYT believe. It’s just that like Kerry, the NYT and Dems sore of equivocate around about who really stands for what.

Barry Romo was right there at Kerry’s side.The Switft Boat ads I saw were replays of Kerry’s testimony.My problem with the Moveon.org ad is this though. If the NYT and Senators believe the ads to be true they are obligated to act.They are obligated to tell the American people we are being lied to by the Military.If they can’t come out and say that truth as they see it, than it just seems like –as VVAW’s Barry Romo said of Kerry– they’re equivocating.That’s a profoundly immoral stance for an institution like the NYT and key Democratic Senators to take in wartime.If the NYT believes this ad, enough to offer a deep discount and violate their own standards on attacks, then it’s serious enough issue that it should have been on their Editorial page instead.

Give me some examples Dan… really… The one that comes clearest to mind is Kerry at the hearings saying he saw soldiers commit atrocities…That ad played over-and-over. It was tough stuff but Kerry was so out-front back in those years there is no way that wasn’t going to come back and haunt him.But like I said, my biggest problem with the Moveon.org ad is the NYT and Dems think he lied they need to get out front and say so. I’m sick-and-tired of Democrats playing themselves as the party of the bamboozled saying they were lied too… …If this General is lying now is the time to say so…very loudly.

Bill, that ad isn’t “true” or “not true”. It presents a thesis, that facts are being manipulated (“Gen. Petraeus is at war with the facts.”) and provides evidence to support it. (“Every independent report on the ground…shows that the surge strategy has failed.”) A few facts are asserted as examples. That the Pentagon doesn’t include death by car bombs in its tally of violence. Or that it’s only assassination if you’re shot in the back of the head but not the front. That there have been more civilian and US military deaths this summer than any other since the war began. The pertinent issue isn’t that some juvenile invoked the obvious rhyme, but whether the Pentagon has adopted a “bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence”, for political reasons.If you concur, then you should indeed speak out, regardless of which party you happen to belong to. If you dispute the thesis, then you’d do better to provide some evidence to that effect (Like, no, car bombs do count in the tally, and here is my evidence. Or, though they don’t count car bombs, there’s a reason for it, which is this.) rather than going off on tangents.

Bill doesn’t really marshall facts. He assinates character and circulates lies. In that regard, he’s the perfect representative for George Bush and Bush’s horrific prosecution of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If he any spine whatsoever, he would have been in Iraq all these years. It’s not too late Bill.

This story just won’t die. Now it’s repeating itself in miniature in Minnesota:http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/09/27/frankens-opponent-undercharged-for-attack-ad/Franken’s Opponent Undercharged for Attack AdPosted by Trish | Sep. 27, 2007, 11:02 amAl Franken is getting a refund. After incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) was underchanged for an ad characterized by Franken as, “criticizing me for criticizing a Senate resolution that criticized MoveOn.org for taking out an ad in the New York Times criticizing Gen. David Petraeus,” the paper decided to even the billing score….Coleman’s ad accused Franken, who has entertained troops in Iraq four times as part of the U.S.O. tour, of undermining the troops by supporting an end to the Iraq occupation.It’s worth clicking through to read Franken’s comments.