Pat Buchanan Shows His True Colors to Chris Matthews

Just on Chris Matthews's Hardball on MSNBC:

Chris Matthews says the media are not wrong to want answers from Sarah Palin and the Republicans about Palin's political record.

Buchanan's response: "They don't owe you a damn thing, Chris Matthews."

So now we see in full blaze what most of us already knew: Patrick Buchanan is the same Republican hatchet man he was with Richard Nixon, with the same contempt for the media and democratic process he has shown on and off throughout his career.

The Republicans are so drunk on the what they see as the success of their VP last night, that they think she and apparently McCain are now above the press, which asks questions of candidates on behalf of all Americans.

At last this election is shaping up for what it really is: a contest between the Democrats, who want to extend and enhance our democracy, and the Republicans, who want to limit it at every turn, beginning with their attack on the media.

See also: How Can McCain Protect America with Totally Inexperienced VP? ... A DA (Not) and a Democrat (Not) Address the Republican Convention

And Coverage of Democratic Convention:

Infinite Regress Democratic Convention Coverage from Day Four: Obama Deliver's New Kind of Speech: Calls McCain on "Temperament" ... Al Gore: The Two Lines of History Converge

Infinite Regress Democratic Convention Coverage from Day Three: America Moves Up - Obama Nominated! ... Biden Hits McCain on Everything from Afghanistan to Amtrak

Infinite Regress Democratic Convention Coverage from Day Two: Patrick Buchanan on MSNBC: Hillary Will Campaign Hard for Obama, But Won't Shed Tears If He Loses ... Hillary Speaks Powerfully at Democratic Convention, in a Scene for the Ages

Infinite Regress Democratic Convention Coverage from Day One: Olbermann to Scarborough on MSNBC: "Jesus, Joe, Get a Shovel!" ... Ted Kennedy at 2008 Democratic Convention: JFK Would Be Smiling ... Michelle Obama's Speech: Bringing Home America

Obama Appeals to the Good Sense of Americans in 21st Democratic Debate Tonight

David Gergen on CNN thought both candidates were "pandering," Howard Fineman on MSNBC thought the debate was stale, and Patrick Buchanan, also on MSNBC, thought Barack Obama did not have a very good night ... but I thought it was the ABC-TV questioners who didn't have a very good night, and the candidates made this 21st Democratic debate the best so far. Hillary Clinton was her customarily clear debating self. But Barack Obama made some important progress in his continuing campaign to practice a new kind of politics in this election - one which respects the intelligence and rationality of the American.

Obama was hit with bevy of volleys about not wearing a flag pin, his friendship with Weatherman radical William Ayers, his relationship with Rev. Wright, etc.

And Obama pointed out that this is not what the election is about - and not what Americans are interested in hearing. These discussions do nothing to fix what is wrong with America.

There were some important questions mixed in with this trivia - about taxes, Iraq, soaring gas prices, and the like. Clinton and Obama both answered them well.

But as long as the media insist on harping on why a candidate does not wear a flag pin, the American people will have to work that much harder to get at the issues that count. (Hillary was hit by this harping too, when she was asked about her misreporting of her Bosnia experience.)

Obama has been staking his whole campaign on the Jeffersonian assumption that people are up to this task - on the view of John Milton, who thought that when truth and falsity, triviality and profundity, fight it out on in the arena of public opinion, truth and profundity will win.

It hasn't in the last two general elections, and the media aren't making it easy now, but I'm betting that even if truth doesn't prevail in the Pennsylvania primary next week, it will still make a good showing. And, whatever happens in Pennsylvania, it will prevail in August and, most importantly, in November.

CNN's Jack Cafferty on Ron Paul: Excellent Piece

My friend Matt Caverhill brought this to my attention ...



I've been watching Jack Cafferty since he shared the WNBC-TV nightly news spot with Chuck Scarborough here in New York City - decades ago. Chuck continues to hold down the fort in New York. Jack has gone on to become a trenchant, curmudgeonly, valuable national commentator.

He's at his incisive best in this piece. Asking plain but profound questions. What if we brought the troops home from Korea? They've been there 50 years ... The questions that Ron Paul is asking.

As I indicated in my assessment of the five mainstream television networks a few weeks ago, MSNBC and CNN have by and large done the least wrong to Ron Paul and the democratic process, and have been the most reasoned in their coverage. Indeed, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, and Pat Buchanan have each indicated some kind of support for Ron Paul and his positions.

It's heartening to see Jack Cafferty doing the same, in his inimitable way, on CNN.

Maybe the mainstream media are beginning to come around. Maybe it's not just the Internet any more...

Rating the News Networks in their Election Campaign Coverage

With the Fall at our doorstep, and the lecture I'm giving to my class at Fordham University about the media mistreatment of Ron Paul just a week away, I thought I'd share with you a little list I put together, which ranks the five major TV news networks on their coverage of Ron Paul as well as other presidential candidates these past six months.

Since I'm not omniscient, I may have missed some network errors and abuses. All corrections and additions are welcome in the comment section.

1. CNN: in first place. They've done nothing wrong that I know of, and get kudos for the YouTube CNN debate a few months ago, in which questions came from people who submitted videos to YouTube, rather than so-called experts in the media. CNN decided which questions to air, but this is still a real breakthrough in the democratization of media.

2. MSNBC has in general done a fine job in its reporting of Ron Paul and the other campaigns. MSNBC commentators Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan have been public and explicit in their support of Ron Paul. But MSNBC got off to a bit off a rough start. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, discussing the candidates' positions on the war after the debate of May 4, neglected to mention that Ron Paul has been systematically against the war. They both improved their reporting considerably, shortly thereafter.

3. CBS has done nothing wrong in its coverage of the current campaigns, either, as far as I know. But I put CBS in third place because of its continuing graceless treatment of Dan Rather, who was forced out of CBS after courageously reporting about George Bush's military past, in the election of 2004.

4. Now we take a sharp turn downward with Fox News. Hannity and Colmes denigrated Ron Paul's first place finish in the Fox phone-in poll conducted after the last Republican Presidential debate on Fox - the two claimed that Ron Paul's supporters were multiple-dialing. Not only was there no evidence for this, it turns out a second call from the same phone resulted in a text reply that the vote wouldn't count. O'Reilly, to his credit, did have Ron Paul on his show. But to O'Reilly's discredit, he barely gave Ron Paul a chance to get a word in edgewise.

5. ABC is in the cellar. Worse than Fox, ABC failed to mention on at least one occasion that Ron Paul came in first in its post-debate poll. It removed comments from Ron Paul supporters on its online board, and then proceeded to shut it down. ABC also showed a lone Ron Paul supporter before the Iowa caucus, in contrast to big crowds for Romney, when in fact Ron Paul had big crowds of supporters, too. Then there was Mark Levin, in ABC's radio line-up, who called upon his listeners to call up Ron Paul headquarters with advice that Ron Paul couldn't win. And, just for good measure, ABC spread some its abuse around, and cropped Dennis Kucinich out of a photo Democratic contenders.

The good news for Fox and ABC is that the election campaigns are continuing, and they can change their ways. Actually, Fox has been worse than ABC in the past month, and that may be a sign that ABC is finally seeing the error of its ways.

I'd like to see all five major news networks report the election campaigns truthfully. The American people require no less.

I'll continue to keep you posted.