corrente

At the risk of repeating myself, a golden oldie. This is the moment when I understood that the Times had, at last and completely, broken faith with its readers:

I remember the exact story that made me understand how decrepit, how complicit, and how complacent the Times had become, the moment when things snapped: When I read the story the Times "broke" that showed how the "bourgeois rioters" [like F/Buckhead, back] who intimidated voting officials in Florida 2000 [were] really paid Republican staffers. [The Times] had the video that gave the evidence while the recount was still going on but only published the story well after the Supreme Court selected Bush. So, the answer to the question, Where was the Times when the news was breaking? has, for a long time, been... What? "Nowhere"? "In the tank"?

When will the Times become a news gathering organization again?
(via "Department of Closing the Barn Door After the Horse is Gone," back)

So, when will the Times become a news gathering organization again? The jury is still out. While the Times editorial page has covered Election Fraud 2004 reasonably well (though I can't lay my hand on the series right now) the rest of the paper has been the sloppy, lazy, faux balanced, and whorish publication we've come to know and love.

Witness this week's coverage of Election Fraud 2004.

First, we look at the outright whorishness. From, fantastically, the same magazine that managed to publish Suskind's work (here), we get this odious little piece of "he said/she said" hackery from American Standard's Christoper Caudwell:

But the rebarbative tone of the campaign so far -- from the Swift-boat ads to the ''60 Minutes'' forgeries -- owes less to Iraq or Sept. 11 than to what happened in 2000. Each side seems to believe that there was a brazen attempt to steal the election four years ago. Democrats think it succeeded; Republicans think it failed. One paramount ''issue'' is responsible for the vitriol of recent months: the issue of whether President Bush governs legitimately.

"Seems"? I know not seems.

[Some claim] that the 2000 Florida election was corruptly conducted -- whether through a Republican-engineered miscounting of votes, bureaucratic obstruction (misleading ballots, etc.) or partisanship on the Supreme Court. History will not be kind to this claim, which has a dog-ate-my-term-paper quality: the extravagant profusion of supporting theories argues against its probability, not for it. The equally heartfelt complaints of Nixon supporters in 1960, in the wake of results in Illinois and Texas, are little remembered today.
(via Times Magazine)

Apparently, Caudwell thinks he's the Second Coming of George Will. Since he can use a 75-cent word like "rebarbative," and all. But look at what passes for analysis, in this piece! Caudwell seems to think it's all about feelings—"tone," "brazen," "heartfelt complaints." And people "think" this happened, or that happened. What to do? Caudwell throws up his hands in despair at the extravagant profusion of theories. How lazy! Of course, it's almost impossible to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it....

But, as we know—and Bush would know if he had ever done the 12 Steps—feelings aren't facts. And the facts are that the Republicans did steal Florida, did, therefore, steal the 2004 election, and Bush does not, therefore, govern "legitimately." (Excellent veneer of objectivity; kudos to Caudwell for saying this out loud.) And notice the fact that Caudwell conveniently omits: he talks of miscounting ballots, the butterfly ballot, and the partisan Supreme Court, while never mentioning the one fact that really matters: Jeb Bush set the table for the whole fiasco by disenfranchising thousands of Democratic voters through a "purge" of the rolls—exactly the same gambit he tried again this year ("Jebbie ignored advice to scrap biased felon-purge system," back).

What a piece of work is man. At this point, we, and Caudwell, would do well to remember Okrent's Law: "The pursuit of balance can create imbalance, because sometimes something is true" (back)

And so to the porcelain bowl for self-interestedly lazy and deceptive millionaire pundit Christopher Caudwell. But the Times is also covering [cough] Election fraud 2004 as news. Here are some excerpts from the flaghip News of the Week in Review—truly a "revue" worthy of the Folies Bergere:

Could the country stand another Florida? How deep would the political and psychological damage be?
(via Week in Review)

Why, it's all about feelings again! About psychology! It's almost as if the American Standard commentator and the Times reporter were reading from the same playbook, isn't it?

But scars remain. Questions about the legitimacy of the Bush presidency and the fairness of the 2000 election have never died. Many Democratic voters have nursed feelings of anger and disenfranchisement for the past four years. Partly as a result, the 2004 campaign has been among the most bitter in decades.

Wow, there are those feelings again. How childish of disenfranchised voters to feel hurt! How immature of American voters, watching a slow-motion coup in progress, to be unable to "move on" and accept the result! Why can't they just lay back and enjoy it?

Some scholars and political combatants believe a second contested election could open lasting fissures in American society. They fear that the red-blue political geography of the country could become imprinted on the national psyche for years to come, squelching hopes for bipartisan cooperation in governing the country.

As if. Kinda like waiting for Lincoln Chafee show Tom "Frenchy" DéLay the error of his ways...

This time could be different, [David Herbert Donald, an emeritus professor of history at Harvard] warned. "There was a lot more residual ill feeling...

Those feelings again!

... more of a feeling that 'we were robbed,'...

Twice now! [Though it would be reassuring to know that some ignorant Times copy "editor" altered Joe Jacob's immortal lament "We wuz robbed!" into the anodyne "we were robbed."]

...in 2000 than in 1876," he said. "If we have another cliffhanger in which the court decides the outcome, there will be serious doubts about whether this is the best way to run a government."

If either candidate wins without leading the popular vote, as Mr. Bush did in 2000, there could be serious calls to abolish the Electoral College and make other fundamental changes in the machinery of American democracy.

Um, no. There will not be fucking "serious calls" for anything. What there will be is massive resistance to an illegitimate regime. (Knowing this in advance, will the Times cover the story anyhow? They sure didn't when the illegitimate regime took power the first time, as we have seen.)

There was a bitterness about the 2000 election that persists in a good many Democratic circles, Mr. Donald said, adding: ''That certainly will be revived if there's another dispute."

Oh, there are those feelings again.

Warren Christopher, the former secretary of state who oversaw Vice President Al Gore's legal challenges in 2000, said that the actions of the Supreme Court and some Florida officials that year had, at least temporarily, tarnished the American way of choosing leaders. A second tainted election, followed by more bare-knuckled partisan conflict, Mr. Christopher said, would be far more damaging. He urged both parties to cool their rhetoric and put the nation's interest ahead of partisan advantage.

"A repeat performance would do irreparable damage to the good will and forbearance so essential to a functioning democracy," he wrote in an e-mail message. "For the political parties, 2004 could be one time when winning isn't everything."

Really? Well, who exactly should do the deciding that "winning isn't everything"? The Democrats, "for the good of the country"? Another "gracious" concession speech, this time from John Kerry? I don't think do. Please, let's hope that the Kerry campaign doesn't let poor old doddering Warren Christopher anywhere near their efforts to ensure that the election is truly an election. And if we see the SCLM making Christopher into a pundit, or their "go to" guy (kinda like Susan Estrich, eh?).... We'll know the fix is in.

The Florida dispute, the 36 days of suspense and the United States Supreme Court's pre-emptive decision tested America's faith in its ability to conduct elections, a faith that had gone largely unquestioned since 1876. Richard Nixon chose not to challenge the results when he lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960, despite questions about Democratic vote fraud in Cook County, Ill.

Not true. In fact, Nixon mounted a massive challenge. A false meme propagated by Republicans and, in fact, by Caudwell. Wow, again, huh? It's almost like they're reading from the same playbook!

Grievances about the 2000 election are not confined to one party or one state, but appear to be felt particularly strongly by minorities and the poor, whose votes were disproportionately tossed out in Florida and elsewhere, said Christopher Edley Jr., dean of Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Wow! Imagine that! The poor have "grievances" because their votes were tossed out!

"These huge precinct-to-precinct, county-to-county differences in spoiled ballot rates are intolerable, especially when the differences are so strongly correlated with class and color," Mr. Edley said, adding that if much of the electorate believes that an election result derived from unfair and inconsistent voting methods, "then defeat is both bitter and embittering."

Those feelings again. "Bitter"? No. Justifiably outraged? Yes.

Republicans appear more sanguine about the condition of American democracy and the prospects for the future.

I wonder why!

"If it happens one time, it's an anomaly; a second time, and it's clear there are real problems," said Elizabeth Garrett, director of the University of Southern California-Caltech Center on Law and Politics. "We cannot take this for every election, but if we do have another contested election, electoral reform efforts will have to be taken."

Woe! That's bold, isn't it? The Republicans steal an election a second time, and "electoral reform efforts will have to be taken." Unbelievable? All too believable.

Maybe one of these professors or pundits can tell me why, if a second Bush regime is not legitimate, I, or any citizen, should obey its dictates?