Whitewash and Smear
The GOP/Media's Different Takes on Politicians
by Tamara Baker

July 2, 2003 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (ap.us) -- The day after Howard Dean turned back Tim Russert's nastiest sucker-punches on Meet the Press, my darling husband pointed out a reprint of a New York Times piece in the paper.

"Uh-oh," he said. "They don't think he did well."

Curious as to who "they" were, I scanned for the byline. Sure enough, it was the work of one Katharine Q. Seelye, forever exposed and immortalized by the Daily Howler website as one of the "Spite Girls," the claque of reporters, mostly females, who were more or less shilling for the GOP during the last presidential race. These ladies were constantly seeking newer and cattier ways to misrepresent Al Gore on the 2000 campaign trail, as Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler pointed out long ago.

The pundits that Seelye caters to have never seen a Democratic presidential candidate they didn't hate, especially on Meet the Press. Bob Somerby brings that up in the June 27th edition of the Howler, where he limns how the pundits trashed Gore's August 2000 MTP appearance, and how they trashed John Edwards' May 2003 MTP appearance. As Somerby notes, the MTP appearances all had one thing in common: Russert made multiple, and serious, gaffes -- and not one pundit mentioned them.

Nor will any pundits mention Mike Allen's June 22nd Washington Post article, wherein he pointedly points out that the tax numbers Russert used to bash Dean were cooked to a fare-thee-well, and left out precisely those segments of the population that stand to benefit the least from them.

And not one pundit will note that, although Russert bashed Dean for not knowing certain military facts and figures down to the last digit, Bob Somerby reminds us yet again that Russert was not so demanding of Candidate George Bush when Bush went on MTP.

Whitewash the Republicans, Smear the Democrats: The GOP/Media's modus operandi, in a nutshell.