Let’s pause and consider how rich it is that Bush is accusing Kerry of using the “politics of fear,” when he’s the one running with Dick “Our cities are doomed. _Doomed_, I tell you!” Cheney.
On “NPR this morning”:http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgDate=20-Oct-2004&prgId=3 they ran a little spot on the subject, looking at Kerry’s flu chatter and Cheney’s apocalypse chatter. Fair enough — it _is_ silly that Kerry’s trying to make political hay out of the flu shortage, and he deserves to be called on it. But “You won’t get your flu shot and _it’s his fault_!” just doesn’t have the same horrific ring as “You’ll die in a nuclear explosion and _it’s his fault!_” And Kerry’s pulling this nonsense just now, opportunistically, whereas Cheney’s been doing it all through the campaign.
The spot is one of those classic instances of “balance” where equal time and consideration are given to unequal offenses. I realize this sort of thing is normal in the media, but despite “previous frustrations”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000480.html, I still expect more from NPR, and am frequently disappointed.
8 comments
October 20, 2004 at 10:26 am
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Wait a minute, explain to me again why it’s so obvious that the Administration shouldn’t be criticized over its role in the flu-shot problem?
October 20, 2004 at 10:32 am
eric
It’s not their fault. They did the best they could with the intelligence they had available. To get through this crisis they’ll need a lot of good people doing hard work. It’s very hard work. If John Kerry hadn’t voted against crucial vaccine measures…
I’m George W. Bush and I approved this message. And I pray every day, so you shouldn’t mind if the information here isn’t true.
October 20, 2004 at 2:04 pm
nate
Patrick: From what I’ve seen the degree of the Administration’s direct culpability doesn’t rise to a level worthy of making it a central campaign issue. Of course I’m basing that on generic media exposure to the issue; I’m happy to be convinced otherwise.
October 20, 2004 at 3:12 pm
Chris
I love your phrase “equal time and consideration given to unequal offenses.” It seems that our idea of non-partisan and unbiased reporting is that one has to report the same amount of bad stuff about both sides, regardless of the proportion of bad stuff. For example, a recent Time runs down the second debate and points out lies. But they make sure to have three lies per side. So even if one candidate outlied the other ten to three, they would look to be even in this regard. Ugh! A fair and balanced report would be as truthful as possible and if one guy lied more than the other that would be a part of the report.
October 20, 2004 at 3:42 pm
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
It seems to me pretty germane that the administration found out about the impending shortage at the same time as the Brits did. The Brits managed to arrange for alternative supplies. The Bush Administration sat on its rear end.
It also seems to me far from irrelevant that Bush felt compelled, in the third debate, to falsely characterize Chiron as a British company. It’s not. It’s American, and its misbehavior is to some extent a failure of the American regulatory regime.
Neither of these facts have gone unreported in the mainstream media.
Whether this deserves to be a “central” campaign issue depends on what you consider “central.” To the best of my knowledge neither John Kerry nor John Edwards have devoted entire speeches to the issue of flu shots. Rather, they’ve brought up the issue in passing as a way of highlighting the Bush administration’s very real disconnection from the ground-level issues that actually affect normal people’s lives, like, “Am I going to be sick for three weeks this winter?”
This seems entirely fair, not even remotely comparable to Dick Cheney’s “vote for us or terrorists will kill you” approach, and I think it’s quite false to claim that they’re meaningfully similar. Yes, it’s possible that a Democratic administration could bollocks up the administration of flu shots, just as it’s entirely possible that a major terrorist attack on the US could happen on a Republican administration’s watch. The difference between the two is that the latter one already happened. So it seems the height of straining at gnats and swallowing camels to pose Cheney’s and Kerry’s remarks as equal examples of political mendacity.
October 20, 2004 at 4:08 pm
nate
Patrick: You raise a good point — there’s no indication that the Kerry campaign is making the flu a central campaign issue; that just happens to be what the media latches onto, presumably because it’s new & confrontational.
I agree completely with your last paragraph, which is what (I hope) was the point of my entry in the first place.
October 21, 2004 at 7:48 am
Greg
It’s also a bit easier to arrange alternative supplies for a country the size of Britain than one the size of the U.S. Not that it would have killed them to have, you know, tried.
October 22, 2004 at 4:20 pm
PHIL
You’re right. NPR is weak. They’re generally very timid and almsot sound apologetic that they’re taking up your time on the air. I always picture those that during these long useless breaks where they let classical music play on and on someone is comforting the nervous host so they can go back on the air.
Pacifica Radio is the place. Check it out. Some of them are out of their minds but the ones that are on are awesome.