SwiftVets.com

[Jeff Carrington]

The WaPo must be embarassed into doing its real job. If that can happen it could be huge If there are enough critics. . . anyone who can spare the time: fire something off to incent Michael Dobbs to stay on the story. They're waiting for it to diminish so they can slip away.

Hoping the strange title makes it stand out in the inbox.. . .
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9/3/2004
To: Editor, Washington Post

Of Lice and Men

Robert Burns wrote a quirky poem about the musings of a churchgoer as he contemplates a louse crawling on the expensive bonnet of a pretentiously dressed and comfortably oblivious lady. The ode titled, “To A Louse”, derives its familiarity from the concluding didactic verse:

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An' foolish notion
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us
An' ev'n Devotion

Fast forward from 1785 Scotland to Washington D.C. in the here and now. The weevil crawling on the stylish bonnet of the Washington Post is a well-nurtured bias that slinks its way through nearly the whole script of your reporting efforts to date on John Kerry’s head-on collision with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Examining your to-date sporadic installments of Kerry’s War political commentary, that bug indeed looms large. It must be that the only people who can’t see it by now are those who wouldn’t spy it (or admit it) even if a moose was perched on your hat.

Look at the record. In plain fact, the Post went through some awkward contortions to completely avoid the SBVT story in the first place. To persist in denial of this prima facie indicator of your editorial agenda would really turn your bonnet-bug into Bullwinkle. One wonders what the Post might have done if not for the Swift Vets ads, the flashfire popularity of Unfit for Command, and the rapid lock-on and appropriate persistence of ‘new media’ (cable, talk radio and the internet) in staying with this critical story.

Well, on second thought, one does not really wonder so much. Many of us are depressingly confident of the most likely scenario: we think the Washington Post would have happily spiked it, not because the story didn’t pass the gravity test (way beyond), but because of resident political neuroses gnawing away at reporters and editors. That is the kind of reactionary tunnel vision that quickly decays into pernicious symptoms depending on the importance of the underlying theme. So you--not the American people--are best equipped to decide what the nation really needs to know about the most fundamental character issues and yes, resultant fitness of a man aspiring to be POTUS and commander in chief in an acknowledged crucial phase of the war on terror. Why sure you are!

When does mere bias crystallize into irrational conceit and concealment that can spawn real harm or even unthinkable tragedy? If we’re not there already, then you can see it from here.

The intolerable spectacle of getting trounced on a story that refused to stay boxed up drove you into doing what you surely ought to have done by journalistic reflex and integrity: investigate the Swift Boat claims and counterclaims, with some degree of professional skill and dedication. You are supposed to possess these talents in abundance at the Washington Post, yes? After all you are the wizards of Watergate. You wrote the book on this stuff. Haven’t lost the old fastball, have you?

Alas, at this point we are forced to grade you not on the fastball but the curve: against a baseline of motionless absolute zero, Michael Dobbs has done some initial investigative reporting on at least one piece of the whole puzzle, including the long overdue interviewing and initial collating of forthcoming Swift Boat witnesses. Any archeology at all can seem like a bonanza after many weeks of bizarre avoidance, but no one is yet mistaking Michael Dobbs for Indiana Jones. The Ark of the Coverup--unabridged Kerry military records and journals, not a preposterous surgical microslice--is lying right now about two steps beyond his shoelaces it would seem. Michael may break his ankle if he doesn’t get the blinkers off pretty soon. Meanwhile we are all watching closely and wondering whether the Post indeed still has the insight, but more importantly the will, to see yourself as so many others are beginning to see you due to your sometimes egregious ‘management’ of this story. If that revelation doesn’t happen soon, then your Dusk of Empire may be drawing near, undoubtedly accelerated by what must surely be seen in retrospect as an amazing default by the onetime leaders of broadsheet political journalism on this vitally important, portentous story. The Post will have taken a giant step towards a faded position in the American political forum that you clearly will have earned. The new media will fill the void. Gauging by your handling of the Kerry/Swift Boats story thus far, there can only be a net benefit to sincerity and truth.

Jeff Carrington
West Simsbury, CT

[lrb111]

man, you do pretty work...
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said Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe. "It is inexcusable to mock service and sacrifice."
well, when even the DNC can see it,,,,, then kerry is toast.