The Washington Post continued to attack Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell on Thursday, highlighting the Republican’s 1989 thesis three times and bringing the paper’s grand total to nine articles in five days. The Post, which recycled George Allen’s "macaca" moment 112 times in the 2006 campaign, featured this headline in the Metro section: "McDonnell's Thesis Is Relevant, Deeds Says: 1989 Paper Highlights Candidates' Differences, Senator Says." [Emphasis added.]
So, the Democratic candidate for governor wants to hype a 20-year-old master’s thesis on the family structure and that automatically makes it news for the Post? Staff reporters Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar used the Metro section article to parrot comments from the Creigh Deeds campaign on the importance of the thesis:
Story Continues Below Ad ↓Deeds said the thesis has helped crystallize differences between the men's records. He said it also proves that McDonnell pursued a "social crusade" during 17 years in the House of Delegates and as attorney general, instead of the economic development that he has made the center of his gubernatorial campaign.
Deeds said that as a delegate, McDonnell sponsored legislation to establish covenant marriage in Virginia four times, an idea in the thesis.
In a separate piece, Metro columnist Robert McCartney regurgitated this line of thinking. He chided McDonnell, who was 34 at the time he wrote a Regent University thesis which asserted that feminists have been "detrimental" to the traditional family: "That response was misleading, to put it mildly. The subject wasn't a high school term paper written by a teenager the week before prom."
McCartney escalated his complaints about McDonnell and conservatism in general:
Unhappily for McDonnell, except for a hard-core minority, voters have made clear in recent elections that they don't want the kind of intolerant policies that he espoused then. They believe that women, including mothers, are welcome in the workplace. They believe that government should let people decide for themselves whether to use contraception. Even Republican grass-roots activists said they support equal rights for gays, except when it comes to marriage.
He added that on the issue of whether McDonnell has changed his views, that point "will probably be contested through Election Day." Certainly, it seems as though the Washington Post will make sure of it. (A third article on the McDonnell thesis appeared in the Virginia Notebook section of Thursday’s paper.)
A November 15, 2006 column by the MRC’s Brent Bozell explained how the Post relentlessly ravaged then-Senator George Allen in 2006 for using the word macaca:
You think I exaggerate? How’s this for exaggeration: By Election Day, 112 Post news stories and editorials had used the word "macaca." But that wasn’t enough. Then came the truly shaky allegations that Allen used the "N-word" during his college days in the 1970s. Still that wasn’t enough. Stories that young Allen stuffed deer heads into the mailboxes of black folks for laughs were deemed as newsworthy history and not merely as hearsay. Reporters like Shear acknowledged that the accusers were Democratic partisans, but that didn’t stop them from spreading them around. Rumors were king; and the "defensive crouch" was established.
Allen was questioned for every allegedly racist bone in his body (including wearing a Confederate flag pin when he was a high school kid – horrors!). He was even pounded in the Post news columns for stealing another kid’s bike in high school and not returning it until the next day – double horrors!
Then Allen gave an interview and complained about the treatment of "his people," the Scotch-Irish rednecks: "Towel-heads and rednecks became the easy villains in so many movies out there." Towel-heads? Clearly this was another Macaca moment, more evidence of Allen’s racist proclivities.
—Scott Whitlock is a news analyst for the Media Research Center.




















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McDonnell should make a
September 3, 2009 - 14:25 ET by mattmMcDonnell should make a public relations event out of using the WaPo to wipe the rear end of an effigy of "no impact man".....
Hey, WaPo, care to look
September 3, 2009 - 14:32 ET by HockeyKidHey, WaPo, care to look into Uhbama's college work? No? Chicken.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
This is how it works...
September 3, 2009 - 14:44 ET by bobthemanThis is how it works... Axlerod has his minions everywhere... this reminds me of the Jimmy Stewert flick - "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" when Willie Taylor uses the newspapers to destroy Smith's reputation.
Politics of Destruction
Oh Really?
September 3, 2009 - 15:25 ET by CobraMan"Unhappily for McDonnell, except for a hard-core minority, voters have
made clear in recent elections that they don't want the kind of
intolerant policies that he espoused then."
Oh really, then explain his political career? You know, those 13 years he spent in the House of Delegates and his recent (well, 2005) election as Attorney General? I guess those 15 years of elected office don't really count, right WaPo?
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus.
The US Supreme Court
Like I said yesterday, if
September 3, 2009 - 16:23 ET by Chris NormanLike I said yesterday, if McDonnell seriously wants to fight this, he should have several thousand of his closest supporters show up at the doorstep of the Washington Post to protest their biased coverage of his campaign and their vendetta against him. They need to put the Post on the defensive and make their coverage the story. A few people won't do - the Post can and will ignore that, But the Post can't ignore at least a thousand people. TYhis sounds probably sounds far fetched and impractical, but until these Republicans start fighting smoke with fire, they may as well curl up in the fetal position while they wait for defeat.
The "Mainstream" Media: By liberals. For liberals.
FOX News is just as bad...
September 3, 2009 - 16:58 ET by jdripperIn 2006 Fox News everyday ran a story in regards to the macaca statement. Britt Hume led the Special Report with it for almost 3 weeks every night. A storm of emails finally got them to stop and they took to castigating other Republicans.
Face it we have no media outlet willing to lie, cheat, steal, or do whatever is necessary to get our candidates electied. We don't have a George Soros. We have people who want to play fair. That is why I am not putting much into the GOP taking back the Congress. The media including FOX will attack and destroy all Republican candidates in the three months going into the elections next year.
Why will FOX do it? So they can smile and thump their chests while saying they were fair and blanaced.
What I would love to see is Michael Steele file a complaint with the FEC that the media are nothing but an extension of the Democrat party. These newspapers who for 30 years have never endorsed a Republican who never write anything negative against Demcocrats. Who attack Republicans day in and day out are providing illegal campaign contributions to the Democrats.
Would be interesting to see the response from the media outlets.
Jack
"If at age 20 you are a conservative then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are a liberal then you have no brains." Sir Winston Churchill
BREAKING NEWS Proof Bob
September 3, 2009 - 18:39 ET by Jack BauerBREAKING NEWS
Where was the Washington Post when Obama refused...
September 3, 2009 - 19:23 ET by jawebster1to release his school records including grades and papers from Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law? Also, where was the Washington Post when Obama refused to release a copy of his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii? Why hasn't the Washington Post run at least a hundred articles highlighting Obama's assertion that "White folks greed runs a world in need."? Perhaps the reason the Washington Post didn't run these articles is because they agree with Obama. Any Republican that subscribes or buys the Washington Post or contributes to it's advertising is aiding and abetting dishonest and biased reporting. Jim Webster
If conservatives quit reading the WaPo
September 4, 2009 - 04:56 ET by TheHistorianIf conservatives would quit reading the WaPo, then the US would benefit by this rag going bankrupt like the NYTimes.
"What experience and history teach is
this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history,
or acted on principles deduced from it."
G. W. F. Hegel