Former New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal was in fine outraged form on the latest “Good, Bad and Mad” podcast hosted by Susan Lehman at nytimes.com. Also, reporter Nick Corasanti defended Hillary from a Trump ad charging her with feminist hypocrisy, and Maggie Haberman dumped on the anti-Hillary investigative book “Clinton Cash” without deigning to name the author.
It was all downhill after the podcast's angular-'80s bumper music intro, as Rosenthal, now an opinion writer, trashed Brexit supporters, Trump, the NRA, and both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, as Lehman cheered on his leftist ranting:
Asked about the worst thing he’s read lately, Rosenthal chose the topic Brexit, Britain's upcoming (now successful) vote to leave the European Union: “...the British are maybe going to vote to exit it, which would be terrible for Britain, and bad for Europe, and a gigantic mistake....and the people who want out are, well, if they were American, they’d probably be Trump voters.”
Lehman applauded: “Crisply stated! And what makes you the most mad this week?”
Rosenthal: The most mad this week is, I’m afraid, is Congress again. And the United States Senate on Monday voted down two of the most mindlessly simple and obvious and necessary gun-control measures. Not even gun-control measures, there was the, if you’re on the no-fly list, which is flawed but still, better than nothing, you can’t buy a gun, and they wanted to extend background checks. And they couldn’t even do that after the latest mass murder in the United States.”
On no-fly, the good liberal Rosenthal puts himself against the ACLU, which opposes on civil liberties grounds those “simple and obvious” measures that would restrict the constitutional rights of individuals who find themselves on the no-fly list.
Later Rosenthal accused the National Rifle Association of having “gone from being a perfectly fine gun-safety group and advocacy group” to “the #1 anti-public safety organization in the country.” But on the way there, Rosenthal confessed to having been an NRA member in his youth and sheepishly apologizing to a rather shocked host: “I’m sorry, but I actually, I actually like guns....They make a great noise and they smell good when you shoot them and they make holes in things. Targets.”
Asked about the good news for the week, Rosenthal turned to Donald Trump: “The good news, the good news is that Donald Trump has no money....But the latest reporting was that he has a million dollars and Hillary Clinton’s got like close to 45 or something and so that’s a really good thing.”
Asked what the “who cares?” story of the week might be, he took a closing shot at two Republican senators who had the audacity to run for president: “...Ted Cruz has endorsed Marco Rubio for re-election. Two of the most irrelevant people who have ever set foot on the national political stage are hand in hand, walking off into the sunset, and it ain’t Humphrey Bogart and Claude Raines.”
Reporter Nick Corasanti found an anti-Hillary ad from Trump wanting in Thursday's “Ad From Trump Ally, Citing ’90s Scandals, Depicts Hillary Clinton as Anti-Woman.” The Times might also be unhappy that Trump used its own reporting to attack Hillary Clinton.
An aggressive new ad from Rebuilding America Now, a “super PAC” supporting Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, tries to paint Hillary Clinton, his presumptive Democratic opponent, as anti-woman.
A squinting, subtly nodding Mrs. Clinton is shown in the screen’s left corner, as a female narrator intones: “So who is all for women, until she isn’t? Hillary Clinton.” A photo of Bill Cosby in a hooded sweatshirt appears opposite her, as the narrator pointedly quotes from a Twitter post by Mrs. Clinton responding to the many sexual assault allegations against Mr. Cosby: “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be believed.”
Corasanti does his best to shield Hillary Clinton from the charge of feminist hypocrisy:
While Mrs. Clinton did once privately refer to Monica Lewinsky as a “narcissistic loony toon,” according to the diaries of a close friend that were made public after her death, the ad takes liberties with the January Times article recounting her role in her husband’s 1990s scandals: The article reported that words like “floozy,” “bimbo” or “stalker” were used to describe Mr. Clinton’s accusers, but not that Mrs. Clinton ever used them.
In her original article Chozick hedges, but does write that “the Clinton effort to cast doubt on the women included using words like ‘floozy,’ ‘bimbo’ and ‘stalker,’ and raising questions about their motives.”
Corasanti concluded: “Suggesting that the first female presidential nominee of a major party is anti-woman could prove a tough sell.”
Corasanti embarrassed himself in December 2015 with a “fact-check” of a campaign ad by then-candidate Marco Rubio criticizing Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. As the Weekly Standard wrote about Corasanti’s piece:
Does the New York Times understand that "fact check" is a phrase that has meaning? Because simply noting that Obama would, rather unsurprisingly, disagree with criticisms leveled against him does not constitute a factual refutation.
I know Obama is adored by the media, but shortly after the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11, having the New York Times insulate him from criticism by insisting he's attacking ISIS "harder than ever" -- whatever that means -- is frankly embarrassing.
There was also this bit in Maggie Haberman’s report Thursday on Trump’s speech going after Hillary Clinton. “Trump Unleashes Torrent of Criticism at Clinton.” The sentence about “Clinton Cash,” a devastating book by Peter Schweizer (who the Times doesn’t even name but dismisses as “a Republican author”) is worthy of a Hillary Clinton press release.
Mr. Trump quoted extensively from the book “Clinton Cash,” written by a Republican author who was forced to correct several inaccuracies after the book went to press.
