Immoral Equivalency

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator just skims the surface of the double standard between coverage of Democrats and Republicans in this article on the Brokaw/Friedman Meet the Press interview and Lord fails to mention the Bay of Pigs, one of the most shameful episodes in American history.

Particularly infuriating is that Kennedy, a completely incompetent playboy, is considered even by academic historians as among the best presidents and Goldwater, whose election probably would have changed the face of the earth for better, is demonized for reasons totally fabricated by the media. FTA

The year after JFK's murder, a beautiful young woman named Mary Meyer, the wife separated from CIA official Cord Meyer, is found shot to death along a canal towpath in Georgetown. She is the sister-in-law of JFK's close friend Ben Bradlee, then the Washington bureau chief of Newsweek, later famous as the executive editor of the Washington Post during Watergate. In the middle of this tragedy, Mr. Bradlee discovers an official from the CIA in his murdered sister-in-law's home rummaging through her belongings. It happens a second time.

Then Mr. Bradlee discovers the object sought by the CIA -- Ms. Meyer's secret diary. The diary tells the startling tale of 20-30 get-togethers for sex with Bradlee's friend President Kennedy, where the two had occasion to smoke marijuana in between trysts. In the White House. Mr. Bradlee is stunned his buddy the president was sleeping with his own sister-in-law. He had no idea. Fair enough. But his reaction once he knew? To do his best to see that this explosive news story never sees the light of day, with the diary destroyed.

In fact, the story does surface -- years later when a source who had seen the diary tips off the National Enquirer -- the National Enquirer! -- and Mr. Bradlee 'fesses up, very disturbed the story is out. He admits that, well, yes -- the story is true. Every word of it.

Coverage at the time any of this actually happened -- which is to say the eve of the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election? A point, you surely would agree, when Americans needed information to make what, in your words, would have been an "informed decision" on the Kennedy-Johnson administration record and also that of the Democratic candidate for Senator from New York -- Robert Kennedy. Zero.

Why? The story was in Bradlee's hands -- the hands of the Washington bureau chief for one of the most influential newsmagazines of the day -- and, said he later: "I never for a minute considered reporting the discovery of the diary and its contents.

Thus the nation and the world was disrupted and millions died including over 50,000 of our soldiers during the most disgraceful period in our nation's history. No doubt Goldwater would have fought the Vietnam war to win and stopped in its tracks the devisive cultural revolution at home.

Goldwater: In 1963 CBS executive Fred Friendly and CBS commentator Eric Sevareid convince Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to sit for a two-hour interview for a proposed CBS documentary called "The Conservative Revival."

Goldwater, wary that CBS was possessed of something he called "liberal bias," hesitated. But persuaded that Friendly and Sevareid were, in Goldwater's words, "gentlemen and men of their word," he went ahead with the interview.

The result? A show called "Thunder on the Right," which focused on the John Birch Society, the Minutemen and, as Goldwater later delicately noted, other "far-right activists." Which is to say, crazies.

A thoughtful profile of the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr. this show was not. Goldwater appeared on screen only briefly, just long enough to link him with the Birchers, a group with which he had not only no connection but had actively opposed.

Said a burned Goldwater afterwards: "In view of their conduct, I would never again accept the word of Friendly or Sevareid."

On the verge of being nominated for president on the Republican ticket, Senator Barry Goldwater is, says CBS journalist Daniel Schorr, heading to Germany for a vacation after the GOP Convention.

Germany? Why Germany? The trip was, said reporter Schorr, "a move by Senator Goldwater to link up" with the far right-wing of German politics. Meaning, of course, the Nazis. Goldwater would not only be consorting with these Nazis, he was scheduled to stay at Berchtesgaden, the infamous country estate of Adolf Hitler.

In fact, Goldwater had no such plans. None. Zero. Zip. But it was a vivid story that successfully added a few brush strokes to the portrait the media and his opponents sought to create (as in the CBS "Thunder on the Right" documentary) that Barry Goldwater was a far-right wing extremist, a nut case.

Said a still angry Goldwater decades later of the attempt to paint him as a Hitler-loving Nazi-sympathizer (Goldwater was a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and a World War Two veteran): "The CBS broadcast was false, and Schorr's was the most irresponsible reporting I've witnessed in my life.

The New York Times followed with an untrue account of its own."

And yet on a national news show, Brokaw, apparently with a straight face, said that people will repeat back to me and take it as face value something that they read on the Internet. And my line to them is you have to vet information. While Friedman opined that the Internet is an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.