AG “Paunch” Sulzberger Fellates Dick
Over at County Fair, Jamison Foser takes the NYT to task for regurgitating Cheney’s appearance on CNN yesterday, almost verbatim:
Dick Cheney isn’t Vice President any more, but the New York Times is still treating his comments as so newsworthy they must be presented without rebuttal. The Times devotes 558 words to Cheney’s appearance on CNN yesterday – 501 of which are devoted to simply quoting or paraphrasing Cheney. The 57 words that weren’t devoted to amplifying Cheney’s arguments didn’t include even a word of rebuttal:
[snip]
That’s it — those are the only words in the article that were spent on anything other than simply telling readers what Cheney said. There was no effort to present the other side, or give readers any indication of whether what Cheney said was true, or misleading, or incomplete.
But Jamison ignores one critical detail (though NY Magazine does not)–the byline:
By A. G. SULZBERGER
The son of Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr, AG Sulzberger, is the author of this masterpiece of hard-hitting journalism.
So the son of the NYT’s publisher was tasked to write a ridiculously solicitous article regurgitating the former Vice President’s propaganda for daddy’s paper.
That’s troubling for a number of reasons. Paunch’s daddy (I’m taking liberties with the family’s naming conventions), after all, was the guy who delayed a story reporting Cheney’s illegal wiretap program for over a year–up until the time James Risen threatened to scoop the NYT with his book. And, at precisely the same time Pinch Sulzberger was bowing to Cheney’s request not to expose the illegal wiretap program, Sulzberger was actively shielding Scooter Libby’s perjury in the name of reporter privilege. From October 2004–just before the Presidential election–until late 2005, Daddy Sulzberger was helping Cheney hide two incidences of egregious law-breaking.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see Paunch taking up the family trade, then, protecting Dick Cheney?
And consider, too, what a departure this is from Paunch’s work on Daddy’s paper thus far. The NY Observer has catalogued Paunch’s extensive work in the (now) four weeks he has worked at the paper–articles on snow and a purim party thrown by one of John Stewart’s writers. And from that, he has graduated so quickly to covering the former Vice President?
It’s hard to imagine this assignment was anything other than an attempt, on Daddy’s part, to make sure Cheney’s appearance yesterday got favorable coverage. Like I said, the Sulzberger trade, protecting Dick.
So now that we’ve learned this Cheney protection racket may continue for multiple generations of Sulzbergers, how long do you think it will really last?
Hmmmmm….must be powerful stuff inside that “man-sized safe.”
BTW, where did the contents of that safe (public records) go?
Outrageous. Simply outrageous.
To answer a question with a question, how long will it take Pinch and Paunch to totally drive the NY Times into bankruptcy, allowing Rupert to buy it and turn it into another News Corp Rag?
The end of this year.
I was not pleased to read NYT writer Alessandra Stanley’s whine about how un-comedic Jon Stewart’s grilling of Cramer was. Claimed that Stewart acted like a “Democratic senator”, and went downhill from there.
I watched the Howard Kurtz video last night that had Tucker Carlson on whining about Stewart being a Democratic Party hack. His feelings are still hurt from Crossfire misfiring.
Some “hack”! He and the TDS staff have had better oppo research than any “real” campaign or news show out there, when it comes to hauling out video clips.
Somewhere today I saw something saying in effect that Cramer had been unfairly ambushed, because he expected a congenial sitdown and was bushwhacked by an angry host.
the repuglitard party has become the largest collection of mentally deranged people since jonestown
Sulzberger hasn’t gotten the news that the Bush/Cheney regime is history.
Do they allow prison inmates to do live interviews?
I predict January of 2011
actually, it all falls apart in the first 8 days of November in 2010
on the first tuesday after the first monday, the cheeney protection racket is going to suffer a fatal blow
the fun part is that the party of lincoln dies with the CPR
oh yeah, and lushbo limpballs’ head will explode …
Not only did Paunch try to protect Scooter and Cheney via Saint Judy’s Privilege Crusade, but they did it with some of the most expensive lawyers in town on the Times’s dime. They shelled out big dollars pursuing a doomed quest — pushing a legal privilege theory that had already foreclosed by Supreme court precedent, while not even pretending to try to get the Supreme Court to take a fresh view.
That would be Pinch who was protecting Judy Judy Judy on the Times’ dime.
I may be mis-speaking, but I think Sebastian’s point is that they weren’t REALLY launching a First Amendment suit. They were stalling–at tremendous cost to themselves (I increasingly suspect they paid Judy’s Bennett bills, given the way Max Frankel told Bennett he had done a good job “for us” in the trial).
If they were making a First Amendment case, they’d be doing it with James Risen, not Judy Judy Judy, and they’d be doing it using novel arguments. Instead, they just ran out the clock.
No question, and you didn’t even touch on Floyd Abrams……
Cause Floyd isn’t cheap either, and he knows how to bring the wood on the First Amendment if that is the goal.
Bingo — and bingo too to bmaz: I’ve basically assumed that the Times (or the Sulzburger family fortune) paid for Bennett. And Floyd don’t come cheap, even when he’s phoning it in. I’d love to get my hands on the Times’ audited financials for that year.
I watched Floyd argue that case. If he weren’t so highly regarded, the panel would have blasted him to smithereens. Incidentally, around the same time, he was trying to pull the same thing — for a bunch of media clients that I think included the times, but certainly included Matt Cooper — in Wen Ho Lee’s Privacy Act suit. That is, he was trying to argue that there should be a shield against civil discovery for reporters’ sources. The D.C. Circuit would have no part of it and the case immediately settled for millions, as the reporters would surely have ratted out some Clinton Administration higher-ups, such as Bill richardson, who, I believe, had a big role int he smear.
Not OT…Steve Rattner has curious connecting and time lines to TheNewYorkTimes and Sulzbergers and…wait for it…Judy Judy Judy. He worked w Judy at NYT-[Washington Bureau?]. Another Woodward?
For that reason I thought he was “Punch”.
They have to protect Cheney because Cheney can nail them to the wall on just how much they and Judy Miller cooperated on Treasongate. (Plus, of course, they really don’t want to revisit just how much aid and comfort they gave Team Bush and the PNAC Platoon on the runup to Iraq.) Yeah, there won’t be any legal penalties, but there’s loss of face, which for Tongue Bath Boy is equally bad.
Cheney is a creepy, not so stealth assassin. Is he showing up to remind us all that he considers himself still quit dangerous? Maybe he is.
Or,
“Little pinch not enough to stop Dick from spewing all over page 15 of the NY Times.”
It may have AG’s byline, but I’ll bet that’s merely a formality, a nominal firewall.
Cheney might as well have written it himself, dictating to Pinch.
A real editor/publisher would have kicked it back at the contributor.
Curiosity. Exactly when did the Sulzberger family start protecting Cheney, and what else was going on at the time?
And what was Dame Judy’s role in the timing?
Devil’s advocate:
This was so not important that you cover it begrudgingly and give it to your greenest reporter. Did not read NYT story on Obama’s statement on Guantanamo because was out of house that day, but you could not miss that Obama is claiming his right to hold these people because of the laws of war. That is not a law
enforcement paradigm. You have covered in a separate story why what Cheney is saying is pure spin.
(My parents were out of town so the paper did not come, but their house cut a mile off the walk to the “Synaplex Shabbat”. Friend was happy to see us)
OT – Per the Senate Judiciary Committee website regarding the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head DOJ’s OLC:
OK, I just read scribe’s comment on the other Cheney thread, and I agree with that. Your greenest reporter may not see that Cheney is making threats of that sort, and that is protecting Cheney. But if your greenest reporter tells it straight a sufficiently cynical reader can see it.
Re your headline on this diary: Marcy, one of the things I love most about you is what a dainty flower you are, always blushing when rude thoughts are expressed and covering your ears when someone accidentally swears.
More, please.
OT – after telling the CIA that it doesn’t matter what anyone did, he’s got their backs, Panetta picks ret Rep Sen Warren Rudman to help him “investigate” the stuff that they are already telling the CIA is just fine for everyone to have been involved in.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c…..hp?ref=fp3
No doubt that’s going to be a worthwhile exercise.
What, Lee Hamilton isn’t available?
Wondered about his worth. Hope Whitehouse and Leahy don’t depend on him too much…
How will the actual Justice Department fit into all of this? Here’s looking forward to Thursday and Dawn Johnson’s confirmation.
Quite a while. We are, after all, talking about a man who shot someone in the face, and the media STILL haven’t interviewed the multiple eyewitnesses to the event. That’s pretty impressive media control.
It’s impressive, but I think it was simply a collective stonewall. Do you think no reporter even asked?
[Bringing to mind the old newspaperman’s mea culpa — at first being called off, next asking to cover the story and being told ‘no’, and finally not even asking]
O/T or back to torture. What is right/wrong with the assertions made here? Thnx.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..Can-Obama-
32 – It makes you think that perhaps where Holder is making his sales pitch, here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200…..n_mvVZ.3QA
to the EU on why they should take GITMO detainees – that we have been torturing for the better part of a decade and destabilizing mentally via human experimentation – that a big part of the sales pitch involves making sure that the EU won’t give legal recourse and access to any of the torture victims released to it, notwithstanding the status of countries as signators to the Torture Conventions.
Sharing all that “info” would almost beg for prosecutions. Of the torturers, if not the “mistakes” who they are shopping to the EU for placement.
Thank you so much for your response. I learn very much at this site and I appreciate your forbearance.
great piece of writing here marcy
anyway to get a progressive rebuttal on the new york times?
I wonder if they would publish your work
Speaking of the Times, Michael Kinsley has a wonderful quip…
“Congratulations to Ross Douthat for inheriting the Bill Kristol Chair in token conservatism at the New York Times. Kristol’s problem was that, despite his sterling intellectual heritage, he turned out to be more of an apparatchik (or, to be generous, a political strategist) than a thinker. That will not be a problem with Douthat, who is the first blogger to break into the upper reaches of the traditional commentariat.”
Who will be the first liberal blogger to ascend?