First off, I'm a HUGE fan of the NYTimes.  I think the decline of the newspaper is a terrible thing.  I'm a big time news junkie.  I've been reading the Times everyday for the last eight years.  But I'm also a Native American attorney who has studied Critical Race Theory and am highly sensitive to images of cultural stereotypes.  Imagine my reaction as I came to work early to read the papers and saw the image below before I went to DC District Court this morning for a hearing on Nez Perce v. Kempthorne.

In speaking to David Kirkpatrick for a piece in the New York Times’ ongoing (and going, and going. . .) series “The Long Run,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) contributes to the ever-growing list of leading Republicans’ attempts to dismiss the illegal abuse of detainees at Guatanamo Bay as little more than a mild discomfort or a puckish hazing ritual.

[McCain] likes trading jokes about colleagues with a small group of friends that includes Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. . . . Entertaining guests at his property in Sedona, Ariz., [McCain] invariably drags them for long walks to indulge his passion for bird watching. “If you took all the people at Gitmo, put them in the cabin for the weekend and made them listen to John talk about the birds, they would all spill their guts.” Mr. Graham said.

   
I will agree with Lindsey Graham on one point: listening to John McCain speak is unfailingly tedious—however. . .

Last week there was a bit of an uproar over the AP's announcement that they would be permitting a more personal style of writing in their news reporting.  It's a bit of a shock because the AP is kind of old school when it comes to the who-what-when-where-why of news.  Even though it was some time ago that the AP started disseminating stories with multiple ledes -- straight and more featurized -- this was new.

I don't have the same problem with it some do.  Like Orwell, I think that personal, subjective writing might be the best way to preserve "the moral atmosphere of a particular moment in time," an argument that he makes in a wonderful essay called "Looking Back on the Spanish War."

Nevertheless, I think that the weird hybrid between news and personal writing that we're seeing now is just peculiar, and is evident in a recent NY Times story about Obama abroad.

John McCain has tried hard to rekindle the fickle affections of the media that has now turned to his younger, more virile rival. Chocolate, flowers, love letters, offers of long walks, fire-side chats ... nothing seems to get the attention of these media whores that now crawl Obama like flag-pins on a Republican.

No matter how much he crows, the hens won't pay no heed to the aging Rooster; heck, even Ann Coulter, that old reliable, seems a little distant these days.

The very last straw was when the Grey Lady returned his love letter expressing regret.

Another man would whine endlessly in impotent frustration -- and so McCain tried that as well. It helped a little bit -- he got the media to talk about what an impotent, frustrated whiner he has become.

Crossposted at New Mexico FBIHOP

McCain got an op-ed rejected by the New York Times. McCain's commentary was in response to one in the same paper by Barack Obama.

Here's what David Shipley, op-ed editor of the New York Times, instructed the McCain team to change via e-mail:

the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out
how it meshes with his Iraq plan

For decades, the major three major networks and CNN have all had conservative leaning biases in which they systematically refused to report actual and compelling news that needs to be reported.

For decades, almost every major newspaper in America, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, have refused to print 95% of the actual news that, if reported, would render the Republican Party and the ideology of conservatism obsolete.  Granted, the NY Post is more conservative than the New York Times and the Washington Times is more conservative than the Washington Post but the NY Times and the Washington Post have been right wing rags for decades.

Below are a list of over 88 names of people who spin or have recently spun RW garbage on one of these four networks or one of these two newspapers.  My focus is simply on these 6 media outlets.  Each of them needs to be monitored, held accountable for each and every lie or spin they tell, and most of them should be fired and replaced with real reporters and real journalists.

John McCain's campaign is floundering and desperate. He is bankrupt both financially and intellectually. And nothing illustrates this more than his pathetic attempts at self-promotion through media manipulation. Rather than present his policies and personal attributes to sway a skeptical electorate, McCain has opted to beg for attention from the press and hope they favor him with some attention.

I apologize if this has been written about, but I wanted to add my dollar's worth...

Ok, let's recap: McCain writes an op-ed for the NYT and is rejected for failing to bring something new to the table (a fairly universal problem for McCain's entire campaign strategy) and failing to define "victory".  A reasonable request, no?  (For all the wind that conservatives and right-leaning independents blow asking "What does Obama really stand for?", their horse McCain is a poster-boy for vagueness and lack of specifics. But I digress.)

Then, after neocons cry holy hell over how biased the NYT is (yes, the same NYT that fell in line in the march towards this disastrous war), in steps the
NY Post to the rescue!!!!

The Republicans are having a temper tantrum over the rejection of McCain's Op-Ed for the New York Times, who said there wasn't enough new.

So, once again, we're treated to the Republican's typical complaint:  The Media is biased against them.

It's not like McCain's made a million gaffes, and had few of them covered.  Or is given donuts by the leader of the newswire service upon whom the economizing media relies for more and more material nowadays.  Shall we define why the Republicans need the excuse of bias?

Writer in process of dialing down rhetoric... and it's now set to mildly acidic instead of roaring flamethrower.  I keep the flamethrower private.  It's the right thing to do in polite society.

Morning music:  Steve Kimock Band in Boulder, another show with no date (turn of the millennium-ish).

A quick nod to Miriam at Feministing for discussing reggaeton.  It's hard not to like the music, even when the lyrics are offensive.  This diarist is now in the process of acquiring Ivy Queen.  Liking the music does not have to include liking the words, but it's better when you can like both.  The world would be a better place if everyone were treated equally, and working to create that environment is important.  That's what this Cuban diarist thinks, anyway.

This is the picture:  John McCain refers to the Iraq-Pakistan border.  He's not making our work any harder, is he?  Sure he's qualified.

It's time to dance.
Buenos dias.  

The New York Times has published the entire text of the email editor David Shipley sent to McCain's representative Michael Goldfarb.  Contrary to the implications on Drudge and elsewhere, Shipley makes clear his willingness to publish McCain's piece, but says that it needs revisions.  Here's a bit from the letter I haven't seen in previous dkos diaries on the subject:

I’d be very eager to publish the senator on the Op-Ed page.

However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach.

More on the flip

While progressive bloggers and Democratic strategists spent the weekend and much of Monday slapping each others backs and their own knees over the news coming out of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's office on Saturday (well, out of an interview with Mr. Maliki in the German new magazine Der Speigel, anyway), Republican strategists and members of the McCain Campaign filled that time with much hand-wringing and efforts to spin the Iraqi PMs comments to their own advantage.  The narrative they've settled on:  "If it wasn't for the surge, about which Barack Obama was wrong, we wouldn't be in a position to withdraw in the first place.  Besides, any plan to pull out of Iraq must be based on conditions on the ground, not some arbitrary date set by domestic political pressures."  While volumes could be written pointing out all the wholes in this rhetoric, the point that is veiled by all this nonsense is what Republicans actually believe about the only way to achieve true "victory" in Iraq.  Any plan to withdraw would be seen as a "surrender to terrorists" should it be anyone other than a Republican Commander-In-Chief who gave the orders.

This qualifies as Breaking since it probably isn't anywhere but Drudge right now, from the exclusive.  It's also explosive in what it inserts into the debate.

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES -- less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece,' NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain's staff. 'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.'

McCain is screaming Bias

A top McCain source claims the paper simply does not agree with the senator's Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not "re-work the draft."

Details of the BURN below...  including the actual reason why it didn't run.

Let's keep the updates going in this new diary!  This one is so big, it certainly deserves its own diary.  The New York Times confirming the bombshell:

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: "Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq."

He continued: "Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq."

Because dailykos was started as the Bush administration was preparing to send this country to war, I've decided my first diary entry will start with my own story from that time.

In August 2002, I began my third year of college. One of my courses was Politics of West Asia, and for this class I was required to keep up with all stories relevant to this region in the New York Times. At the beginning of the semester, I opened my Times every day and inevitably found an update of the US operations in Afghanistan.

At some point in September, I started noticing a change in the Times' stories. The coverage of Afghanistan was now on page 2, 3, 4...and on the front page appeared strange articles about Iraq. I say "strange" because they often did not follow the normal Times protocol of having front page stories cover distinct and recent events. Iraq was not complying with the UN Security Council Resolutions—just as it hadn't for years. Sometimes based on vague White House statements, these articles otherwise did not seem to describe any new developments, but had the effect of replacing "Afghanistan" with "Iraq" in the top news items in newspapers around the country.

  Tom Friedman, who gets paid far too much money for what he writes, and takes up far too much valuable editorial space in the NY Times has done it again. 9/11 and 4/11 is his complaint that Bush has wasted too much time while doing nothing that might actually  work with regards to the energy situation. Friedman is 'outraged'

I am reliably told by a Bush administration official that there is an old saying in Texas that goes like this: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”

Could anyone possibly come up with a better description of President Bush’s energy policy? America is in the midst of its worst energy crisis in years and what is the big decision our Decider has decided? Drum roll, please: Our Decider decided to lift the executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country’s shoreline — even though he knew this was a meaningless gesture because a Congressional moratorium on drilling passed in 1981 remains in force.

Well DUH!

Wow, Frank Rich's Sunday NYT Op Ed column, It’s the Economic Stupidity, Stupid, just slams McCain! Despite a somewhat odd discussion towards the end about VP candidates, it's a thing of beauty, with this as the central point:

were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain’s response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl.

Is the MSM starting to get it?

David Brooks tries in his column today to do something I've warned about before. He tries to claim Theodore Roosevelt as a conservative, which he most definitely is not. TR was a liberal, period. I've written about the need to claim liberal Republicans as our own. This is crucial for us as we frame American history as a march, however uneven, toward the triumph of the progressive values we share, and progressivism as being rooted in American history going back two centuries (rather than simply being seen a deviation from 'traditional values' that cropped up in the oft-[unfairly] derided 1960s). Why is this important? Because progressivism has been a winner in the big picture since 1776, and we need to portray it as being a winner. Doing so makes it more likely that progressivism will continue winning. Winners win. Losers lose. It's that simple.

See more after the jump.