I'm sure by now you heard about the Mickey Kantor smear story from the movie "War Room." You can read it through the link. The point of a smear is to get it out there in the ozone no matter if it's right or wrong.
Anyway, I woke up to the story like most people and was given the video snippet that has since been pulled to check out by a good friend. My first thought was that since the War Room was released in 1993, why hadn't it been used against the Clintons by the right wing noise machine a long time ago? They would never have let something like this get by their antennas.
Rep. Dan Burton from Indiana (who has his own problems) surely would have been all over this back in the day. Remember, this is a man who likes watermelons:
Their leader is Watermelon Dan Burton, who of course got his nickname by inviting reporters to his back yard and shooting a watermelon to prove (how?) that Vince Foster did not commit suicide, a wacko theory he still believes, despite at least four investigative conclusions to the contrary.
I called a friend who has seen the film many times and he refuted the claim outright so I was getting ready to go down to the video store and rent the movie to watch it for myself. I then found another clip on Youtube to watch and it's still not clear what he was really referring to. And then Ben Smith posted this:
I just spoke to D.A. Pennebaker, the director of "The War Room," who said his film had been doctored to produce a widely-viewed YouTube clip.
Now the story has even been pulled off of Drudge and various other sites. My point is that I think there needs to be more responsibility taken by all parties right now on what's happening as the battle continues for the nomination---including the blogosphere--- because this story is so reminiscent of a typical right wing smear tactic. And I'm seeing more and more IP addresses on C&L coming from right wing corporations and organizations which makes me believe that there are a lot of phonies infiltrating our sites to stir it up, so to speak. I know we all have our picks for the presidency and emotions are running high with May 6th primary coming up, but maybe we could take a step back. I know I've had to. Jack Tapper says he didn't post about the "N" word clip, but blames his own culpability on the fact that he is traveling and eating a chicken sandwich.
Were I not currently eating a chicken sandwich at Liberty East Restaurant in Charlotte, NC, while working on a World News piece about the economy and the candidates, I would go to Blockbuster, rent a copy of The War Room and settle this matter as much as possible.
As it is, all I can do is post this to explain why I took down the original blog entry, and re-post it with all the added context above. Not good enough, but the best I can do from Liberty East Restaurant.
This is a reporter from ABC News with access to vast resources at his disposal and his reason for not being accurate is a chicken sandwich? And Buzz Bissinger thinks we're the ones full of sh^t? Media Matters:
If Tapper had put down his chicken sandwich and rented The War Room, he'd know that Mickey Kantor did not call Indiana voters "shit" [..] Media Matters for America did obtain a digital copy of The War Room and downloaded the relevant section. It is provided here and clearly indicates that Kantor is not saying, "Those people are shit"; he is, in fact, saying, "Those people are shitting," presumably referring to the Bush campaign's reaction to the poll numbers he was reading.
It's sad that smart liberals fall for this again and again. Someone feeds bad information to Drudge and all the mainstream media run with it like he's a reliable source, without doing the basic vetting it needs and then the blogosphere piles on, always assuming the worst.
