President Bill Clinton Asks California Voters To Vote NO on Proposition 8
Tells Voters Prop 8: "Not What America is About"
SACRAMENTO – In a telephone call to California voters, President Clinton delivers the following message regarding the unfairness of Proposition 8:
"This is Bill Clinton calling to ask you to vote NO on Proposition 8 on Tuesday, November 4th. Proposition 8 would use state law to single out one group of Californians to be treated differently -- discriminating against members of our family, our friends and our co-workers.
"If I know one thing about California, I know that is not what you're about. That is not what America is about. Please vote NO on 8. It's unfair and it's wrong. Thank you."
The calls from President Clinton went to millions of registered California voters overnight.
The thing that immediately stuck out to me about Palin’s bizarre 1st Amendment comments yesterday was that this didn’t seem like the first time I had her say something like that. It turns out it was not.Here she is a few weeks ago saying something equal parts incoherent and creepy:As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we’ve really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance.And here she is yesterday:
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”
The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.
If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.
This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional. MORE
Let's unpack this a bit.She isn't the only one.
If I understand her correctly -- and with Palin, it's sometimes tough to understand her general incoherence -- the governor believes she should make scurrilous, dishonest, and personal attacks against Democrats. She's afraid, however, that reporters might tell voters she's making scurrilous, dishonest, and personal attacks, and worse, that voters might recoil from her vicious style of campaigning.
And if that happens, politicians in the future might hesitate before launching scurrilous, dishonest, and personal attacks of their own. What a brutal "chilling effect" that would be.
The entire point of the First Amendment is to allow ideas to either flourish or perish in the open air, on their own merits. If your speech has no merit, it dies an entirely natural and well-deserved death. The First Amendment allows Sarah Palin to spew poison. It also allows news outlets, other politicians, and informed citizens to bash her enthusiastically over spewing said poison.
Nothing in the First Amendment claims that you're to be free from people rejecting the things you say. It's so simple a simpleton can understand it, but it's beyond Sarah Palin's grasp. This says all we need to know about her.
Suppose in your neighborhood there are 600 registered voters per machine, while across town there are only 120 per machine. (That's a 5 to 1 disparity, which is what exists in some places in Virginia today.) On Election Day, your line wraps around the block and looks to be a four-hour wait, while in other areas lines are nonexistent.
This ought to be a crime. It amounts to a "time-tax" on your right to vote, and some of your neighbors will undoubtedly give up and go home. This scenario raises three questions: Nationwide, will it discourage tens of thousands, or untold millions? Which presidential candidate and down-ballot candidates might benefit from this "tax"? And what can be done in the next few days?
Voting rights advocates, watching this slow-motion train wreck that could disenfranchise so many minority voters, have filed emergency litigation in Virginia and Pennsylvania demanding that, at the very least, officials be prepared with plenty of paper ballots and reserves of competent poll workers. More litigation may follow elsewhere.
Judges can hold official feet to the fire, but they shouldn't have to. Assigning blame -- whether the fingers are being pointed at Congress or the Justice Department, county registrars or state legislators -- isn't crucial this week. Neither is this the time to focus on the reasons for failure -- whether indifference, incompetence, indolence or animus. What's crucial is that state and local officials nationwide salvage the situation by implementing second-best strategies: For starters, redistribute machines on the basis of voter registration, instead of assuming that minorities won't show up. Stockpile paper ballots, under lock and key, and offer a paper ballot voting option if wait times reach 45 minutes. Train platoons of reserve poll workers and stand by to shuttle them where they are needed. Commit right now to holding the polls open late if necessary. Advertise what you're prepared to do. For heaven's sake, a lot of people bled for this opportunity.MORE
John McCain supporters who believe they haven't gotten a fair shake from the media during the Republican's candidacy against Barack Obama have a new study to point to. Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
If you compared the press coverage of, like, Hitler compared to FDR, would you say that Hitler really didn't get a fair shake from the media? The media was out to get Hitler?I think the idea of an objective press is idiotic to start with. But, even if I didn't, this has got to be the stupidest study since Sarah Palin was "vetted" to be Vice President. After that, it might be the stupidest study since the Project For the New American Century was formed.Fair means objective. Objective means disinterested. It means discerning facts from opinions. It doesn't mean balanced.If I were to say that getting bone cancer is a shitty thing, would an objective and fair media be required to provide balance by quoting someone else who thinks getting bone cancer is awesome? And then let the readers decide for themselves whether bone cancer is good or bad?Context, muthafuckers!MORE
But while the study lends rhetorical support to the conservatives' arguments, it is nearly useless as an actual assessment of how the media covered the campaign.
First off, it is worth noting this little nugget about the study's methodology, buried at the end of the PEJ report: "Talk radio stories ... were not included in this campaign study of tone." PEJ offers no justification for the exclusion of talk radio. Not a word. In what surely must be a coincidence, talk radio skews further to the right than any other medium.
Now, here's PEJ's description of how it assesses whether a news report is "positive" or "negative":
To examine tone, the Project takes a particularly cautious and conservative approach. Unlike some researchers, we examine not just whether assertions in stories are positive or negative, but also whether they are inherently neutral. This, we believe, provides a much clearer and fairer sense of the tone of coverage than ignoring those balanced or mixed evaluations. Second, we do not simply tally up all the evaluative assertions in stories and compile them into a single pile to measure. Journalists and audiences think about press coverage in stories or segments. They ask themselves, is this story positive or negative or neutral? Hence the Project measures coverage by story, and for a story to be deemed as having a negative or positive tone, it must be clearly so, not a close call: for example, the negative assertions in a story must outweigh positive assertions by a margin of at least 1.5 to 1 for that story to be deemed negative.OK ... anyone want to guess what that means in practical terms?MORE
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