Is it some impulse of "respectability" -- or simply an aversion to actual news -- that would lead to this
ridiculous snip from the Klub fur Growth's ad:
"The Bush camp and its allies clearly look forward to campaigning against their eventual opponent as a throwback to the old tax-and-spend days of the party. Conservatives are already running advertisements and directing barbs along those lines at Dr. Dean. A new television advertisement in Iowa produced by the Club for Growth, a conservative group, shows a man and his wife denouncing Dr. Dean's 'tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking' policies."
It's as though the NY Times is bending over backwards to make a deeply shameful attack ad relevant to serious political discourse. For readers not in the blogosphere, they might very well not know that this ridiculous ad continues: "SUSHI-EATING, VOLVO-DRIVING, NEW YORK TIMES-READING,
BODY PIERCING, HOLLYWOOD-LOVING, LEFT-WING FREAK SHOW."
Clearly
this is the newsworthy part of the ad. It's like giving only the first half of a news release that reads "Man pats dog -- and then bites him."
That the ranting spew that constitutes this effort to drag down political discourse includes the NY Times
itself -- what can you do but shake your head?
In my mind, this is just as bad as the sloppy and biased reporting that we pounced on from the AP's coverage of the debate. Especially in the context of the article as a whole.