I need Kossacks to help!
It's time to fight back against media companies who insist upon publishing lies and distortions. Here in New Hampshire The George J. Foster Publishing Company publishes two daily newspapers, Foster's Daily Democrat, which is circulated in Dover, Portsmouth and Rochester, and The Citizen, which covers the communities of Laconia, Gilford, Gilmanton, Tilton, Plymouth, Franklin, Belmont and Sanbornton. Both newspapers are, and have always been as far to the right as the notorious Union-Leader published in Manchester.
This past Sunday Foster's Daily Democrat trashed Barack Obama in an editorial Obama takes an imperial tour of the Old World in which it observed
Obama's grand tour of Europe and the Middle East was the most presumptuous and pompous act in the modern history of American politics.
On Monday The Citizen followed up with John McCain wins in N.H. — again which regurgitated the McCain talking points including:
In describing the situation in Afghanistan, John McCain struck the contrast between himself and Barack Obama boldly.
"I have said I would rather lose a campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Sen. Obama would rather lose a war than lose a campaign."
It concluded:
John McCain's talk is straight talk. He isn't promising things that cannot be achieved. But he is promising to be the kind of leader with whom Americans can best identify — the kind of leader who can restore the trust and confidence of the American people.
The Citizen is published in Laconia where I chair the local Democratic Party. The area has long been a Republican stronghold, but that's changing. In 2006 Laconia elected three Democrats to the New Hampshire House out of a total slate of five, and provided the margin of victory for our newly elected Democratic State Senator.
I've frequently complained to The Citizen about its Republican slant and its propensity to ignore entirely the Democratic Party. Even that, fortunately is changing - a shift that began when I served as editor of a rival newspaper, The Laconia Daily Sun, which during my five year stint grew in circulation from 4,000 to 13,000 while The Citizen saw its circulation decline from 11,000 to 8,000.
Much of the success of the Daily Sun can be attributed to my insistence upon a more objective, if somewhat left-leaning coverage of the news. Sadly, since my departure, it has drifted to the right, believing that if it can capture the remaining readers of The Citizen the great newspaper war will be over.
Two days ago I penned a response to the Editorials that appeared in the Foster Company's publications that took both McCain and the newspapers to task. I forwarded it to the Editor of The Citizen for publication, promising that if he'd print it in it's entirety I would not submit it to my old newspaper, but if he couldn't see fit to publish it, it would appear in his competitor's pages. He agreed to publish it and it appeared in print and online today.
The following is an excerpt from the column No Regard For Truth or Integrity:
Last week John McCain ventured into Rochester, N.H. for a Town Hall Meeting and before a crowd estimated at 700 people managed to embarrass himself, his party, and his country by accusing his opponent of being a traitor while pretending that his own unremarkable career record qualifies him to serve as the Commander-in-Chief of our military and as the Chief Executive Officer of our government.
Senator McCain has earned the respect of a grateful nation for his having endured 5 ½ years of imprisonment and torture in a Vietnamese prison camp. Aside from that, however, he’s done little to deserve the esteem being heaped upon him by a compliant press, although one cannot fail to appreciate how he’s managed to parlay that life-changing experience into a life-long career on the public payroll.
Not quite as flattering is that his military career included the loss of five naval aircraft – one in combat, three during training exercises, and one in an explosion on the deck of the USS Forrestal; or his having graduated 894th out of 899 mates in his 1958 class at the Naval Academy. Nor especially distinguishable was his retirement at the rank of captain after having served over 25 years in the U.S. Navy, a departure prompted by his dim future prospects for promotion.
Although McCain is among the wealthiest members serving in the U.S. Senate, his accumulation of a vast fortune hasn’t been through the dint of hard work, nor derived from the wise investment of his $58,000+ in annual military disability payments and $161,700 annual salary as a U.S. Senator. Rather, he married a wealthy heiress after dumping his first wife, a one-time beauty queen whose physical allure had waned as a consequence of physical injuries sustained in an automobile crash.
I'd like to ask that you continue reading No Regard For Truth or Integrity online at The Citizen. One of the editor's objections to giving ink to Democrats or their activities, ideas, policies, etc. has been that no one is interested. I'd like to disprove that and that's my call to action.
I'd like to flood the newspaper's website with hits to the column. The more, the merrier. Indeed, if Kossacks really crank it up it might crash the site. That certainly isn't the objective, but I'm not sure how many readers their server will handle.
My point is to illustrate that there is interest on the left, and that it's organized.
If you don't want to serve up any hits on the newspaper's website but still wish to read the rest of the column, you can do so on the Laconia Democratic Party's Blog.
If you visit the blog, be sure to leave a comment, for I know the newspaper will be monitoring traffic on that as well.
So please, lend me a hand in completing the transition from Red to Blue in my community.
Thanks fellow Kossacks!