'Fortunate Son': Flashback to another smear book... of Bush

[LTR]

Great article about how the media and the Bush family buried this 1999 smear book, which alleged Bush's cocaine use, among other things. The Bushes threatened to sue.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200408200006

In 1999, St. Martin's Press published a book by author James H. Hatfield called Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President. The book, which contained allegations that then-candidate George W. Bush had used cocaine in the 1970s, received barely any media coverage -- until Hatfield's own past came into question, at which point Hatfield, not the allegations in his book, became the media's primary discussion topic during the story's short life.

Fortunate Son, like Unfit for Command, contained false and unverifiable claims about a presidential candidate. Fortunate Son's author, like Unfit for Command's co-authors John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, had serious credibility problems.

While the media virtually ignored Fortunate Son (other than to condemn the book and its author), the Bush campaign was quick to threaten legal action, and many in the media suggested the press had a responsibility to either ignore the book altogether or to debunk its claims. When St. Martin's eventually suspended publication and recalled the book, the Bush campaign lauded the decision as "the right thing to do."

In stark contrast with the treatment given Fortunate Son, the media is heavily covering Swift Boat Vets' allegations. New polling by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey found that more than half of the country has "heard about or seen" the Swift Boat Vets TV ad. "The influence of this ad is a function not of paid exposure but of the ad's treatment in free media," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the survey and of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, explained. "The advertisement has received extensive coverage, particularly on conservative talk radio and cable news channels and has been the subject of some attention in broadcast news as well."

Media ignored Fortunate Son before allegations about Hatfield's past emerged, then focused on Hatfield (not on Bush); media and publishers denounced book

[Democat]

1. Kerry needs to get this message out to all media and all Democrats

There is no excuse for any Kerry supporter to go on any news show without knowing this information. This should be sent out far and wide by the Kerry campaign and our side must be ready to use it.

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. I actually got a copy of Fortunate Son (first it was on the shelves,

then it was off the shelves, then it was back on the shelves). I read it several times. It is not scurrilous. In fact, since the book was published, several stories posited in the book have been corroborated.

Then, as now, I think the two items most likely to make the Bushes nervous were sections on the Bush family's ties with the Bin Ladens (remember, though, that the book was published before 9/11) and on the author's self-admitted conjecture that Bush had been busted for drugs and in exchange for having his record expunged performed community service by working with some inner-city kids.

The book was never going to win a Pulitzer, but compared to works by Coulter, O'Reilly, and Hannity, it should have.