This is a stunning editorial, published today in the Los Angeles Times. As background, let's revisit the 1954 Army/McCarthy hearings:
"McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican, chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. His ferocious inquiries, while popular with an anxious public, were denounced by critics as a communist witch hunt. His taste for smearing the targets of his anti-communist campaign, whether guilty or not, spawned the term 'McCarthyism.'
But despite his previous use of televised speeches and news conferences to win support from the commie-fearing electorate, McCarthy was, ironically, about to be undone by TV's exposure during this, the 30th of 36 days of broadcast hearings into 'red influence' in the Army.
'Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,' erupted Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney representing the Army, as he lit into McCarthy. The watching world gasped. No one talked that way to 'Tailgunner Joe.'....
Welch was near tears of righteous outrage at McCarthy's attack.
'Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator,' said Welch, about to earn himself entry in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: 'Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?'"
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/09/tv.mccarthys.50th.ap/***
LOS ANGELES TIMES: EDITORIAL
These Charges Are False ...
The technique President Bush is using against John F. Kerry was perfected by his father against Michael Dukakis in 1988, though ITS ROOTS GO BACK AT LEAST TO SEN. JOSEPH McCARTHY. It is: Bring a charge, however bogus. Make the charge simple: Dukakis "vetoed the Pledge of Allegiance"; Bill Clinton "raised taxes 128 times"; "there are
Communists in the State Department." But make sure the supporting details are complicated and blurry enough to prevent easy refutation.
Then sit back and let the media do your work for you. Journalists have to report the charges, usually feel obliged to report the rebuttal, and often even attempt an analysis or assessment. But the canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false. As a result, the voters are left with a general sense that there is some controversy over Dukakis' patriotism or Kerry's service in Vietnam. And they have been distracted from thinking about real issues (like the war going on now) by these laboratory concoctions....
***
At the moment, Kerry is being punished by the media for taking advice (b) and failing to take advice (a). There was plenty of talk on TV about what Kerry's failure to strike back said about whether he had the backbone for the job of president — and even when he did strike back, he was accused of not doing it soon enough. BUT WHAT DOES BUSH'S ACQUIESCENCE IN THE USE OF THIS ISSUE SAY ABOUT WHETHER HE HAS THE SIMPLE DECENCY FOR THE JOB OF PRESIDENT?
***
NOT LIMITED BY THE CONVENTIONS OF OUR COLLEAGUES IN THE NEWSROOM, WE CAN SAY IT OUTRIGHT: THESE CHARGES AGAINST JOHN KERRY ARE FALSE. OR AT LEAST, THERE IS NO GOOD EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE TRUE. GEORGE BUSH, IF HE WERE A MAN OF PRINCIPLE, WOULD SAY THE SAME THING.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-swiftpress24aug24,1,3137952.story?coll=la-home-headlines
This editorial represents, IMO, even in a year when the Los Angeles Times has been showered with Pulitzer Prizes, its finest hour.
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