Media Is Getting Pissed

While conservatives in the media seem to have little problem wearing their political affiliation on their sleeve, liberals have been conditioned to at least attempt to be objective. That's why it has been so satisfying to see some members of the media who are usually prone to frustrating evenhandedness, come unhinged as a result of the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks. First, Chris Matthews was visibly upset last week on Hardball when interviewing one of the Swift Boat Vets. Then yesterday, on Fox News of all places, Juan Williams and Cece Connelly came to Kerry's defense, or, more accurately, simply pointed out the facts, which, crazy facts, back Kerry up. It certainly doesn't take a liberal to see through the slander, but the passion with which Juan Williams stated the obvious may have given us a glimpse into his true colors. Anyway, here's what they had to say:

Juan Williams:

This is just amazing to me. There is no dispute about John Kerry's heroism in this situation. John Kerry went to Vietnam, chose to put himself in that Swift Boat, what we have here is a group of people whose accounts change from day to day from time to time from situation to situation given whether they're happy or angry or whatever. When it turns out their own contemporaneous records that were the basis for their getting awards are released, which they had to release, it backs up John Kerry's account of what occured...They are lying, Bill. If this were a courtroom, this whole thing would have been thrown out a long time ago. These people have political motivations, they're angry at John Kerry about the fact that he came back and was part of the anti-war movement in this country. They're Bush supporters. Bob Perry, Merrie Spaeth from Texas, are big Bush supporters, they're putting money behind this, they're taking advantage of these men. This is a political conspiracy. In addition, the co-author of this book has slandered the Pope, slandered Jews, slandered Muslims and yet somehow we give them all this attention and credibility and put them on network television. These people are ridiculous.

Cece Connelly:

What are some of the facts that we know? Some of the facts are that Mr. Thurlow, who received commendation on that same day that Kerry did, in his citation as well as Kerry's, it reflects all boats taking enemy fire. And by the way, Mr. Thurlow's citation was written by a guy named Lambert on his boat. What else do we know? We know that everyone on John Kerry's Swift Boat as well as Jim Rassman support his account, which is also shown on the citation for his medals. We also know that George Elliot and Lonsdale stepped forward in 1996 not simply to say he was not a war criminal, they went much further in their rhetoric and praise for him as being courageous.