February 21, 2006



Changes to ‘The Daily Howler’

Posted by Eric Jaffa
Thursday January 19th 2006, 8:31 am
Filed under: Government, Media Watch, Free Press

One of the best media-watch websites is The Daily Howler by Bob Somerby.

The Daily Howler frequently criticizes the press for making up stories about Al Gore from 1997-2000 (that he claimed to have invented the internet, that he lied about the novel “Love Story,” that he was advised by Naomi Wolf to wear earth-tones).

For the past few months, The Daily Howler has often been talking about education and how that is covered in the press than other media issues.

Yesterday, Bob Somerby wrote that he is going to start a separate education website in a few weeks, and only update The Daily Howler occasionally, with articles which aren’t about education.

Also in yesterday’s Daily Howler, he accused New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd of hypocrisy.

First he quotes Dowd as writing in yesterday’s Times that Al Gore and John Kerry “could have stopped W. and Dick Cheney before they undid 230 years of American democracy, didn’t, because they allowed themselves to be painted as girlie men. “

Then Bob Somerby notes:

During Campaign 2000, Gore “allowed himself to be painted as a girlie man,” Dowd laments. But she forgets to say who provided the paint—a harpy by the name of Maureen Dowd.

Yes, when it came to painting Gore as girlie, few were more deeply involved than Mo Dowd. Along with Frank Rich, she invented the ludicrous Love Story nonsense back in the fall of 1997. And two autumns later, she stood in the forefront as her class charged Gore with “girlie-man” crimes for dealing with vile Naomi Wolf. Dowd had long had a problem with Wolf, who is smarter, more sincere…than she. Result? When it turned out that Wolf was advising Gore (she had also advised the ’96 Clinton campaign), Dowd invented fake facts and phony quotes, putting the skirts on poor Al. “[W]hen a man has to pony up a fortune to a woman to teach him how to be a man, that definitely takes the edge off his top-dogginess,” Dowd deliciously wrote—reciting the utterly fatuous line the RNC was enthusiastically pimping. Al Gore paid a woman to teach him to be a man! All the flunkies and hacks were reciting—but none with more feeling than Dowd.



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