Patrick Kennedy: Press Corps Is 'Despicable' For Not Covering Afghanistan War Resolution

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) excoriated the national press on Wednesday during a debate over the war in Afghanistan, charging reporters with shirking their duty to cover the issue and instead focusing on the peccadillos of former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.).

"There's one, two press people in this gallery," he thundered. "We're talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We're talking about war and peace; $3 billion; 1,000 lives and no press! No press!"

The House is debating a resolution written by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), which would require the military to withdraw from Afghanistan within 30 days or longer if it couldn't be done safely that quickly.

"You want to know why the American public is fit? They're fit because they're not seeing their Congress do the work that they're sent to do," railed Kennedy, who is retiring at the end of this term. "It's because the press, the press of the United States, is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that's the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It's despicable, the national press corps right now."

UPDATE: The resolution was defeated by a vote of 356-65, with 60 Democrats and five Republicans voting to end the war.

The roll call can be found here.

Several powerful chairmen -- David Obey (D-Wisc.), Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and George Miller (D-Calif.) -- voted to end the war, and Obey's opposition will be particularly noted by war proponents, given that he controls the purse strings through the Appropriations Committee.

Comments

[PoliticalRockChick]

05:36 PM on 03/21/2010

Like father like son. Here him roar. The young cub is right.

[davidly]

09:03 AM on 03/14/2010

I know you provided the link, but since this is from the angle of Kennedy's rant, you might've made passing mention that he voted against the resolution.

[CkRo]

02:18 PM on 03/13/2010

I'm thinking young Patrick's cognitive abilities have been diminished by his drug usage. The mainstream media are Patrick Kennedy's cup of tea. These are the same left-leaning folks who have propped up the Kennedy family for 50 years. Glad to see you're retiring early Patrick. One less liberal democrat.

[TOPCAT711]

09:59 AM on 03/12/2010

War ? What war ?
Anyone without a family member there could care less.
Those "Support The Troops" stickers on cars are getting kind of tattered.
They might be concerned about the money spent there, though.
Keeping your job, health care, and chasing the almighty $ are more important to most people than a very unpopular war.
Iraq set the table for that.
Sad.

[PoliticalRockChick]

05:37 PM on 03/21/2010

So true.

[hang319]

09:53 AM on 03/12/2010

I totally agree with Mr. Kennedy. The press corps has completely lost sight of its job description. Last night on television the only mention of the Afghanistan war was Mr. Kennedy's rant sandwiched in between full coverage of the Massa crap and the Ensign crimes. I had to turn my attention to American Idol to keep my dinner down.

[k6007]

09:23 AM on 03/12/2010

The "press' corp is despicable.

[James Croteau]

04:27 AM on 03/12/2010

Might want to watch a video on war in Afghanistan.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=354014807434

[M1]

01:14 AM on 03/12/2010

Mr. Kennedy is entirely correct.

[nmaddog7]

01:11 AM on 03/12/2010

It enrages me to see the sarcastic messages making fun of Kennedy, I don't like this guy that much- BUT we need more outbursts about real problems like the inane press- including HuffPost for idiotic celeb and gossip crud creeping into the main areas.
I'm bleeping sick of the robot in chief who seemingly would give a corporate sounding speech if an asteroid was ten minutes away from hitting earths surface. Until this rant, thevrwpubs have owned anger at none existent problems.

[William Kolek]

12:24 AM on 03/12/2010

"Good for you Patrick. It is about time someone speaks their mind and tells the truth, without fear of repercussion."

[SkyCap]

08:51 PM on 03/11/2010

Wow, this was embarrassing. I was expecting a powerful, compelling, passionate speech that would shine light on the injustice...but this was just a squawking, helpless-sounding rant. The content may be true...but, dang...this didn't help the Left wing image.

[tekjensen]

07:51 PM on 03/11/2010

I believe he's right and the Massa thing only proves his point. Is it news? Yes, but it's not as important as what's going on in other areas like the continue health care debate, consumer protection, economy, crumbling infrastructure, declining education system, ect. The problems is these stories have been buried under the increase coverage of these scandals. It's why most of Americans have little political knowledge other then who the president is. They don't know procedure, they don't know the details of the bill, they don't know what their politician actually believe in. It's why Republicans can paint reconciliation as the Democrats going against rules, it's why they think their grandma is going to be killed, and it's why politician are allowed to flip flop without any repercussions. Our news media is supposed to gather FACTS and present BI-PARTISAN views, instead it takes politicians at their word and never bother to follow up on what's really going on. CNN reports, you decide isn't exactly effective if they don't bother to tell their followers when their congressmen are lying and not giving them all the information to make good decisions. Fox's Fair and Balanced. The closest they've ever gotten to that is when they first took the air and usually had guests from the left and right. Now Hannity and Colmes has become just Hannity. MSNBC has bet their success on becoming the anti-FoxNews. Opinion has no place in the news.

[ReedYoung]

08:12 PM on 03/11/2010

Wait, what?

"Is it news? Yes, but ..."

I don't live in his district, so my answer is "no" and even then, I'm not sure I'd care. The wedding thing: if he was as drunk as he said, his comment probably sounded funny, at least until he said it, at the time. And I never chose to serve in the military because by the time I was legal age, the USSR was history and I was very suspicious of our imperial-looking military presence around the world, but I do recall the story of Tailhook, so I'm not so sure the things being said about Massa's behavior aboard ship was out of the ordinary at the time. He seems more like a kook than a bad guy.

To everything else you said ...

"The problems is these stories have been buried under the increase coverage of these scandals. It's why most of Americans have little political knowledge other then who the president is. They don't know procedure, they don't know the details of the bill, they don't know what their politician actually believe in. It's why Republicans can paint reconciliation as the Democrats going against rules, it's why they think their grandma is going to be killed, and it's why politician are allowed to flip flop without any repercussions."

H*** YES!

[middleoftheroad]

07:24 PM on 03/11/2010

The fact is that it is in the news...it was on the TODAY'S NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2010/03/11/pageone/scan/index.html)
He needs a Vacaction bad!

[Thomas Castle]

06:42 PM on 03/11/2010

WAY TO GO MR. PATRICK KENNEDY!! THANK YOU FOR TAKING NOTICE!!

[GeorgeP922]

05:56 PM on 03/11/2010

God Ryan, at least write into your contract that YOU write the headlines, not Danny Shea.

You call this a RANT?

Man becarefull, Shea would love nothing more then ruin your credibility.