NRO Media Blog, 4:21 pm today:
ABC reporter Brian Ross, who broke the Mark Foley story, hinted to The New York Times that his sources on the story have come from the Republican Party[.]
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In this context, it's worth remembering the [sic] Rep. Rodney Alexander -- who sponsored the page who received the e-mails that started all this -- was a Democrat until he switched parties in 2004. What happened to his staff?
Really? It's worth "remembering"? Or parroting?
The Hotline On Call, 5:52 pm today:
Republicans have been conducting a behind-the-scenes campaign to redirect attention away from themselves. Within 24 hours of Foley's resignation, GOP aides and Republican political operatives began pushing a story that Brian Smoot -- who was Louisiana Rep. Rodney Alexander's chief of staff before the lawmaker switched parties to the GOP in 2004 -- might have been involved in leaking the e-mails to reporters. The GOP operatives have been making the argument to a host of reporters that the leaker, by sitting on the e-mails, acted in a way that could enrage voters.
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Smoot adamantly denied any connection to the e-mails or any other aspect of the Foley case.
UPDATE: After the jump, a response (of sorts) from NRO.
IMDB.com
Fortune has named this year's picks for the 50 Most Powerful Women In Business, and the list, topped by PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and Xerox chief executive Anne Mulcahy, is dominated by CEOs, who take up seven of the ten top slots. There's heavy overlap with last month's Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women rankings (minus the whole ironic twist), and along with the list itself we're treated to sub-categories and profiles of the youngest, the latest rising stars and the highest paid (which, at $26.1 million for Safra Catz of Oracle, is still paltry next to Terry S. Semel's whopping $230.6 mill).
To supplement the rankings, Fortune offers several pages of pro-female features, from "Big Companies where Women Rule" to "The Women of Viacom." But in the midst of all the unbridled estrogen celebrations, we came across a troubling "Tips" section. The headline? "Avoiding the Dreaded B-Word: How women executives can stand up for themselves without being labeled uncooperative, or worse." Worse than uncooperative? What, "bellicose?" The word they're tiptoeing around, of course, is "bitch," the term inextricably linked with successful women in business. From best-sellers ripping female bosses to much-hyped guides offering anti-bitch strategies for up-and-comers, powerful women in the corporate arena are never without reminders of how society tends to view "their kind," and any ambitious female is liable to get the message. But here, in this supposed recognition of the world's most powerful and accomplished, do we really need further confirmation that avoiding bitchiness is one of the major issues plaguing businesswomen, or even an issue at all? Funny how columns with titles like "How To Make Your Employees Like You" never seem to show up next to the larger, male-dominated CEO lists. Though it would be pretty interesting to hear Barry Diller's or Howard Solomon's advice on creating a "nurturing and motherly" work environment.
— Melissa Lafsky
from TVNewser.com
Vanity Fair editor of creative development and former Life magazine director of photography David Friend's new book, "Watching The World Change" looks at the images of 9/11, the stories behind them, and the wider issue of how imagery is perceived — and used — in a post-9/11 world. The book has received a lot of attention since its release, most notably from Frank Rich in his Sept. 10 column making critical assumptions about the subjects of one particular photo (Slate's detective work on the photo here). One of the most interesting things about the book has, in fact, been its website, which has gone beyond book-and-reading information and has become a gathering place for 9/11 memories and reflections with a comprehensive blogroll and frequently-updated blog posts with links, feedback from readers, and even meta-commentary on the photo mentioned above, adding to the understanding of the story behind it and not shrinking from the controversy it spawned. Good stuff.
Yet lost in the shuffle has been a nugget featuring Fox News Channel top dog Roger Ailes, who leads the celebrations of the network's 10th anniversary this week. Friend spoke to Ailes for the book, and got a kind of creepily fatalistic comment from him that we present to you in full now:
There were deeper and more disturbing repercussions [to our having seen the towers fall on live TV], geopolitically and, to many, spiritually. "The implications from a television standpoint," says Roger Ailes, chairman of FOX News and FOX Television Stations, "are simply that: When the end of the world comes, we'll be able to cover it live until the last camera goes out. I believe I mean it literally. If you can witness something like [9/11] by two billion people, live, then there's nothing that can't be covered. And if we get into a world war, with nuclear weapons, I assume we'll be covering it live."Ailes, recognizing TV's corporeal-world role, as it were, at the right hand of omniscience, speaks with a preacher's assurance and without
an iota of irony when pondering the ultimate news story — a real-time Apocalypse Now: "It's horrifying to think about. But maybe God set it up that way. You can either figure out how to live in freedom...and hope, or you can watch yourselves burn to death. Nine-eleven is a warning shot that says: "Look, this can go either way. It's your choice, folks."
It's true; if people can have the presence of mind to keep a camera tilted upward as the towers come down, not to mention head straight into the eye of a hurricane in a fortified truck in the hopes of getting the story, then they probably will keep on shooting the live feed until the live feed goes dead. Even so, the cautionary "moral" of the second paragraph seems rather out of place for someone who has deliberately set up his network as an outpost of a particular point of view, whereon that point of view is presented rather, er, strongly (cf. Bill O'Reilly and dissent-eschewing Sean Hannity). Far be it from ETP to opine on the intentions of the Supreme Being, but we're betting that the motivating higher purpose isn't ratings. Or, at least, hoping. In any event, Happy Anniversary, Roger Ailes! Here's a song for you.
Taylor Marsh
by Taylor Marsh
Dennis Hastert was whining today on Rush. Rush went after Brian Ross hard on the show, though you need a subscription to hear the worst of it.
RUSH: And I like what you said yesterday, if I may editorialize this way, when you said, "Look, somebody knew this long before we knew it. Somebody knew about those instant messages,"...
The Mark Foley affair is once again giving everyone a lesson in the importance of the Internet, and how it moves the story forward and makes it challenging to rewrite it backward: First, we note that Foley's official website has been taken down lickety-split, but has been saved in phantom form thanks to Google cache. Meanwhile, C-SPAN has pulled a nugget out of the archive, putting Foley's upbeat "Tribute To Pages" speech from 2002 front and center on the website (C-SPAN had apparently received quite a few requests for this footage from broadcast outlets, and apparently it's already made the rounds of the evening news shows). RealPlayer link here; doesn't he just seem so innocent and vulnerable, just waiting to be victimized by knowing, plotting pages, Matt Drudge?
Meanwhile, on "Reliable Sources" this week Salon's Joan Walsh noted how deftly ABC had used the Internet to advance the story by publishing the shocking emails and IMs:
They went with them in a quick way, which the Web lets you do. And then they saw that more people came forward, that there was a lot more evidence out there. And I think that was a completely defensible thing to do. The story came together, and Foley's career fell apart in a matter of hours. And that's because there was plenty of evidence.
Once again, an amazing example of the newsgathering potential of the web, and how a news outlet can serve as both a provider of information and a clearinghouse for incoming intel. All in a matter of days. Amazing. But, good thing Foley's website is no longer online!
Update: Add citizen journalism to the list as former pages collect on Facebook to swap Foley stories (""I WAS a house page, and Mark Foley totally weirded me out!").
Further update: It's also worth noting how different the story becomes now that there's more than just the New York Times out there jumping on it (because the New York Times doesn't appear to have jumped too hard).
Further update: Good grief, it doesn't stop - here's more from ABC on Foley stopping a house vote to have "internet sex" with a page. Gross.
PubTV.com
Since Michael Wolff and PBS think it's all about tabloid culture these days, we thought we'd see what was churning through the gossip mill. Already ODed on Lindsay Lohan? Never! Thus we bring you ETP's Tabloid Roundup:
— Melissa Lafsky
from ABC.com
The scandal involving Republican Congressman Mark Foley and his "simply naughty emails" — Tony Snow's quaint new phrase for asking a 16-year old boy whether he masturbated that day — has opened up a whole new can of worms this weekend involving who knew what and when they knew it. The short answer to that is, apparently, everyone and everything, ages ago — including Hill journalists and the FBI, oh, and the Republican party. Charming.
Radar's Jeff Bercovici reports that a D.C. reporter got printouts of Foley IM's back in May, but her editor didn't think it was "newsworthy" enough for an investigation. Radar reports that other reporters knew as well. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post has all the news on the front page, including Foley's 11th hour attempt to cut a deal with ABC and House Leader Dennis Hassert's disquieting silence about what he knew. Meanwhile, Matt Drudge has shown his stripes by suggesting that the pages were the instigators (the words "poor Congressman" were actually used). Even the New York Times pulled a Jeffrey Epstein — per Jane Hamsher:
Even the NYT is being remarkably compliant, featuring the one article that promoted Foley as a poor, sick fellow and back paging everything about the coverup.(Hat tip Atrios.)
And of course, Tony Snow's euphemistic dismissal mentioned above is disingenous, to say the least.
There is a silver lining for the Republicans, however: This sure is distracting from what Condi knew...and when she knew it.
Cenk Uygur
It didn't take much. When ABC saw the first e-mail Congressman Mark Foley sent to an underage boy, they thought it was an important story. When they looked into it a little further, they found instant messages that were very sexually explicit. When they posted those, far more information came out, including the latest story that Foley was setting up get togethers with at least one of the boys.
That wasn't so hard, was it?...
Mark Kleiman
No, really.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once...Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party.
Legs? Yeah, this story has legs.
