Every solid reporter and editor knows the key to journalistic success: assume nothing and question everything. For successful business executives, it's a survival mantra. Educators call it critical thinking, the ability to see an advertisement, hear a presentation, read a news story with a questioning eye on what's behind the claims being made, who are the sources, who benefits, who does not, what's the context, what are the implications of the story -- in other words -- the Colbert truthiness of it all.
The venerable NYT runs a front page, above the fold, story about Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's problems in his first two years in office. It's a legitimate evaluative survey for every governor of any state. And every governor has to go through it -- in their state's newspapers.
But this story is in a national paper from New York, not Massachusetts. If critical thinking is applied, there are some reasonable questions to ask. Why this governor? Why now? Why on the front page of this most powerful national newspaper?
The 'why this Governor' is answered in reporter Abby Goodnough's opening. It's because he is "....a surrogate for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, his friend and fellow gifted orator.....He dazzled voters with a message of hope and change." Oh, by the way, he's black.
Hmmmm.
The story goes on to detail the battles this governor is having with the state's Speaker of the House, who has more power with the legislature than the newbie governor. The article gives the overall negative impression that Deval is losing the battle due to insufficient governing skills.
So, again, why this Governor? Why now? The implied logic and conclusion seems clear - guilt by similarity. Deval is Obama. Obama is all new, change and eloquence with questionable governing skills. Oh, and he's black Really?
Critical question: Why did the editors chose this governor to compare with Obama? Why not compare Obama with Vermont Governor Timothy Kaine? He's a newbie Governor in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat since 1964. He was all about change. He's also an Obama supporter. Why not him?
Has the NYT done a similar story comparing Hillary Clinton to a female governor like Arizona's Janet Napolitano or Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, both of whom are articulate, are change agents, and neither having an easy time with unfriendly legislatures? Oooops, they're both supporting Obama.
If you subtract the elements of fractious legislative relations, change agent, new voice, articulate, what's the only thing left to compare between Obama and Deval? Is it because they're both black? Perhaps the venerable New York Times is not above playing the race card. This is a critical question that needs to be asked.
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and comparisons to deval are far closer then the absurd comparisons to JFK. i fell down laughing when they said obama was a new JFK.
The NYT is just doing what it does best - trying to form the opinion of it's readers to align with their opinion - remember the leadup to Iraq? And keep in mind which candidate they endorse.
We in Massachusetts elected Deval Patrick because he offered "change". We got....nothing. He is a big loser and he now busy shopping his bio for a book publication. The one hope we have is that if Obama Baby gets to go to the WH he takes Deval with him. Couldn't get much worse. We also survived Mitt here as well.
HuffPost's Pick
I'd like to thank Tom Alderman for this article.
Usually, when one or another of Sen. Obama's, staffers, associates, or admirers (NEVER the Sen. himself), employs the now-very-familiar "reverse race baiting" strategy....there is at least SOME possible ambiguity about the statement or action about which the feigned outrage is being expressed.
Mr. Alderman, however, has provided an absolutely clear, unadulterated example of discovering racial bias where there is none......zip........zero....nada.....naught.
The Goodnaugh piece is PRECISELY, and forthrightly about the political similarities between Patrick and Obama....yet Mr. Alderman manages to make sinister the banal..... through the use of the ALSO now-too-familiar (and highly literate) interrogetory (and I quote).........."Hmmmmm".............
As in "Hmmmm...could it be because they are BLACK??"
Alderman wonders whether.... "...the venerable NYT might not be above playing the race card"....and calls that "a critical question."
I have another. We needn't WONDER if the not-quite-as-venerable Mr. Alderman is above playing the REVERSE "race card". The fact that he is NOT is manifest.
My question is...........Hmmmm.......I wonder if certain of Obama's supporters, like Mr. Alderman, so often play this particular card because their "deck" contains no other kind..........................................tm
If you check out TheRealist! profile, he appears to be nothing more than a pretender and agitator. Neither Dem is his candidate.
Silly, it has nothing to do with their race and everything to do with their "agenda". Why didn't the New York Times question the lying and the runup to the Iraq War? Why didn't it question Eliot Spitzer's abilities and background? Why did it hire one of the poorest excuses for a human being in the last half century - William Kristol? Why? I'll tell you why. The answer should be obvious to anyone with a fifth grade education or better.
IT'S BECAUSE THE NEW YORK TIMES - LIKE MOST SO CALLED "MEDIA" OUTLETS, HAS ITS OWN AGENDA. AND USUSALLY, NEGATIVE PRESS GETS RESERVED FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE A DIFFERENT AGENDA OR VIEWPOINT THAN THAT OF THE EDITORS AND MEDIA BOSSES - WHETHER YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT A SMALL LOCAL RAG OR CNN OR THE "VENERABLE" (YEAH RIGHT) NEW YUCK TIMES.
" Is it because they're both black? Perhaps the venerable New York Times is not above playing the race card. This is a critical question that needs to be asked."
I think the question that needs to be asked is whether this Tom Alderman is just another Obama operative using reverse race-baiting as a tool to attack the Clintons.
The relationship between Obama and Patrick is much deeper than even this NYT article implies. Here is some obvious stuff reported by the Obama-backing Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/12/bay_state_voters_know_their_limits/
And even this does not go into the fact that Patrick is from South Chicago, the political home of Obama and a key component of the Kennedy political machine.
The fact of the matter is that both Patrick and Obama are front men for the Kennedy political machine whose most visible operative today is David Axelrod whose campaign apparatus has worked for Patrick Kennedy in Rhode Island since 1994 and was responsible for concocting the campaign of hope and change that along with Kennedy Massachusetts political operatives installed Patrick as governor of Massachusetts.
Little did we know at the time that this was simply a dry run for the Obama campaign which is the Kennedy strategy to stop Hillary Clinton from taking her legitimate role as leader of the Democratic Party.
It is no coincidence that after Hillary's startling victory in NH that Kennedy took the low road and with operative James Clyburn launched the Clintons are racists campaign that ended up giving Obama 3rd world-like 90 percent majorities of the black vote thru the southern states.
This Kennedy connection is the key ingredient missing in this otherwise relevant NYT story.
Obama is a pure product of the Chicago political machine which is a major branch of the Kennedy national political machine.
This is a race between CLINTONISM and KENNEDYISM. Hillary and Barack are just the fronts for these two important political movements in the Democratic Party which appear to be in a fight to the finish.
If what you posted is true (and I have no reason to doubt you) it makes a lot of sense now.
Kennedy Clyburn MLK racism campaign against the Clintons connection:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/01/25/statesman_or_hatchet_man/
oh and obama wasn't lifting speeches from kaine, he was stealing them from deval. they also are both harvard law graduates with civil rights backgrounds and little governing skills. they are very much alike, and america will suffer the same glaring failures that massachusetts has on the state level thanks to deval.
Agreed. Deval is a big nothing so far. And he succeeded Mitt which you would think be easy. Not so. He has been largely absent and is now touting a bio for publication. We in MA want him to go away.
they wouldn't compare him to vermont governor tim kaine, because tim kaine isn't the governor of vermont, he's the governor of virginia.....idiot.
is he still a govenor
Obama cannot win unless Hillary quits and McCain surrenders. Waiting for someone to step up and tell Hillary its over and McCain he's too old is not leadership. Obama won't win. That's not a racist diatribe or an emotional outburst. It's sober assessment of the situation.
stop buying the spin
Why compare him to Deval Patrick?...DUH!
The two are so symbiotically linked that Obama was given a quick look then yet another media pass for lifting much of his speech invoking MLK, JFK, etc. directly from a Deval Patrick speech.
Their explanation was that they were almost like family, which apparently is supposed to explain why it was OK not to attribute those passages, while Joe Biden was driven from the 1988 campaign and reminded of it this time around, FOR DOING THE SAME THING...only it didn't involve a "brother" in his case, just someone he frequently quoted and forgot to attribute ONCE.
Look, both of our Democratic candidates are crucially flawed... I fear what I/we DON'T know about Obama, and am not thrilled about what I/we DO know about Hillary... But I'll vote for whichever is the nominee just to keep the Repubics away fromt the AG's office and the SCOTUS...
I just wish we had the BEST choice, like Joe Biden... Wouldn't this be a different campaign if the media hadn't ruined it?... Oh, for what could have been...Instead: ??????
They did not give Biden a chance, nor any of the other candidates running for that matter with the exception of the two we have now. Biden had it all, experience being number one. And we are asked to go with a senator with two years in office who only got there because he beat Alan Keyes for God's sake! Biden or Dodd carried more experience and background than either of these two and he is gone. Sorry for us.
Reading the article though I saw that I agreed with all the legislation that Deval had tried to get through and that the House Speaker shot down. I also thought that the House Speaker sounded alot like a Republican with a D next to his name, undermining the will of the people when they elected Deval, and if this continues handing the highest office to that state back over to the Republicans. And that is a similarity I see with Hillary.
And I agree. I thought the article was an underhanded attack on Obama. Funny how the media that is in the tank for Obama pursues every attack line against him real or imagined, but Hillary who has been so abused by every "bully picking on a woman" gets off unless she commits a major blunder. Which is a similarilarity between Hillary and McCain, the media advances all their talking points but when they make a mistake the media may or may not report on it.
The Times article is important because both Patrick and Obama advertise themselves as kindred political spirts who "riff" off each other. Axerod is behind both campaigns and they both share the Hope and Change message.
Deval has proven himself to be the empty suit his opposition said we was years ago. He can't get anything done. Once things got tough, he ran away from his duties.
Will Obama do the same? Well, when things got tough he did run off to the Virgin islands, didn't he?
Now I'll watch my comment get "disappeared" like 50 percent of all anti Obama comments here.
Tim Kaine is the Governor of Virginia, not Vermont.
Ahhh that NYT jaded pen again. How they get away as being considered "liberal" is a joke, that the conservatives keep on life support.
You just might be on to something here to listen to the media the last few days the race card is being played think of how many times you've heard in the last few days about Obama's distant cousins Dick Cheney and Brad Pitts. he has the unique ability to lose his color when he is in the midst of Caucasians he plays whitesideof race card and he does it naturally because that is his natural orientation. That is what makes him black man for this job at this time. Obama is not a drive-by descendent of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. He is a Kenya wind African-American who was deserted by his black father when he was two years old he had to go to South side of Chicago to learn what it really meant to be black and he could not have found better teachers than Reverend and Michelle. this man must be elected president. he was raised decent white folk like us and we can trust him.
PAHLEEEEEESE. This is the most paranoid post. You have got to be kidding me. The Massachusetts governor should be on his knees that he has the free press that the NYT article gives him, and Obama is a national candidate, get a grip, comparisons are going to be made, especially since Obama lifted much of his speeches from Patrick. If you are suspicious of the NYT, if Obama gets the nomination, just wait to see what happens!
"since Obama lifted much of his speeches from Patrick." ??? . . . UNTRUE!
No, Axelrod did just a lot of copying and pasting
"some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation." ??? . . . UNTRUE!
After reading this article in NYT I saw exactly how bad a President Barack Obama will be! He has copied everything that Daval Patrick and probably is just an empty shirt - Time will tell!
Hey, I voted for Deval, and my god! What an absolute disaster this guy has turned out to be. I don't know what I was thinking at the time, but I sure as hell will never vote for someone who has little to no prior experience like that again. He talked a good talk. He was smart and articulate, and gave good speeches. He made me think he was going to bring big changes to the office. So far, he's gotten little to nothing done, and failed to undo most of Mittens' less than popular policies. I will easily vote for someone else come next election. Talk about your empty suits.
Gee, I wonder if this post will be ironic in about two years.
Another fellow MA voter who got snookered into Deval's message of "change". He has proven to be just another calculating politician, an empty suit, not vested at all in the state who elected him. It must say something about us Bay Stater's in how we go about selecting our governors because we have had some doozies!
I guess we can count on your vote for Obama then, since he has significantly more elected experience then Clinton. And the relative inexperience of Clinton shows in the incompetence of her campaign to date. When vote for me because my name is Clinton failed, she tried vote for me because I am a woman, when that didn't work she resorted to don't vote for him because of any lie I can make up. Clinton experience you can't trust, because it doesn't exist.
You're post is ironic now. Your posts show you to be a Clinton supporter that probably should get back to TM.
Yup, you know I am so pleased that nobody has evaluated me based solely on who my friends happen to be. Has anybody done that to you? Time will tell -- and I believe Senator Obama (with us at his back) will be the 44th President of the United States of America. Now, we are facing untold horrors (we don't even know how bad it is) thanks to the last 7+ years of incompetence, corruption and radicalism, but I believe Senator Obama (with us at his back) is uniquely equipped to help us solve some of the mess and make serious progress on old messes (i.e. soaring health care costs).
Honestly, this story only has relevance or power if you also buy the idea that the fact that Elliot Spitzer is (was) a white governer from New York and a Clinton supporter who went down in a stunningly hypocritical and tawdry sex scandal that saddled New Yorkers with a HUGE legislative mess to handle in some way reflects on Hillary and Bills return to the white house.
Obama and Deval are different people and will lead differently. The color of their skin (as if I need to actually point this out) has absolutly no bearing on their ability to govern effectively OR NOT.
Likewise, Just because Elliot spitzer is white, a supporter of the Clintons, and is a liar and a hypocrit who put the state of new york at jeopardy of being led by someone succumbing to blackmail as the result of his total inability to control his sexual desires, It in no way is predictive of what the Clintons behavior and performance in the white house might be. Rather it only serves to REMIND us of what they have already done themselves. Monica, of course, the war in Iraq, saber rattling againt Iran, Cheerleading for the disastrous war in Lebanon, failing health care reform so badly that it was scuttled for almost two decades and on and on and on.
Obamas record, on the other hand, so far has been QUITE GOOD.
What was the contrived ruckus before the Texas and Ohio primaries? I remember the "kitchen sink" parable, but can't remember what was in it.
It was full of Bosnian Sniper Fire, my friend, Bosnian Sniper fire, which, if you think about it, ought to become the new national euphamism for B.S.
Tom, Tom, Tom, critical thinking? NYT?
I love this piece. Why the Spitzer story, NOW? - ANY realation to sub-prime illegalities? (I know Spitzer was a fool, but still). Why the Al Sadr end of cease fire, NOW? - ANY relation to upcoming Oct. provincial elections wherein Maliki has no support (whoops there goes our oil control puppet)?.
Current media refuse to untangle what becomes clear via appropriate questions. I am lucky to have Pacifica radio and locally KPFA in Berkeley. These questions are pondered and delved into, daily. I supported Hilary for awhile. The 1996 FCC media consolidation did not cause, but helped bring us to current pathetic 'news'. That was Bill. I hold hope for net neutrality with an Obama presidency. Maybe even restoration os habeus corpus, who knows?
Senator Obama has specifically stated that he will restore habeus corpus. Hope this helps.
The NYT has become a joke. Their shilling for Hillary, has gotten to the point of absurd.
Posted March 27, 2008 | 08:17 PM (EST)