Wes Clark didn't "attack," and the media missed the mark

A quick thank-you to Zachary Roth at Columbia Journalism Review for the piece he posted online yesterday (here's a link): "'Attacking' McCain's Military Record: What Wesley Clark really said (and) how the press missed it."

Roth's point is that the basic premise for the campaign flap du jour isn't true -- Clark didn't attack John McCain's military record, he merely said that having been a prisoner of war, all by itself, doesn't qualify someone to be president.

  "This is a distinction," Roth writes, "that you'd expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp."

You can't blame the McCain camp for sensing an opportunity -- Clark's comments did provide an opening -- but as Roth points out, "This is the perfect embodiment of the press’s unbelievably destructive habit of assessing every piece of campaign rhetoric for its political acuity, rather than for its validity and accuracy... which is how the news media should be evaluating them."

Comments

[Bitter Typical White Person]

More manufactured faux outrage magnified by a lazy and compliant press. What a shame that speaking a simple truth becomes a 3 day issue.

[Brian]

Fair points all, but it was so damn tone deaf. Gen. Clark has to know how his words will be judged and speak accordingly or he needs to be sent to Arkansas to hang out for a few months.