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February 14, 2004
Et Tu, Brian Williams?

I know I lose some amount of liberal blogger cred by admitting that I regularly watch NBC Nightly News, but it's true. I know, I know.. big conservative media conspiracy, not to be trusted, mouthpiece for the administration. I got it.

I do, however, enojy watching NBC News every night. It's half an hour long, covers a good swath of major issues of the day, and there's not too much car accident, celebrities, and missing children. I can't stand that stuff.

Anyway, this is what Americans watch. They don't read The Nation, watch CSPAN (who does?) or even read The Daily News. They watch Tom Brokaw or one of them other guys.

Sometimes, though, they really can piss you off. The journalistic integrity, while maybe not as lacking as it is in some others (Ann Coulter, I'm looking at your evil ass), is still pretty thin. They'll run with pretty much anything if it'll make a good promo.

For instance, tonight they jumped on the bandwagon trying to circulate this photo of John Kerry and Jane Fonda at a Vietnam protest in 1970.


If this is all that Karl Rove's sleaze machine can come up with, things are looking pretty good for November.

What Jane Fonda did in Hanoi was probably pretty shitty; I don't know all that much about it, but from what I've heard, it sounds lame. Still, she was free to do it. People can be lame, if they want. They can be stupid and irresponsible. I mean, fighting for people a country we're currently at war with, probably not so good, but I don't think she did anything like that.

The real problem with this photo is that it was taken BEFORE Jane Fonda went to Hanoi. She wasn't known as Hanoi Jane when this photo was taken, she was just another -- albeit very vocal and visible -- celebrity protesting against Vietnam. Everybody who was anybody protested against Veitnam in 1970. It was totally the thing to do.

Look at me, writing about it as if I was there. "Oh yeah, I totally remember. It wasn't like they're saying. It was different, man."

Regardless, it's a bullshit smeary thing to do; to put this photo out there and say, "Look! Kerry's crazy! He's a radical! See who he sat 3 rows behind 25 years ago?! Remember what she did a few months later?!? See?!?!"

So shame on NBC News. And all the other news organizations that have no doubt done the same thing. It's just a picture -- among thousands -- of Kerry when he was active in the antiwar movement. We know he was active in the antiwar movement. It's not a secret. Throwing out this picture, and implying some sort of a connection between him and the future activities of someone else in the photo is just ridiculously low.

The photo's currency might make it news, but 5 minutes of investigation would have led them to at least say, "We should note, however, that this photo was taken before Jane Fonda took her now infamous trip to North Vietnam." That's all they had to say. It's the truth. Is that so hard?

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