Last week, David Bernstein of The Boston Phoenix launched a broadside against what he termed the “right-wing smear machine” coming to get Elizabeth Warren, which I highlighted in my post Right wing smear machine to blame for Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee problem (again).
The attack by Bernstein was pretty sweeping:
But the intense interest on the right for the re-election of Brown — and the mocking demonization of Warren — ensures that plenty of money will be spent attacking her, while conservative consumers lap it up. One major site, Michelle Malkin’s hotair.com, ran 27 posts about Warren in May alone.
Once they’ve zeroed in on an enemy, as they have with Warren, the appetite of these national dirt-diggers is insatiable. And nobody here in the state is doing anything but encouraging them…
It was clear that Bernstein was including the Cherokee issue, because he mentioned how Hot Air had run “27 posts about Warren in May alone.” Those posts were not about Warren’s hair style, they were about her bobbing and weaving on the Cherokee issue.
As Rob Eno of Red Mass Group points out, Bernstein also made an explicit reference to the Cherokee issue, regarding a letter sent to Harvard by the head of the Massachusetts Republican Party.
But mostly, Bernstein tried to change the subject, which is strange considering how the Cherokee issue has dominated campaign coverage, and not only at Hot Air.
Since the Warren Cherokee problem broke on April 28, I have had over 100 posts specifically on the Cherokee issue. And it’s not just me. As I noted regarding Warren’s Google Problem (even in Japan), the Cherokee issue has been by far and away the dominant controversy surrounding Warren as to which even the mainstream media has been focused.
Yet rather than confront Warren’s main problem, the Cherokee issue, to support his accusation of a “right-wing smear machine,” Bernstein focused his attack on two other issues:
I described two specific examples: charges of scientific fraud relating to a book Warren co-authored in 1989 (and related speculation that her co-author had been fired for this reason); and attacks on a Warren staffer based on an anonymous Tweeter.
As you know, the charge of “scientific misconduct” by a former Rutger’s law professor was serious indeed, and was documented in his 60-page law review article in great detail. Michael Patrick Leahy of Breitbart.com has done an excellent job showing how there never was a proper investigation of that accusation and the other accusations set forth by the Rutgers professor. This may become a big issue for Warren as the campaign progresses, but so far it has received almost no media attention.
The issue of a “Warren staffer” and Twitter concerned why Warren’s Press Secretary turned her Twitter account private hiding all her prior tweets; for a press secretary who likes to call people names (i.e., me) and who apparently was childish at best on Twitter, it was a fair point to make. Bernstein claims that the Press Secretary turned Twitter private because she was being harassed by someone; his article is the first time I heard that explanation. But again, it has received almost no coverage.
Neither of these two points raised by Bernstein has been why Warren has suffered the press she has. It’s the Cherokee issue, front and center, and whether Massachusetts wants to elect someone who has been accused of and based on available evidence committed “ethnic fraud.”
Bernstein came under criticism for his “right-wing smear machine” post not only from me, but also from Warner Todd Huston of Breitbart.com and Rob Eno of Red Mass Group. We all raised the Cherokee issue.
Bernstein has responded to that criticism by claiming he never raised the Cherokee issue, that his critics should have responded to the two issues he raised, Conservatives Respond to Imaginary Article:
A neutral observer could conclude from all this that these conservatives are doing to me exactly what I accuse them of doing to Warren: attacking irresponsibly based on fabrication and distortion.
So here’s an invitation to conservatives who have criticized the article: please try again, but this time respond to the actual content of the article, rather than the imaginary article you invented and ascribed to me. Or, admit that you’re not interested in truth and fairness. Your move.
No, not our move.
The overwhelming coverage of Warren by what you call the “right-wing smear machine” has been on the Cherokee issue.
Do you really care about the book accusation or the Press Secretary’s Twitter account? Of course not. You tried to play it cute by diverting the discussion to other issues, just like Warren does when she is asked about the Cherokee issue.
You tried to undermine the scrutiny of Warren on the Cherokee issue without having to defend her on the Cherokee issue, and instead attacking the messengers as part of a “right-wing smear machine.”
But we didn’t take the bait.
Your move, Bernstein. Back up and defend Warren on the Cherokee issue, or drop your “right-wing smear machine” accusation.
Update: Bernstein got into a back and forth on Twitter with Rob Eno, and denied criticising conservative media coverage of the Cherokee issue. So how can we be a “smear machine” if the issue to which we have devoted the most time and attention by far is beyond criticism?
I’ve got it! We’re 1/32 smear machine:
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Comments
Well done, Professor! I’m glad you are on the side of the good guys!
Now that’s hitting back twice as hard. And directly at Bernstein’s weak point. Impressive.
Warren exposes the utter fraud perpetrated again and again by our would be liberal rulers, to wit the rules do not apply to them. Hollywood phoneys like Brad Pitt and Mat Damon militate in favor of Obama’s policies on health care, taxes, etc. with the well founded assumption that they will never be personally touched by such policies.
For higher taxes, Brad Pitt will have his accountant take care of it. No doubt he’ll be invested in some kind of green fraud and will actually make money out of it. For health care, not to worry, Brad will still have his private Beverly Hills doctors.
Look at Titanic director James Cameron, who constantly advocates for draconian carbon reduction policies for you and me. But noble Mr. Cameron will not suffer from these. He lives on a massive beach front property which employs scores of cars, SUVs, motorcycles, helicopters and private jets. We on the other hand need to ride bicycles and have government officials looking closely at our carbon foot print.
Liberals love to talk the talk, but they will not walk the walk. Which brings me to Warren. How often have she and her fellow travelers screeched about the importance of affirmative action? But it does not apply to them personally. Indeed, they must benefit from it. After all, they are entitled!
“Right wing smear machine”
I do believe that this was intended an anti-Semitic slur. The writer probably typed in “schmear” but spell-check changed it to smear.
So there. You are a fancy-schmancy bagel preparation machine. A terrible, terrible thing to be called in Boston. You will probably have to move to Marina del Rey now.
He schmeared me with smear.
This is how JFK’s “I am a jelly doughnut!” gaffe from his speech at the Berlin Wall in 1963 started too.
“He schmeared me with smear.”
אבער איר פארבלענדט אים מיט וויסנשאַפֿט.
http://translate.google.com/#yi|en|%D7%90%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%A8%20%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A8%20%D7%A4%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%A0%D7%93%D7%98%20%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9D%20%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%98%20%D7%95%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%90%D6%B7%D7%A4%D6%BF%D7%98.
Hang on. Now I have to turn my screen upside down or hold it to the mirror or something to read Hebrew. Darn! My extension cord isn’t long enough.
Except he doesn’t live in Boston, and the closest Jewish enclave to Boston is Sharon, MA . . . where support for a president who hasn’t once visited Israel and who’s gone out of his way to insult and demean both Israelis and their Prime Minister (not to mention destabilizing the entire Middle East) is still steady.
Stupid you can’t fix. (I was partly raised in Westwood, CA, so I know Yiddish syntax a little.)
I lived in Atascadero CA for a year but I didn’t learn a little crazy while I was there.
If a CONSERVATIVE candidate was outed to be a liar, fraud, and cheat – conservatives would be clamoring for that individual to drop out immediately. IMMEDIATELY. Nixon resigned not because the Democrats were after his neck; the Republicans were after his neck.
If a LIBERAL candidate was outed to be a liar, fraud, and cheat – liberals simply do not care. Governor Erkel himself stated “we don’t care”. When “BJ” Clinton committed perjury and embarrassed the Office of the Presidency, his fellow Democrats said “It’s only about sex”.
In a nutshell, that is the DIFFERENCE between conservatives and liberals [aside from policy]. It’s been said thousands of time before, liberalism is a disease.
Well done, and to me, the other items are important. I realize that many people’s eyes glaze over at any discussion of fraud in a research publication, but it’s important to show that the “cherokee” fraud is simply an example of the way this person does things. If elected, she will present the voters with more of the same.
“But the intense interest on the right for the re-election of Brown — and the mocking demonization of Warren…”
and
“Once they’ve zeroed in on an enemy, as they have with Warren, the appetite of these national dirt-diggers is insatiable. And nobody here in the state is doing anything but encouraging them…”
Hmm… Well, nobody is “demonizing” Warren. She is her own worst demon. She could’ve put this to rest a LOOOOOOng time ago, but she seems constitutionally unable to exhibit any integrity.
And she is SOOOOOOOooooo very mock-worthy. And partly because she seems to take herself seriously. She just seems to scream, “I’m wearing a Hong Kong war bonnet. And I’m the intellectual mother of the Occupy movement”. Who could pass that up?
Then our boi calls people committing journalism “dirt-diggers”, and tries to cadge the rest of the media into the well-worn “shut up” chorus. Nobody from the Mushroom Media has paid ENOUGH attention to this story, much less encouraged the reportage.
You know you are bombing accurately when you see the secondary explosions, Prof. Bombs away…
Asking them to take responsibility for their smears or to support the clearly insupportable is admirable (do you have a legal stance here?). Unfortunately, and as we all know all too well, leftists cannot defend their viewpoints, worldview, or ideology (whatever you want to call their twisted mess of utopianism, fear, and dependence). The only recourse they have, as they prove again and again on a daily basis, is attack, smear, repeat. That’s Alinsky. That’s what they are teaching American kids by the millions and all they know.
Don’t hold your breath on this one. Pesky things like principles, honor, and morals are sneered at by leftists. On a good day.
Bernstein employs the strawman trick writ large.
Bernstein’s convincing portrayal of the pyromaniac in a field of straw men is exceeded only by Jacobson’s tour de force performance as Ray Bolger, merrily dancing through the cornfield with buckets of water, putting out Bernstein’s flaming distractions, allowing the white maize sown to be reaped and reaped and reaped and reaped …
“This may become a big issue for Warren as the campaign progresses, but so far it has received almost no media attention.”
What kind of campaign is Brown running anyway? It’s up to the Brown campaign to make as big a stink of this as they can by incorporating it into commercials, constant references in public statements and comments, and other standard campaign tactics. These Kennedy Republicans from Boston seem incapable of firing loaded guns even when handed to them cocked and properly aimed. Maybe Brown just doesn’t deserve to win. Potted plants make terrible generals.
He’ll pick c) Double down on demonizing the “right wing smear machine.” Since you failed to do as ordered and leave off the Cherokee thing, he will claim your arguments are dishonest and intentionally misleading.
It never pays to debate someone who is more interested in appearing righteous than in truth.
Exactly. Bernstein’s article was an attempt to move the target.
Conservatives will never seem to grasp one basic truth about liberals. They lie. They don’t give a rats ass about the truth and you can’t shame them into caring about it. Because they never will.
The only truth a liberal really believes in is that all conservatives are Evil with a capital E and ANYTHING done to stop any advance of any perceived conservative is vital. Paramount. That’s all that matters.
Put the target back where it belongs.
By all means, let’s ask Mr. Bernstein his opinion of ‘ethnic fraud’. I just did.
Let’s ask him to opine on whether it’s proper for a white person of no particular ethnicity to claim the status of another ethnic or racial group in order to receive government mandated benefits from being a member of that group.
Let’s ask him to opine on whether, if a person claims to be a member of a particular ethnic group, what documentation should be expected, particularly if the claim of membership is used to gain a privilege in an affirmative action program.
I will wager anyone a glass of their favorite beverage that Mr. Bernstein will not respond to me, let alone write about Prof. Warren’s ethnic fraud.
Six hours later and no response from Mr. Bernstein. Perhaps, as a member of the MSM and not a blogger, he doesn’t work Sundays.
To follow-on my previous comment: the best way to handle the Bernsteins of the world is to challenge them. Go to his article at the Phoenix and comment. Do so politely but make the point.
To use the hoary, cliched line from the movie, he can’t handle the truth.
This story is devastating to the Left, which is why they’re turning to deflection, inversion and projection. A white establishment Progressive falsified minority status to advance her own career interests. The hypocrisy is staggering. Furthermore she has denied the aggrieved Cherokees even the courtesy of a meeting. Her conduct undercuts the entire Leftist racialist project and its presumption of moral superiority. If a conservative had done such a thing, she’d be railroaded out of public life, destroyed. For the Left to admit — even tacitly — that one of their own did this would be ruinous. It is, quite literally, physically and morally, impossible. So expect no answer to your challenge, just more attacks. The ballot box is the only cure here.
You’d think that the whole Left would just SHUT UP and write about bunnies, flowers or the great benefits of ACA. Instead, they just keep digging holes, albeit holes with unsteady walls that tend to cave. At some point, you think they’d just quit digging.
Warren is in so deep with the Cherokee lying, she can’t back down, come clean, or admit her error. That train done left the station. Now, she can only hope to twist and obfuscate. Or maybe she can wear brown contacts, buy a tanning package, color her hair black and start wearing buckskin.
Go big or go home? Or…just go home. We’d really love to see you come home>/i> to Tahlequah and apologize to your people!
Poor boy…he attempted to Alinsky the issue. FAIL.
As Col./Rep. Allen West said the other day (among MANY things): you only get flak when you’re over the target. And not only are you on target, the “bombs” are hitting the mark!
This hack has nothing but flak; no ammo left.
Projection – it is the other tool in the two-tool toolbox! (Lies are the other, of course.)
“Mocking…”
They can’t handle it! Pour it on! Encore!
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.”
Cheetos munchin’ dirt-diggin’ smear machine.
lol
“Right wing smear machine” means they have no adequate response to really damaging information raised by the other side. It’s designed to shut down argument without getting to the merits.
As is often the case with labels, it tells you more about the person doing the labeling – in this case that David Bernstein is a partisan hack.
Now Playing:
Nonfiction: “Bend it like Bernstein.”
Fiction: “Smear it like Jacobson.”
We live in an internet that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with blogs. Who’s going to do it? You? Me?
Professor Jacobson has a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. And his existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves us from the Bernstein’s of the internet.
You want him on that wall! You need him on that wall!
From Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of America:
“… Michelle Malkin’s hotair.com …”
This guy is living in the past.
lieawatha Warren is living proof of the old saying: those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.
She needs affirmative action, desperately. So does the “kingfish”.
“those who can’t, teach” — since 2007 I’ve had mixed feelings about that phrase.
It refers to those who never did, who went from student to faculty with no ‘doing’ in between, because they ‘couldn’t’. You’re safe!
the more this stuff (THE TRUTH) is spread around the better.
people with forums/blogs need to preach it often.
those without blogs (I provide free blogs space btw) need to comment at places and point people to sites that are preaching it.
the left is going to regret tying themselves to old media.
we may not be politicians, but we are voters and we now have ways to make our voices heard.
this was supposed to be an agreement with and reply to MaggotAtBroadAndWall | July 8, 2012 at 2:35 pm
not sure why I posted wrong, sorry.
You hear that science professors are not nearly so left leaning. They’re about the science. ln my limited experiance engaging a number of them thats false. They look at everything thru the left eye. ln politics they repeat the same specious points all leftists do. When you confront them with specifics & data , they respond with the usual platitudes & nonsense. l challenge them how can they call themselves scientists when they cherrypick data ,fudge results ,tilt the process. l ask if they do this in their work. lf so , how can we trust the findings. After the last engagement ending saturday ,they have labeled me crazy & refuse to engage in any way. l feel they have gone Soviet Union.
You are right. During my years as an avocational skeptic (investigator/journalist of paranormal claims) I was run out of several science-related orgs solely for the crime of being a conservative. I’d guess about two-thirds are hard liberals, however, I must allow that almost all of them use proper methodology to control for their own political and other biases *in their work* (science, unlike opinion, must actually work to proceed). But in all other aspects, a whole lot of raging libs to be sure.
Soft sciences are different, worse – opinion too often counts as data. No one is more embarrassed about the sorry state of his own field than I (psychology). A thousand times I saw clinicians try therapeutic approaches they read about in a freakin’ magazine or heard on a radio show because ‘it sounded cool’ and ‘what I’ve been doing isn’t working’. Not everyone in the mental health field or social sciences is a liberal, just 99% or so.
I didn’t know that River had a brother named Boston! How weird.
Hold on! “Bernstein.” Wasn’t he one of those little bears that lived in the tree in Bear County? You know, Momma, Poppa, Brother and Sister? Evidently all his years in public schools did that little bear precious little good…
Challenge the Boston Phoenix ? Good luck with that as their bully pulpit is surrounded by a sound proof dome of silence…
David Bernstein is such a great reporter that he does not realize Hotair.com is no longer her website.
To clarify, her being Michelle Malkin.
Isn’t amazing how liberal progressive socialist-marxists, refuse to admit the truth, but rather just double down on the lies and propaganda they know is a lie in the first place. But that is why they are what hey are in the first place, and why we should bandy creed words with them, and ours is not to try to reason with those who have no reason, no logic, no values and principle of goodness whatsoever, ours is to only defeat them
Boy, you can say that again.
Isn’t amazing how liberal progressive socialist-marxists, refuse to admit the truth, but rather just double down on the lies and propaganda they know is a lie in the first place. But that is why they are what they are in the first place, and why we should not bandy creed words with them. Thus ours is not to try to reason with those who have no reason, no logic, no values and principle of goodness whatsoever, ours is to only defeat them.
Boy, you can say tha….. heeeeeey.
I think this “idea”, that criticism demonstrates how correct a position is, is a mindless cliche.
When David Duke was rightly attacked, on the left and right, did those attacks show he was “on target”?
Not at all.
Please, please: respond to arguments “on the merits” rather than regurgitate brainless pap. This is a legal blog, after all.
For you law grads: think back and consider what your first-year profs would have done to you if you tried to recite a case by by saying criticism of it meant that the original decision was “on target”?
Was Dred Scott correctly decided because so many attacked it?