We're not the only ones with a sharp eye. Yesterday a video was posted on Youtube by someone who believes they heard Bill O'Reilly and Tony Snow on The O'Reilly Factor allude to the still unsubstantiated scandal of illegal drugs and gay sex surrounding Senator Barack Obama.
O'Reilly and Snow were discussing the story put out by the New York Times which alluded to an affair between the top Republican candidate for President, Senator John McCain, and one cute blond lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.
Excerpts from the show's transcripts:
SNOW: But it seems that Bill Keller, the executive editor, thought this was a sloppy piece of work and kept resisting it. There was a lot of pressure out of the Washington bureau. "Hey, we've got something saucy, boss." And whether Bill Keller, for whatever reason, knuckled under and figured that this is the way to sort of get along, I don't know.Reporting more on the level of the gossip rag, the National Enquirer, the Times piece on McCain was indeed, sloppy, and guilty of printing a story full of unsubstantiated gossip and innuendo, the foundation of the story built on the quicksand of "unnamed" sources.
But having been in journalism for nearly 30 years, I've got to tell you, no editor is going to look at something like that and say that it measures up, because it doesn't. It doesn't even measure up in terms of gossip.
O'REILLY: Well, here's the real tragedy, and this is an American tragedy, because this is stuff that's been going on for far too long. There isn't an accusation that McCain broke any law. There isn't an accusation that he actually had an affair with a woman. They don't say he did. Both parties deny that. OK?
All they do in The New York Times article is insinuate, is suggest, based on no hard evidence.
Snow and O'Reilly go on to discuss the pattern of journalistic misbehavior by the once venerable New York Times and other organizations whose readership is in decline:
O'REILLY: See, I disagree with you there.
SNOW: Look, I also think that there is a problem right now in journalism. Everybody's trying to get on air as rapidly as possible with something as sensational as possible. This is why we get all of these Britney Spears stories.
But the fact is that this is a presidential campaign. People are sick of this stuff. They're sick of the kind of cannibalism that goes on in Washington. They're sick of sloppy smears. What they like is somebody who's actually talking about stuff.
SNOW: No.
O'REILLY: There has been a longstanding rumor, and you know it, about a Democratic, powerful Democratic person in this country, longstanding, been around, people have looked at it, never reported by anyone, never mentioned by anyone. Easily done in the same way The New York Times did it. I could do it. I could do it. I could do it tomorrow, anonymous sources told me this individual in America, again, a prominent Democrat... Source - FOXNews
Is O'Reilly alluding to the Obama story swirling around the blogs, of a gay man who is accusing the squeaky clean Senator of two incidents of illegal drug use and oral sex? The story no one in the MSM dare not investigate nor dare not speak of?
While the MSM turns its collective noses up at verifying whether the Obama story is true the Times made the decision to print the hit piece on McCain. This isn't the first nor will it be the last time people will be outraged over the shenanigans over at the Times. Howls of protest they're used to, but not a steady decline in readership and advertising, the cash cow that keeps them going.
We agree with Snow and O'Reilly. The Times has failed Journalism's most basic tenets, reliable sources, facts back by hard evidence. In other words, after all these years of leaning hard to the Left, the Times finally fell into the realm of "slacker" journalism, or even lower, a "rag" mag.
But there's that other story sitting in the background, on another candidate running for President, a very popular Democrat candidate. The story concerns alleged illegal drug use and gay sex, also "unsubstantiated" and no "hard evidence" other than the man who claims he was a participant back in 1999.
The story hidden within the story is why the Times went with the "hit" piece on McCain and continues to ignore the story on the Democrat front-runner, Barack Obama.
We've attempted to get an interview from Larry Sinclair, the man at the center of the drug and sex allegations aimed at Obama.
We're not sure what's going on over at the Times, if reality has been supplanted by a Liberal Ship of Fools intent upon steering the course of American politics, while their ship founders and slowly sinks into the Journalistic Sargasso Sea.
By LBG
Image - Ship of Fools
Source - Obama: Gay Man Threatened Over Sex and Drug Claims
Source - Youtube - Obama's Limo Sex and Drug Party
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.
Source - Youtube