Capitol Ideas/Personally Opposed
Bethell, Tom
little more than disguised press secretaries. Well, they raise a tricky issue here, so when we meet, no funny business. The last time we were together you shook my hand rather excessively...
...In January 1983 Ferraro appeared at a Family Planning Advocates conference (a pro-abortion group), and explained how she had actively sought to prohibit anti-abortion riders to appropriations bills...
...The Bishop of Scranton popped up next, saying that Mrs...
...it is my responsibility to ascertain the truth and to ferret out the news...
...If they decide that her husband's contacts with unsavory men of enterprise are not news, the public will remain in the dark...
...It became quite clear early in the campaign that there was an actual pattern of association here, not mere stereotyping based on associations with names that end in vowels (as Mrs...
...The religion-and-government tempest was interesting because it was unsought: not on anyone's agenda...
...They didn't treat White House counselor Ed Meese that way, did they...
...But still, the media's heavy guns have maintained a discreet silence on the shameful topic...
...Look at the religion-and-politics flap...
...Elections somehow force the wrong issues to surface...
...Normally the bow-tied and the pointy-headed and their running media lapdogs do a brilliant job of setting the policy course and holding firmly to it no matter how the populace might toss and storm...
...the senior capo who was a tenant in another building...
...M 101 Indianapolis, IN 46250 impose her "anti-abortion views" on the rest of us...
...Personally Opposed tries to make out...
...PO's position on a b o r t i o n was "ridiculous...
...Decreeing, for example, with only a few fake "polls" as evidence, that the people are in a state of deficit panic...
...They are better thought of as settled and beyond debate...
...Not welcome in Washington, I can assure you...
...Maybe we can force them into an embarrassing retreat-cumapology...
...That's the excuse--and I don't believe it for a minute, because what we see here is an entirely new philosophy o f news, conveniently coming along in Ferraro/Zaccaro's wake...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...Then of course we have her husband's mobster links, almost too numerous to list in a column of print: the pornography distributor in the Zaecaro warehouse...
...I shall enter the Oval Office unafraid, and leave pretty much the same as when I arrived, for my career is not beholden to leaks...
...Ferraro and Mr, Zaccaro on aspects of the article...
...Once again we see the baneful influence of old Freud...
...Pinkerton, the newspaper's reporters, in pursuit of what was originally intended to be a news story, had tried unsuccessfully for several weeks to get responses from Mrs...
...She added that if her daughters (then aged 21 and 16) came to her "and said: 'Mom, I'm pregnant and I'm not going to have the baby,' I would say: 'Here's the money...
...But with a few exceptions (such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, and again, the Moonie papers) the media showed a positive aversion to finding out more or publicizing the above...
...That way it won't be necessary to defend policy terrain that has been captured by stealth...
...Imagine a candidate in 1860 saying that if his gon wanted to own a slave he would give him the money to buy one, but that at the same time he was "personally opposed" to slavery...
...So Mondale turned up the volume on the issue...
...Your thoughts may be very pretty jewels or grim hunks of coal, but until they are uttered as statements of policy or principle they are private matters, interesting only to eavesdroppers...
...Ferraro is a disgraceful figure on whose behalf the media have risen to new heights of hypocrisy...
...Post readers must have wondered what was going on exactly...
...What about, for example, her claim to be "personally opposed" to abortion...
...The Post sure wasn't telling them...
...Peregrine Worsthorne, the seasoned deputy editor of London's Sunday Telegraph, frequently derides the American press's chumminess with the pols, and with very good reason...
...Probably Mike Deaver, is what I'm told...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...The Washington Post ran a story by Eleanor Randolph which contrived to impugn the editorial judgment of Robert Bartley, the Wall Street Journal editor ("Journal Article on F e r r a r o Family Background Stirs Up a Furor"), while demurely withholding from Post readers precisely those details that had made the "family" background of news interest in the first place...
...At any rate, this time I shall have my guard up...
...He thought that with a Quisling Catholic he could both appease the NOWfolk and the libberlobby, and win the Catholic vote in one fell swoop: In my view Mrs...
...So then, it will be drinks and palaver at 4:45...
...Pinkerton said...
...An ideologically corrupt press...
...Then the press began to play up this internal mini-conflict ("frankly, the President's own people are not comfortable with the s p e e c h . . . " ) , and this in turn signaled" to Mondale's Praetorian Guard: Weakness...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 9 All of which leads one to ask: Who was the cunning fellow inside the White House who pulled the ju-jitsu maneuver, feigning weakness on the issue and pretending to stumble, only to drag the clumsy Mondale to the ground...
...What you really think is much less important than what you are doing with the government...
...Recently some of the colleagues thought the fact that you wear sweat pants on Air Force One was a capital news story, and despite your staff's objections one of the press services carried a photograph of you in this incongruous ensemble...
...Hang tough, in other words, and the press will back off...
...the campaign manager who was a close associate of Anthony Scotto...
...If such explanations are true, it would be good to hear them...
...Let the First Bartender prepare for me the most ingratiating cocktail ever imagined...
...The White House is divided...
...In these essays Leggett brings his views to bear on the issues of the Jacksonian period...
...He spoke out, as they say...
...Since many of the questions of principle in his day recur in our own, the editorials are of contemporary as well as historical significance...
...Liberalism, as Joe Sobran says, is substance disguised as procedure...
...inquired lefty Jonathan Alter in Newsweek...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...Would you believe him...
...Here is Mr...
...To wit: Because they have not talked, there is no story...
...I think it was an invasion of your privacy, so dress anyway you like when we meet...
...As long as your dress does not affect public business it is none of the public's concern...
...Just keep your mouth shut in the future, then, and the press will decide that their suspicions are unjustified, that what they think is important isn,t really a story a f t e r all...
...What makes the matter of the journalists' proximity to the pols so tricky is that the journalists want it both ways: They want to be friends with the pols and they want to be adversaries too...
...In view of the possibility (depending on an election victory and a missed heart-beat) that this same John Zaccaro could soon be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, otherwise known as the White House, there was an obvious story here: one with Pulitzer potential, one would have thought...
...But in the end that was a mistake because he came across as being a tiny bit anti-religion, while Reagan was left comfortably holding the pro-religion banner...
...or that there is an "immigration crisis...
...The fiercely independent CBS reporter Phil Jones for one took this at face value, and told us on the "CBS Evening News" one night that she refuses t o LlbertyPre L szs Democratick Editorials Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy By William Leggett Compiled, Edited, and with a Foreword By Lawrence H. White William Leggett, writing for the New York Evening Post, the Examiner, and the Plaindealer in the 1830's based his editorial views on the principle of equal rights to liberty and property...
...Coverage of Mrs...
...But she has been allowed to get away with this deception because the press corps that covers up her campaign is in ideological sympathy with Ferraro on the issue...
...Not only did the media not pursue it, but when two Wall Street Journal reporters stayed on the case, and came up with more associations, the response was actually to denounce the WSJ editorial page for running the piece...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...and others...
...Here we come to the trickiest matter of all, what is "the news...
...The attitude here is: By all means, keep prayer out of public school, keep abortion legal, put Jerry Falwell in his place, provide family planning money for the Third World so that the darkies don't overrun us in the 1990s...
...Admittedly there are one or two in the White House who would not swear that he foresaw all the moves exactly...
...Whoever and however, it serves Mondale right...
...Pretty soon you had Walter Mondale on the screen saying I do not want religion to be the issue in this campaign, and you had Geraldine Ferraro saying I do not want abortion to be the issue in this c a m p a i g n . . , and the within-the-beltway types were beginning to get very uncomfortable indeed...
...Has Ferraro been the victim of a hit job...
...The Archbishop of Boston declared that abortion is a "primordial evil," and the Archbishop of New York declared that Mrs...
...The relationship lacks a clear set of ethics...
...Can you imagine the press being so degenerate and ideologically corrupt in either of those years as to let such insincere candidates get away with such absurd contradictions...
...Who would have guessed he could be such a brilliant strategist...
...Your predecessors, particularly the alphabet presidents, FDR, JFK and LBJ, were legendary seducers of the press, but it is really up to us to maintai~ our integrity, is it not...
...Would you believe him...
...The story was dropped--and the judgment of those who pursued it ac, tually impugned--because the great majority of those in the media are liberals, like Walter Mondale and Mrs...
...Z have refused to answer the questions...
...Some among the colleagues argue that this penchant for off-the-record meetings hinders us in our sacred duty to goad public officials into colossal botches or into blurting out what "they really think...
...by all means do all these things--but please, do not encourage or even permit explicit debate on these issues...
...She is evidently strongly in favor...
...The WSJ writers (Jonathan Kwitny and Anthony de Stefano) had concluded their piece by saying that "one can still conceive of explanations for all this that might raise rather than lower one's regard for this generation of Zaccaros and Ferraros...
...Though they do not want to be used, they want to be free to use others...
...jobs in the Ferraro organization...
...It is my obligation to remain clear-headed...
...I rather doubt if the woman is telling the truth When she claims to be "personally opposed...
...dollars...
...You may tantalize me with promises and honors...
...Ferraro's campaign has been turned over to evident sycophants such as Ellen Hume (Wall Street Journal), and Eric Engberg ("CBS Evening News"), who would appear to have 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 applied for p.r...
...Well, that is what we have today...
...Many want to advance their careers by exploiting intimate contact with the pols...
...Strict application of this view led him to favor minimization of government power...
...But let's at least give him the credit, and the benefit of the doubt...
...The next minute his ribald jokes are being reported on page one, and he is undone...
...One minute the pol is being reported as having a small sense of humor...
...Things are turned over to the hoi polloi for a say in the grand enterprise of government, although many here wish there were some way around that irritating constitutional requirement...
...He held that principle to mean that law may not discriminate among citizens, benefitting some at the expense of others...
...They have in fact undertaken what can only be called a rescue operation and a coverup...
...And at that point we heard senior media figures singing a song that I honestly thought we would never hear...
...Stewart Pinkerton, assistant managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, as paraphrased by the New York Times: According t o Mr...
...Hardcover $12.00, Softcover $6.00 Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...No journalist has ever given me a satisfactory definition...
...But Mrs...
...As far as I have been able to judge, the news is what the press barons and the wizards of broadcast news say it is...
...F and Mr...
...If they decide that Congresswoman Ferraro's tax returns are news that is what the public will be presented...
...The last time we were together you shook my hand rather excessively and spoke vaguely of making me ambassador to Monaco, or was it Malibu...
...Personally Opposed) Ferraro had personally misrepresented church teaching...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 11...
...The colleagues have plenty of cause to fear your charms...
...There are a lot of people that we might be able to get on our side," she said, " i f they only didn't have to [vote pro-abortion] every time an appropriations bill comes to the floor, and the right wing loonies in the House attach these riders to appropriations bills...
...T r u t h be known, what passes for news nowadays is increasingly only gossip and bizarrerie...
...I think what happened was that President Reagan gave his Dallas ecumenical prayer breakfast speech (unexceptionable enough, but including the feisty and correct observaTom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...the campaign contributions from the convicted labor racketeer...
...TM) But presidential campaigns can establish a different, outside-the-beltway agenda...
...tion that "those who are attacking religion" do so in "the name of tolerance" when they are really "intolerant of religion"), and the next thing that happened was that we began to hear the usual ventriloquized muttering and murmuring from the West Wing of the White House...
...Please go see a doctor.' " Personally opposed but . . . . But faced with the prospect of an unwanted grandchild, the millionaire congresswoman would overcome her personal opposition and finance the abortion...
...The foregoing information about Ferraro's p r o - a b o r t i o n views have been available in Life Letter, in antiabortion literature, in the Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, and in Jean Frawley's excellent compendium of Ferraro's abortion record in the Wall Street Journal (editorial page...
...Ferraro, and they would like to see them elected in November...
...Certainly the media had no desire to make an issue of it...
...Nor did the White House...
...It's as simple as that and everyone knows it...
...Journalists ought not to aspire to being psychoanalysts...
...Because the questions largely went unanswered, the article was not suitable for display as a news story, Mr...
...Imagine a candidate in 1960 saying that if his son wanted to open a segregated night club he would give him the money, but that at the same time he wa~ "personally opposed" to segregation...
...Anyone who denies it will no doubt also tell you he is personally opposed to hypocrisy...
...Soon enough there were mitres and crowers all over your TV screen, with the Archbishops of New York and Boston weighing in with (long overdue) criticisms of Geraldine Ferraro, who says she is a Roman Catholic, but who is also personally~opposed-toabortion-but...
...And they won't with the next Republican, I promise...
Vol. 17 • November 1984 • No. 11
