MSM caught "swiftboating"

MSM is using “swiftboating with increasing frequency. And Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Rosen has plenty to say about that

Ever short on reasoned rebuttal, liberaldom has now come up a new buzzword to rationalize legitimate criticism. It's "swiftboating."[…]

"Swiftboating" has also been recently invoked to deflect criticism of Cindy Sheehan, John Murtha and Al Gore. This is the left's contemporary update of the old McCarthyism Gambit.

Originally, "McCarthyism" was a term that connoted unfair accusations about an individual's ties to communist organizations. While Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the redhunter-in- chief of the 1940s and 1950s, had the goods on some dyed- in-the-wool commies who had infiltrated our government, he was also given to demagoguery and irresponsible allegations about others. […]

"Swiftboating" is a loaded, critical term coined by leftists during the 2004 presidential campaign, referring to criticism of John Kerry by John O'Neill (author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry) and more than 250 other members of the Swift Boat Vets for Truth.

These were Vietnam veterans, 60 of whom were wounded in combat, who served in U.S. naval units like Kerry's, and who disputed his embellished and exaggerated accounts of personal heroic battle experiences.

Since Kerry had built his political career on his opposition to the war in Vietnam and had made his military experience there the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, his self-serving claims were fair game for scrutiny.

We learned how he lobbied for Purple Hearts for questionable wounds enabling him to cut his Vietnam tour 243 days short, and what appeared to be an outright fabrication about a Christmas Eve mission to Cambodia. I suppose it's possible that Kerry had it right and that all of his swift boat critics were lying. It's also possible Kerry was lying. The dispute was never definitively resolved.

Today, "swiftboating," like McCarthyism, has come to be used by leftists as a facile antidote to dodge or dismiss legitimate criticism which they condescendingly characterize as merely an ad hominem attack, nothing more than name-calling or smearing.

But this charade just doesn't hold up. Cindy Sheehan hasn't been "swiftboated." She's an emotionally distraught, foolish airhead. And that's not an ad hominen attack. If you've listened to her speak, it's an accurate, clinical appraisal.

Have you heard the names she's called the president? Talk about ad hominen. She's exploited her son Casey's death in service to his country to advance her own obsessive cause. She has no standing to speak for him, or for any other parent who's lost a son or daughter in Iraq and who might disagree with her. She's entered into political combat and has been held to account for her words and actions. […]

As with Sheehan, Rosen rebuts those in MSM who, instead of reporting on Murtha, Gore, and other liberals, really work to defend them by claiming their critics are “swiftboating.”

Rosen ends :

It's bad enough when liberals use this term. When supposedly objective journalists use it, it's intolerable.

Amen.

You can read Rosen’s column here.

BTW – When’s Kerry's next scheduled promise to release his military records? I want to take the whole family this time.
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