It shouldn’t surprise me the lengths that Greenwald will go to distort what people say in order to lambaste his enemies, but his Christmas offering really takes the figgy pudding.
Mike Huckabee’s Christmas ad — like everything Huckabee does — provoked all sorts of vehement, angry, un-Christmas-like attacks from Republican pundits. The GOP establishment almost uniformly claimed that the edges of the bookshelf behind Huckabee formed the shape of a cross, which — along with Huckabee’s mention of the word “Christ” — rendered Huckabee guilty of making a highly inappropriate, overt religious appeal for votes.
In furtherance of his never ending crusade to reveal just how hypocritical the political right is, Teh Gleen(s) go on to highlight how John McCain’s Christmas ad used a cross, but the right had nary a negative word to say about that.
But here is the Christmas ad from John McCain, which features not a subliminal cross arguably lurking in the background, but instead, an explicit one drawn in the sand, serving as the centerpiece of the ad, and expressly referenced — twice — by the political candidate, whose face lingers wistfully next to the cross for 10 of the ad’s 30 seconds …
Yet the reverent reaction to McCain’s ad could not have been more different than the one provoked by Huckabee’s. Chris Wallace said: “That McCain ad is so powerful. You find yourself tearing up when you see that, obviously.” Obviously. A clearly moved Fred Barnes concurred with the only word that was needed: “Indeed.” Mort Kondracke gushed: “I think it was a great ad, and it had a religious overtone to it. . . . it should remind religious [voters] that there is another candidate in the options besides Huckabee.”
As you have probably guessed by now, not one of the links support Greenwald’s contention, and in fact largely refute it. I could go on at length describing just how grossly Herr Sockmeister mischaracterized the various statements as well as who said them, but Karl at Protein Wisdom has already completed that task, so RTWT.
I will, however, point out a few of the more wild distortions.
(1) Greenwald’s initial paragraph claims that Huckabee’s ad “provoked all sorts of vehement, angry, un-Christmas-like attacks from Republican pundits,” but links to just one mention of an “attack” from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. The other link takes you to Byron York’s praise for Huckabee’s political prowess (”Huckabee’s astonishing ability to hit the target is what is shaking up the GOP race now.”).
(2) Greenwald’s only other link to an “attack” is an article by Peggy Noonan (which he claimed was “condemning Huckabee’s ad”), who also praises Huckabee’s political savvy, particularly with respect to the alleged cross imagery in his ad:
The ad was shrewd. The caucus is coming, the TV is on, people are home putting up the tree, and the other candidates are all over the tube advancing themselves and attacking someone else. Mr. Huckabee thinks, I’ll break through the clutter by being the guy who reminds us of the reason for the season, in a way that helps underscore that I’m the Christian candidate and those other fellas aren’t. As a break from the nattering argument, as a message that highlights something bigger than politics, it was refreshing.
Was the cross an accident? Please. It was as accidental as Mr. Huckabee’s witty response, when he accused those of questioning the ad of paranoia, was spontaneous. “Actually I will confess this, if you play this spot backwards it says ‘Paul is dead, Paul is dead, Paul is dead,’ ” he said. As Bill Safire used to say of clever moves, “That’s good stuff!”
Ken Mehlman, the former Republican chairman, once bragged in my presence that in every ad he did he put in something wrong–something that went too far, something debatable. TV producers, ever hungry for new controversy, would play the commercial over and over as pundits on the panel deliberated over its meaning. This got the commercial played free all over the news.
The cross is the reason you saw the commercial. The cross made it break through.
(3) Every bit of Greenwald’s juxtaposition of the McCain ad to the Huckabee ad, and the supposedly different reactions to them, is pure unadulterated crap. The comments highlighted by Greenwald about the McCain in particular were not so much to the cross as to the story of McCain’s Christmas in captivity, and how a (impliedly Christian) guard gave him a bit of reprieve from his remarkably grueling daily existence as a POW. That’s what was so powerful and what Chris Wallace described as moving him to tears. It had nothing to do with a cross appearing in the ad.
Those are just the highlights. You should read Karl’s post to get the full-on fisky flavor. Or, you could just accept finally, once and for all, that Glenn Greenwald is about as dishonest a hack as you are ever likely to come across, and save yourself the time and trouble of slogging your way through his mendacity. Obviously, while I accept the latter, I find it much more entertaining to do the former. YMMV.
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