Pot shot

It was inevitable that the New York Times would run a feature on Robert Kennedy Jr. shorty after Kennedy created a stir with his Rolling Stone article about the 2004 election. Kennedy's article was, by and large, ignored by the mainstream press, included the New York Times itself, though it generated the usual partisan online heat. And while the Times chose to ignore both Kennedy's evidence and the issue of election fraud itself, the peculiar attraction the Grey Lady has for the Kennedy clan would demand some look at the man who chose to attack an issue on which he is admittedly not expert.

It was also inevitable that, while presenting a small and not entirely unflattering biography of Kennedy, the New York Times would veer into a veiled criticism of RFK Jr. for what must obviously be delusional fantasy: the Ohio election stolen by the Republicans. In fact, an air of smug conceit permeates the Times article regarding Kennedy's plunge into the 2004 election data and testimony of Ohio state voters. The Times appears at once blithely unconcerned about how the "paper of record" itself failed to record any of the vast array of reported problems seen in Ohio in that presidential election and further eludes any admission of such poor form while simultaneously admonishing Kennedy as delusional for thinking that anything untoward took place during the 2004 election. Of course, the Times itself does not do this -- they're far too proper -- so they leave the accustational deed up to Farhad Manjoo's whitewash job from Salon. What the Times scrupulously ignores with this small effort is any mention of the harsh and severe criticisms levied against Manjoo for his apparent cluelessness regarding the facts on the Ohio ground. The Times never mentions the fact that Kennedy spent several weeks in Ohio interviewing various local election official and numerous voters throughout the state. Manjoo? Well, he did exactly ... nothing.

It is a remarkable effort on the part of the New York Times, at once indulging their love for the Kennedy clan while also inveighing against Kennedy's less than propitious accusations regarding America's electoral system and the Republican party's large efforts of voter disenfranchisement. With the effort, the Times continues the party line that everything is as it should be and that Robert Kennedy Jr. should stick to environmental law because when he ventures outside his realm of expertise, he appears to become delusional.

While fully able to admit that the Bush administration might have pushed the country into an illegal war, with globe-trotting rendition programs and innocent civilians snatched off streets, with a network of secret prisons around the globe, with vast programs of spying and surveilling American communications and international banking transactions, the New York Times, and much of the rest of the mainstream media, is still convinced -- at least publicly -- that the Bush administration couldn't possibly rig an election.