Cheney Falsely Attacks New York Times For Printing "Subsidized" MoveOn Ad
September 17, 2007 -- 7:24 PM EST // //
The New York Times is one of those reliable GOP stock villains -- others include MoveOn, Howard Dean, and the two leading She-Demons of the Democratic Party, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton -- that can always be targeted whenever the GOP groundlings get drunk, grow bored with the main plot, and are restless for a cheap distraction.
Cheney attacked the Times as treasonous back in 2006 when the administration was under fire over the warrantless wiretapping story. And now, with the Petraeus testimony failing to budge public opinion, Cheney is doing it again, pushing the falsehood that The Times gave an ideologically-motivated discount to MoveOn's full-page ad in the paper attacking Scholar-Warrior Petraeus.
Check out what Cheney said today:
Like most Americans, I admire the integrity and the candor that General Petraeus showed in his hearings before Congress. And the attacks on him by MoveOn.org in ad space provided at subsidized rates in The New York Times last week were an outrage. (Applause.) It's bad enough when politicians turn their backs on a war they voted for and supported when it was popular. But no one in politics, regardless of party, should hesitate to object when an American soldier at war is mocked and insulted. (Applause.)It's kind of funny that the Vice President of the United States can lie egregiously about the top journalistic organization in the world -- and nobody bats an eye about it anymore.
But the really interesting thing here is that Cheney knows he can lie about this because he can bank on the fact that the Republican talking point on this -- that The Times gave a special cozy discount to MoveOn for days now -- has gotten far more circulation than the truth about it.
In reality, of course, there was nothing special about the rate that MoveOn got from the paper at all. As The Times itself explained last week, the paper charges less than the full price when advocacy groups request full-page black-and-white advertisements that run on a “standby” basis, meaning an advertiser can request a specific day of the week but is not guaranteed that day. MoveOn knew it could bank on the ad running early in the week -- when Petraeus was testifying -- because things are slower on those days.
Thing is, however, that reality just doesn't matter. Just compare the amount of circulation that the Republican criticism got with the amount of circulation that was afforded the "standby" pushback, that is to say, the truth.
It's not even close. Cheney knows he can count on this, which is why he knows he can just tell this lie without even giving it a second thought.