Rolling Stone article

[Songbird]

Anyone survive the hella long article in the current Rolling Stone on the 2004 Election fraud in Ohio?

Great stuff packed into Robert Kennedy Jr.'s piece.

Sounds like a whole lotta dirty **** went down in Ohio in the months, days, hours leading up to Election, and even on the actual day of it.

It's worth a read, though I still have another page and a half to go, plus the sidebar.

 

[Cosmo]

Xan ... I read it. And I understand the whole consider the source thing, especially with Rolling Stone. I enjoy the mag, but it's a little too far left. I expected the article to be a lot of sour grapes, instead it seemed to be packed with legitimate information and good reporting.

 

[Songbird]

Yes, good reporting. They talked to the people with no vested interest in either side of the aisle.

The numbers game from Ohio '04 is just disturbing.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

I'm afraid I can't get past the source on this one.  I've grown too weary of Rolling Stone's bi-monthly "Bush Killed Tupac!" articles to take them seriously on political issues anymore.

 

[Songbird]

Take a crack at it. If what you feel is validated in the first 15-20-25 inches put it down. But I think you'll keep reading well beyond the first page.

 

[Perry White]

Wasn't there a thing on Romenesko about how there was really nothing new, national and Ohio papers already investigated the stuff, etc.? I haven't read the Rolling Stone article so I can't comment on it.

 

[PopeDirkBenedict]

Take a crack at it. If what you feel is validated in the first 15-20-25 inches put it down. But I think you'll keep reading well beyond the first page.

When Salon, which is no friend to Bush or most any conservative, says that RFK's arguments are filled with "distortions and blatant omissions," I tend to discount pretty much the entire article.

 

[Songbird]

I've never read a Salon article, so I can't comment on your comment.

What exactly is a Salon?

 

[PopeDirkBenedict]

I've never read a Salon article, so I can't comment on your comment.

What exactly is a Salon?

Salon.com, which is a liberal-leaning website (similiar to Slate and most online rags).

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/

 

[slappy4428]

I've never read a Salon article, so I can't comment on your comment.

What exactly is a Salon?

It's where Bubbler goes to GET A ****ING HAIRCUT

 

[Ralph Waldo Henderson]

Salon.com is not liberal-leaning. It is liberal. Slate is liberal-leaning, but like any good site that only leans it dishes it out equally.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

I just looked at the article. I got as far as the part where Kennedy told us that exit polling has evolved into an exact science.

Uhhh... no.

Sorry, but all I saw was a series of very, very questionable declarations with absolutely no substance to back them up.

 

[User 4332]

Wasn't there a thing on Romenesko about how there was really nothing new, national and Ohio papers already investigated the stuff, etc.?  I haven't read the Rolling Stone article so I can't comment on it.

Romenesko linked to an E&P report: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002651747

But for many in Ohio who covered the presidential race, which was not decided until the following morning after John Kerry gave up any attempt at challenging the Ohio results, the Rolling Stone allegations are unfounded.

"We looked at the Rolling Stone piece and we didn't see anything new in there," says Eva Parziale, Associated Press Ohio bureau chief, who held that post in 2004 when the election occurred. "They were things we already reported on and issues we did not see to have substance."

Carl Weiser, government and public affairs editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer, agreed. "I read it and nothing in there was really new," he said. "The folks who know Ohio elections best checked into it and found there was no conspiracy."

...................................................................................................................

Kennedy's article, which is heavily footnoted on the magazine's web site, draws much of its sourcing from the very newspapers in Ohio and nationally it appears to criticize. The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Blade of Toledo and the Columbus Dispatch, as well as the Times and The Washington Post, appear frequently throughout his long list of background notes

 

[Songbird]

It was good to see that Salon article.

 

[PEteacher]

This is not a liberal-conservative issue. If a town of 300 is casting 5,000 votes for Bush, that's everyone's issue.

 

[DisembodiedOwlHead]

This is not a liberal-conservative issue. If a town of 300 is casting 5,000 votes for Bush, that's everyone's issue.

Yer damn right. It's an issue for FREEDOM !

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

The Kennedy article had its problems, and I still recall that RFK got onto the vaccine-autism story just as that one crashed and burned. That said, Greg Palast's done better work than either Kennedy or Manjoo on the story. And the most compelling thing to me is that all the "mistakes," "glitches" and "stuff" that happened benefitted one side.

 

[Cosmo]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking Fenian. The article made me think a little bit, but at the end, I was still thinking that RS has destroyed any sort of political credibility it ever had with its constant hate attacks against the Bush admin. I know they don't purport to be fair and balanced, but, ya know ...

 

[tyler durden 71351]

That's the same sort of conspiracy theory junk conservatives used to deal in, like "Clinton had people killed!" There's no conspiracy. Kerry ran a ****ty campaign and he wasn't a great candidate. Bush beat him fair and square.

 

[Songbird]

Instead of starting a new thread ...

So I'm trying to expand my reading habits. Today over coffee at Borders I pick up a mag I've never read: Harper's.

I really enjoyed what I read. Ben Metcalf wrote a terrific Notebook piece on what it means in this day and age in America to have the right to write something on what it would be like to kill George W. Bush with your bare hands.

There's also an interested tidbit about Tom & Jerry the cartoon and how and why the cartoon came to be back in the day. It's called "Tom & Jewry."

And the other piece I straggled through was (forget the author's name) a first-person piece "Letters from Kiev," about mail-order brides. The writing is simple with just enough complexity, without that complexity going over one's head.

Anyone else read this mag regularly?