Thursday, December 11, 2008

At the NYT, more “Name That Party”

The NYT’s latest round of “Name That Party” is headlined: “Illinois First Lady Faces Scrutiny”

It begins:

In the six years since she became first lady of Illinois, Patricia Blagojevich, now 43, has not played a highly public role in her husband’s administration.

“She has kept a very low profile as first lady,” said Paul Green, a political science professor at Roosevelt University. “She literally could walk down Michigan Avenue and if she didn’t have security, 9 out of 10 people would not know who she was.”

So the extent of her involvement in the brash telephone conversations that resulted in charges of corruption against her husband, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, on Tuesday came as a surprise to many....
The Times makes no mention of anyone’s political party affiliation until the 8th paragraph of its 21-paragraph story:
Ms. Blagojevich has a deep-rooted political pedigree as the daughter of Richard Mell, the longtime Chicago alderman and a leader in Cook County Democratic politics, who is considered to have been instrumental in getting Mr. Blagojevich in politics.
The Times’ reference to Mell’s leadership role in Cook County Democratic politics is its only mention of the party affiliation of any of the story’s principals.

And how did you like the Anything for Obama NYT's describing the grossly vulgar and bribe-soliciting telephone conversations as "brash?"

That's like describing Al Capone as "adventurous."

The entire NYT story's here.

Hat tips: AC, BN

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

This weekend, I looked at all the articles related to the Illinois governor and his dealings. Not a SINGLE ONE managed to mention that Bago is a Democrat. However, the party affiliation of anyone critical of him (read that to be Republican) was mentioned. Guess that the capital D on the printing press of the Cincinnati Enquirer was either damaged or missing in action.
When I mentioned this to my son who is home visiting from London, he commented that it was not necessary to mention Bago's party affiliation because everyone knows that he is a Democrat. When talking about the news where I teach, most of the faculty assumed that Bago was a Republican ("because that would be the sort of things Republicans engage in") and were shocked to find out that in fact he was a Democrat - I had person tell me that I had to be mistaken.
cks