The McCain "Abuse" Story Revisited or The Non Retraction - Retraction

Cross Posted from http://azamatterofact.com

Matt Yglesias of the Atlantic.com printed a blog post yesterday .

Welcome to the Non Retraction Retraction.

Matt Yglesais posted THIS on his blog at The Atlantic.com on Monday. In his post he quotes and links to Cliff Schecter’s The Real McCain about stories of verbal abuse by John McCain towards his wife, Cindy.

I blogged about how flimsy the story was over at RedState. My one commenter was nice enough to point out that Yglesias seems to agree with me and has since retracted his story.

Or as he put it..."but there's no evidence that this particular incident happened that meets a reasonable journalistic standard."

Of course Yglesias didn’t really retract his story. In his retraction he includes a text link to the story knowing full well that the link will be repeated, move the story up in the search engine rankings and bring his blog post, the Left Wing “Raw Story” post and the Democratic Political Strategist, Cliff Schecter greater exposure and readership.

This is about smearing John McCain, driving traffic and selling Schecter’s book. On one of Schecter’s many blogs, every link referring to “exhaustive research” was in fact a link to buying his new book on Amazon.com. Matt Yglesias in his non retraction retraction repeats the “trollop” charge and then meekly states “there's no evidence that this particular incident happened that meets a reasonable journalistic standard.” In his post Matt basically says ‘I hate Republicans and John McCain so much that I just had to print this garbage knowing it was garbage.’

As for Schecter, he is a Democratic Operative who worked for the Clinton Campaign and if you need to know how far left he is he worked for Fed Dalton’s Campaign to defeat Joe Lieberman for Senate in Connecticut.

In a recent post about McCain’s relationship with the African American Community, Schecter referred to "John Sydney Hussein McBush. This clearly something from an ideologue, not a journalist or objective author.

Of course the left wing blogoshere is repeating this story as if it were Gospel…if the believed in the Gospels. We have the following:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/07/report-mccains-profane-ti_n_95429.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/08/new-book-mccain-once-phys_n_95595.html

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/04/07/a-trollop-and-a-ct/

http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/04/07/please-convince-me-were-not-doomed/

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/7/19555/14030

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=27363

http://airamerica.com/blog/2008/apr/07/mccainca

http://wonkette.com/376849/john-mccain-called-wife-awful-word-that-rhymes-with-hunt-and-punt

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/07/temper-temper/

Of course none of them have reported on Yglesias’s non-retraction re-traction. And of course, as they hoped, building a big enough biomass it would leak into the MSM which it did via The New York Daily News.

The liberal blogosphere doesn’t report much on this from Macs Mind.

Lying on McCain and Cindy
Apr 7 at 2:02pm by Macranger

Uber left wing blogger is hawking a book called “The Real McCain” in which he delivers this “shocking story” from 1992 when during a campaign stop McCain got irked by his wife Cindy called her the “C” word. Via the supermarket reliable Raw Story.

“Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.”

The only problem is that the story is false. This tale first floated up around the 2000 election primary cycle but was quickly knocked down by Cindy herself in an interview in 1999. Further this article - while counting the ups and downs of McCain’s political career and marriage to Cindy makes no mention of the event.

You would think if true this story would have been old news by now. It’s doubtful Cliff Schecter got this from anything except the top of his head."

What is disheartening is the silence from the conservative side of the blogosphere.

Mad Irishman has blogged about this HERE.

The Pink Flamingo HERE.

William Teach of McCainBlogs has written about it HERE.

This is the kind of garbage we are up against. I am not saying that this came from the Barack or Hillary Campaigns. I am saying we need to research this kind of post, comment on them and get John McCain’s message out.

I know if I ever posted something like Cliff Schecter’s or Matt Yglesias’s piece I would get an e-mail from someone in the McCain Campaign asking me to stop. Clearly, neither Cliff nor Matt got that memo.

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