A little note to the Oregonian‘s public editor about Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, who participated in a conference call organized by the Bush campaign yesterday :
I’m surprised that Gordon Smith has been so much off your radar lately. He turns up for a single innocuous line in today’s article by Harry Esteve and Edward Walsh, but you have to go to the Los Angeles Times for more of his conference call from August 12, where he accuses John Kerry of appeasement and socialism, and repeats the talking point “It’s not John Kerry’s fault that he looks French.” The Times goes on to say:
“Some Republicans have referred jokingly to Kerry’s ability to speak French and his physical appearance, but rarely has the reference found its way onto the campaign trail.”
It’s a(nother) sad day when you have to go outside the state to find out what our own politicians are doing and saying.
A little over ten years ago, during a period when the Oregonian‘s advertising motto was “If it matters to Oregonians, it’s in theOregonian,” the Washington Post was the paper to break the story of Sen. Bob Packwood’s [R-OR] sexual harassment problems that ended up driving him out of the Senate. Wags then made the change to “If it matters to Oregonians, it’s in theWashington Post.” More recently, they were in such a hurry to beat the local newsweekly to print about former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s thirty year cover-up of having sex with a 14-year-old girl (while he was mayor of Portland) that they accepted his account of the case and used the word “affair” in their headlines.
Kerry’s live on all four stations (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) here in Portland.