Who's the blowhard? Just asking. Just talking out loud.

[madfloridian]

There have been enough insults this week toward certain of our Democrats...we won. We had a big win, but some can't shut up with being condescending.

John Dickerson called Howard Dean a blowhard, said very condescendingly, he was "behaving himself" better (so snide)...and he just plain insulted John Kerry all in the same paragraph. I don't see strategists going after other Democratic leaders like that, lately just Dean and Kerry. Even Lieberman is revered.

Dickerson says Dean is being a good boy.

The better case against Dean is that he's a blowhard who says the wrong thing repeatedly in front of cameras. We know that's true, but Dean has gotten better at behaving himself—his mild response to Carville being a case in point Even his detractors point out that while Republicans tried hard to make Dean an issue, they couldn't. This time, it was John Kerry who provided the late-in-the-election radioactive gaffe. Dean has been so disciplined that most people don't even know he's there. In a recent Pew poll that asked people to name the leader of the Democratic Party, only 3 percent named Dean. More people named Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader. Sixty percent of respondents don't think the party has one.

Well, after reading these 5 write-ups about John Dickerson at Media Matters...it is my contention that Dickerson is acting more like the blowhard, not Howard Dean. Sounds like he is carrying someone's water just like Carville was...damning Dean with faint praise with a sort of call out to Carville. And insulting Kerry. He is not a responsible media person in many ways.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602070006

"Former Time White House correspondent John Dickerson, in a first-person account of his knowledge of the Plame matter, now acknowledges that he, too, knew that Rove was Cooper's source well before the October 2003 article -- an article on which he, like Cooper, received reporting credit.

Dickerson, now Slate.com's chief political correspondent, wrote a February 7 article in which he described being on a July 2003 presidential trip to Africa when two senior Bush administration officials, speaking to him on background, criticized former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had gone on a 2002 mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there. On July 6, 2003, The New York Times ran an op-ed by Wilson in which he challenged claims made by the administration in making its case for the Iraq war. According to Dickerson, the officials encouraged Dickerson to look into who sent Wilson to Niger. In his Slate article, Dickerson described a conversation he had with Cooper shortly after speaking with the Bush officials:

It had been a long week. I was co-writing a long story on the trip for the European edition, filing each day to the Web site and also filing for the domestic cover story on the fallout over the 16 words. Oh, and I also had to file a story on violence in Liberia. My inbox was a mess. In the middle of it was an e-mail from Matt Cooper telling me to call him from a land line when I had some privacy. At some time after 1 p.m. his time, I called him. He told me that he had talked to Karl Rove that morning and that Rove had given him the same Wilson takedown I'd been getting in Uganda. But Matt had the one key fact I didn't: Rove had said that Wilson's wife sent him.

So, in July 2003, Time reporters Cooper, Duffy, and Dickerson all knew that Rove had outed Plame. But three months later, all three of them helped produce a Time article (Duffy received a byline; the others were credited with having contributed to the reporting) that falsely suggested that Rove had nothing to do with it"


http://mediamatters.org/items/200610250015

"John Dickerson
During the first hour of Battleground America, Slate.com chief political
correspondent John Dickerson claimed, without explanation or elaboration,
that "ou don't know where the Democratic Party is, as a whole, on the
war" because "the Democrats are trying, basically, to be all things to all
people." Dickerson did not elaborate on the charge, and NBC News chief White
House correspondent David Gregory did not challenge his remark."

Maybe he is not the right person to be calling Howard Dean a blowhard. Maybe he is the real blowhard.

More from Media Matters about blowhard Dickerson:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602100005

"Franken grills Dickerson on Time-Rove scandal: "Why can't you just say they're big liars?"
Summary: Former Time magazine correspondent John Dickerson answered questions raised by a Media Matters item during an appearance on The Al Franken Show. His answers indicated that he is familiar with the Media Matters item, yet Dickerson did not deny the central point of the item -- that he and his colleagues participated in the publication of misleading articles that contained statements they knew to be false. Nor did Dickerson offer a single relevant explanation or justification for the knowing publication, without rebuttal, of a false statement by White House press secretary Scott McClellan."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200611030015

"NPR's Liasson, Slate's Dickerson, Time's Cox all downplayed Haggard's significance
Summary: Although Rev. Ted Haggard was the pastor of a 14,000-member church and president of "the largest evangelical group in America," as well as a regular member of weekly conference calls with the Bush administration, National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, Slate's John Dickerson, and Time's Ana Marie Cox all downplayed the political impact of recent allegations that he solicited sex and drugs from a male prostitute."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200610310016

"Slate's Dickerson claimed both Democrats and Republicans are using deceptive push-polling, but provided only GOP example
In an October 30 article documenting Republican "push-polling," in which political campaigns make phone calls purporting to conduct surveys but in fact push a particular viewpoint and often smear an adversary, Slate.com chief political correspondent John Dickerson baselessly suggested that Democrats are "no doubt using the same tactics but haven't been caught doing it as flagrantly yet." In his article, Dickerson provided no examples or reports of Democrats using push-polling, while providing the transcript and audio link for an automated push-poll phone call on behalf of Tennessee Republican Senate candidate Bob Corker. As Media Matters for America has documented, ABC News and NBC News have similarly suggested that both Democrats and Republicans have engaged in "mudslinging" and "dirty tricks," respectively, while providing only Republican examples of such behavior."

Maybe he is the one who is misspeaking and misleading and doing what blowhards often do...trying to hurt good people by smear and innuendo.

[ginnyinWI]

1. all this jockeying for position in the Party is sickening. n/t

[w13rd0]

2. Dickerson isn't jockeying for a position in the Party...

...he's just a media whore doing Rove's bidding.

[madfloridian]

3. and perhaps helping others jockey for position.

Doesn't he appear on TV as Democratic strategist. He doesn't sound like one. I think Franken has him on a lot like he has Norm Ornstein of AEI.

[spooky3]

6. anyone who has been cited 5 times by MMFA is no Dem

[madfloridian]

4. Here's the transcript of the Franken interview with Dickerson..

which is mentioned above.

http://prairieweather.typepad.com/the_scribe/2006/02/20806_air_ameri.html

[madfloridian]

5. Dickerson also blasted Pelosi for saying we would investigate.

Good Lord, we have so-called Dem pundits bashing our side as well. This was not a nice article.


http://www.slate.com/id/2141282/