Rising Hegemon
Here's a nice piece of lyin':
But Hume is well aware that some people, particularly on the left, view him as a conservative hack and Bush apologist.
"It bothers me a little bit," he says. "I think we look conservative to people who are not. . . . I knew the rap on us from Day One was going to be that we were a right-wing news outlet." But, he says, "I believed if we tried that, it would never work."
Hume and Fox News were among the first to jump on the charges by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam record, with Hume pushing the controversy day after day.
As the lead panelist on "Fox News Sunday," Hume said in August 2004 that the book by the Swift Boat Veterans "is a remarkably well-done document. It is full of detail. It is full of specifics. The charges that are being made of Kerry, of irresponsible and indeed in some cases mendacious conduct in his service in Vietnam, are made by people who were there."
The Center for Media and Public Affairs, in a 2004 study, found that "Special Report" coverage of President Bush was positive 60 percent of the time, while its evaluations of John Kerry were negative by a 5-to-1 margin. Hume says he was fair to Kerry and that the media gave far more scrutiny to Bush's National Guard record.
More recently, Hume said the press corps "behaved badly . . . like a pack of jackals" during the Cheney hunting accident furor. He also criticized an erroneous Associated Press report that said Bush had been warned that the New Orleans levees might be breached, when the word that a weather official used was "overtopped." "Much of the rest of the media fell for it hook, line and sinker," Hume said.
I'm going to disabuse you of my right-wing hackdom by proving it.
An interesting defense, one worthy of FoxNews no doubt.
But here is the most sickening lie of all.
Early on in Kurtz's piece, there is a discussion about how Hume feels guilty about early in his career reporting that Spiro Agnew's son was gay.
You might think that was related to the death of Hume's own son years later.
Apparently not. And then comes the real lying:
...February 1998, in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky furor, Kim Hume told her husband that the story was so hot he should start the program immediately. After checking with Ailes, Hume launched "Special Report" that night.
He was not only having fun, he was proud of his 28-year-old son, Sandy, who had just signed a contract as a Fox contributor and was writing for the Hill newspaper and several magazines.
On Feb. 22, Sandy Hume killed himself with a hunting rifle in his Arlington apartment. He had been arrested the night before for driving under the influence, had tried to hang himself in a D.C. jail cell and was released after being evaluated in a psychiatric hospital.
"It's a moment of truth when you realize what you believe," Hume says. "I realized I believed in God." He had been "a fallen Christian," Hume says, but "it was such a devastating loss I was thinking, 'How in the world am I going to get through this?' I had this odd thought that I would get a phone call: 'Brit, this is God.' I had this idea that somehow I was going to be okay and God was going to rescue me."
Why such a promising young journalist took his life was a mystery. "The proximate cause was the arrest for DUI, which he believed, for reasons that are not entirely clear, was going to be ruinous. . . . He was manifestly depressed about it."
Was Hume racked with parental guilt? "It was a great help to me that I'd had a very good relationship with him. I didn't have to live with a lot of regrets about how we'd gotten along."
Um...Maybe we should talk to Bill Paxon about that. Because here is something that Howie just cannot bring up:
Robert Dodge, national economics correspondent in the Washington bureau of The Dallas Morning News, began the discussion by introducing one of the most recent examples of an allegation destroying both a political career and a life -- an alleged affair between U.S. Rep. Bill Paxon, R-N.Y., and young upcoming Washington reporter Sandy Hume.
A leaked allegation about the two made national headlines and has been cited by many as the most likely factor in the journalist's decision to kill himself and in the congressman's decision to retire from public office in spite of a blossoming career.
The importance of covering such a story, according to Dodge, is not so much to find out whether an individual is lesbian or gay, but to uncover the motives of individuals or organizations that are using leaked allegations to undermine political foes.
The implication that Hume & Paxon were "involved" was spread by Gingrich & the establishment GOP in Congress to thwart an uprising against him. One might think that would cause Hume to have some anger against Gingrich -- but that would denote some sort of non-sociopathic behavior. Newtie boy has been having Brit rub one out for him for the last 8 years.
I guess if you are so deeply in denial about things, it goes several layers deeper.
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