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Oh, Outrage! Oh, Hypocrisy!

NewsMax once again looks silly by attacking Democrats for actions it previously engaged in with impunity.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 12/17/2000


Perhaps NewsMax needs to hire a secretary or something to keep track of its behavior so that it doesn't look stupid when its writers attack Democrats for doing the exact same thing.

That's right -- NewsMax plays the stupid card yet again, smacking itself in the face not once but twice with its own hypocrisy.

Example No. 1: In a Dec. 12 article criticizing unnamed "liberal press outlets" for allegedly trying to dig up dirt on a rumored relationship between Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (never mind that NewsMax, et al, have been dishing unproven rumors for years about an alleged affair between Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster), it is ominously noted that Jeb Bush's sons have also faced scrutiny as part of a "media-backed vendetta."

"The lengths the big media are taking to discredit the Bush family doesn't stop with W. and Jeb," the article intones. "Jeb's son, George, is one target. In 1994, he had a bad breakup with a girlfriend and ran his Ford Explorer over the young lady's front yard. More 'scandal' being peddled by the media: Jeb's other son was discovered by police in a car with a girlfriend, windows fogged, and not fully clothed."

Both incidents are true, by the way, with police reports backing up these "scandals" against both George P. (which also included a breaking-and-entering charge) and 16-year-old Jebby (who made sure the cops knew who his daddy was while he was being written up).

Contrast this to NewsMax coverage of Chelsea Clinton. A Feb. 17, 1999, article quotes a "source familiar with the New York plastic surgery scene" as saying that Chelsea had plastic surgery after graduating high school to repair "a horribly recessive chin" and "an uneven lower lip."

And a Sept. 6, 2000, story makes sport of Chelsea for dating a White House intern. The article notes that the beau was on the college swim team, then adds: "Did he snap his speedo in her direction while enjoying the White House pool?"

Sounds like NewsMax is conducting its own vendetta. Yet they couldn't come up with anything as, well, interesting as being half-naked in a mall parking lot.

The very same day its was inventing outrage over this, NewsMax found something else to piously attack: Jesse Jackson's statement that the Bush campaign used "Nazi tactics" in the Florida post-election brouhaha.

"Jackson's explosive invocation of the German dictator's genocidal regime represents the ugliest and most divisive rhetoric yet employed by either side in the 35-day post-election standoff," the article states.

Funny, invoking dictatorial, genocidal regimes was just peachy with NewsMax when Democrats were the targets. ConWebWatch has previously noted a Nov. 21 NewsMax commentary by Paul Craig Roberts titled "The Democrat Nazi Party" as well as a Nov. 23 CNSNews.com commentary by Alan Caruba, likening Gore to a Nazi.

Additionally, a Nov. 27 article by Richard Poe, editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine -- which appeared briefly on NewsMax -- makes the Gore-Hitler connection: "Like most Americans, I concluded that no one with half a brain could have fallen for Hitler’s cant. But real life is not like the movies. A lot of decent, intelligent Germans supported Hitler - people not unlike our friends and relatives who now support Al Gore."

Ironically, Jackson's statement is more accurate than he probably knows. There is indeed a Nazi connection in Bush's family tree: George W.'s grandfather and great-grandfather, Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker, were among the chief American fundraisers for Germany's Nazi Party and helped disguise Nazi assets in the United States; assets of Bush and Walker were seized by the U.S. government in 1942 as a penalty for violating the Trading With The Enemy Act.

"The politics of personal destruction are alive and well," NewsMax tsk-tsks in its Bush article. Being one of the prime practitioners of it, they would certainly know.

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