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Saturday, January 08, 2005Here's Instapundit yesterday on the Armstrong Williams bit. I think there are two issues here:1) Williams' ethics 2) The Administration's ethics From what I know of Armstrong Williams, I doubt that he would have done anything differently on his shows, payola or not. I don't think you'd need to pay him to push NCLB, to hammer it and to have on government mucky mucks to drive home the point. I also don't think the Administration would have approached anyone who wasn't up for the deal. My objections: 1) Williams didn't say, "This segment brought to you by you, the American taxpayer." 2) Why are my taxes being used to push Administration policies? However, it should be pointed out that this is not such a big shocker. Planned Parenthood and countless other organizations that can't even provide their most basic services without Washington's assistance do manage to find the dough to run pretty strong campaigns for their backers. Alarming News wrote: taking money for publicizing [NCLB] without disclosing it seems very wrong to me. I agree with Jonah Goldberg that if the Clinton administration did this, conservatives would be outraged. This is no different.The Clinton Administration, for those who have forgotten, paid broadcasters off to up the anti-drug storylines and strew money left and right upon organizations whose PACs and mailing lists were converted into subsidiaries of the DNC. Conservatives should be outraged with the Bush Administration because they were outraged by the Clinton White House. I'm appalled, but too cynical to get too worked up. The other question is whether this was all within the Education Department or if geniuses with last names like Rove - or Bush - gave the go-ahead. One hopes they're smarter than that. 
posted by gbarto at 10:39 PM |
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
