Moral Equivalency Raises Its Ugly Head (Again)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that bloggers should beware of attempts by MSM to paint the Swift Vets as the moral equivalent of the promulgators of Rathergate or of the long-discredited Kitty Kelley. In particular, Michiku Kakutani and Elie Wiesel did their best to create a new way for the left to weasel out of any valid argument over the Swift Vets' charges. Wiesel penned (in French!) a vapid cri de coeur for everyone to hold hands, sway, and sing Kumbaya rather than engage in political debate, while Kakutani placed the Swift Vets on the same moral plane as the loathsome Kitty Kelley.

Allan Murray of CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, trying desperately to bring up the rear, weighs in this morning with a Journal column ($) that again does the old moral equivalency two-step. But the content of his piece undermines his own story.

That's because in "Kelley, O'Neill Books Bashing Bush, Kerry Rate Unfit to Read," a funny thing happens on the way to the conclusion. The 811 word column devotes only 89 words to a critique of O'Neill's book versus 623 to Kelley (the other words make up the introduction and conclusion).

Murray exhausts his critique of John O'Neill in the second paragraph, which follows a "woe is us" introductory graph. Here is the full text of his supposed take-down of O'Neill:

"Mr. O'Neill's hatred for John Kerry, nurtured over three decades, oozes out of every page of 'Unfit for Command' and makes it difficult to take the book seriously. Perhaps his account of what happened on the Bay Hap River -- he says Mr. Kerry 'fled the scene' like a coward -- is more accurate than the account of Jim Rassmann, who says Mr. Kerry risked enemy fire to pull him out of the river and save his life. But I'm inclined to go with the guy in the water."

(Does every page ooze hatred? In the interest of sartorial preservation, I hope Murray had changed out of his suit before picking up the book.)

The next 623 words are devoted to an admirable dissection of Kelley's vacuous charges against the Bush family. It's an example of the kind of writing an able reporter can do when he's not toeing the official line. For example, to the charge that Laura Bush both smoked dope and sold it while she was a college student at SMU, Murray writes:

"I had a long talk with Mr. Nash [Kelley's quoted source] on the phone last week, and he says he doesn't know Laura Bush, and to his knowledge isn't friends with any of her SMU classmates. Instead, he's a longtime Austin resident whose name was passed on to Ms. Kelley by a mutual acquaintance in Washington. The author called him for help in chasing down a number of rumors she had heard about the Bushes, including that Mrs. Bush had smoked marijuana in college. Mr. Nash said he had heard that rumor, as well as a rumor that she had sold marijuana to friends.

"It was sheer gossip, says a now-distraught Mr. Nash. 'She is taking a kernel of cocktail chatter that was ill-advised and stupid on my part,' says Mr. Nash, 'and she has blown it up.'"

Unwilling or unable to maintain this level of journalism, though, Murray reverts to form in his conclusion to take a swipe at bloggers and other new media:

"Recent screw-ups at the New York Times, USA Today and now CBS News have cast a cloud over the 'mainstream' media and its ability to serve as an effective filter for consumers of news. But without such a filter, anything goes. Let the reader beware."

Well, it seems that, within the mainstream, anything went. Or, at the risk of a metaphor alert, if the filter's clogged, should we count on it to remove undesirable material?

Murray's a smart guy, and at his best he's a capable journalist. But his claim that John O'Neill is no more reliable and legitimate than the gossip-mongering Kitty Kelley is belied by his own inability to critique them equally. If O'Neill's book really is as porous as Kelley's, why the tepid response? Why the fact-based and lopsided column that easily wipes out Kelley while offering only a subjective opinion about O'Neill's claims? Why did he limit his investigative skills (making phone calls, checking sources) to Kelley's claims? Perhaps because he couldn't lay a glove on O'Neill?

By leaving the Swift Vets unscathed, Murray solidifies their claims. And through his over-reaching attempt to draw a moral equivalency between the claims of O'Neill and Kelley, Murray indeed reminds us of why the reader should beware. The herd mentality rides on, but these days its stampede isn't kicking up as much dust.