Our news is not your news!

I was all set to write a post about the LA Times withholding the video of Rashid Khalidi's farewell party (which featured the Ayerses and the Obamas among other luminaries), when I saw that WorldNetDaily has stepped right up to the moral equivalency plate with a story about McCain giving Khalidi (or at least some previous political incarnation of Khalidi) some money.

That means, obviously, that I can't blog about the Khalidi video without looking like a hypocrite, right? Because, the thinking goes, if the Republicans gave money to Khalidi, then he becomes magically "respectable" and politically untouchable forever. Like Bill Ayers via Walter Annenberg.

The problem with that logic is that it shouldn't matter who gave him money or why. What matters here is that the tape is being withheld, in a manner which suggests they're playing the hide-and-seek game instead of reporting. (Which ties right in to what Jules Crittenden and Michael S. Malone said the other day.)

As to the "investigative journalists" who might get to the bottom of this and track down the Khalidi video, they're too busy going after Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, who unlike most politicians is not afraid to fight back.

What's interesting about the Ayers angle is that the LA Times (which is withholding the tape) didn't report that Ayers and Dohrn were there:

"But we should know about their relationship, including apparently information that is held by the Los Angeles Times concerning an event that Mr Ayers attended with a PLO spokesman."

McCain appeared to be referring to a Los Angeles Times article from April which said Obama knew and attended a farewell party for Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO spokesman, during his academic career in Chicago. The article makes no mention of Ayers's presence at the event.

"The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public. I'm not in the business of talking about media bias but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet?

"I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different," he said, saying Ayers had a "long relationship" with Obama, who was eight years old when the Weathermen were waging their radical campaign.

Yes, not only did they keep Ayers out of the report, but they tried to keep a lid on it -- even to the point of making McCain look like a blithering gaffer for mentioning Ayers. This ABC story was originally titled "McCain Again Botches Khalidi Attack; Larry King Forced to Correct Him," until they realized that McCain damned well meant to mention Ayers. Why? Because Ayers was there. As if they didn't know.

At the risk of sounding like a wild conspiracy theorist, I'd be willing to bet that Ayers is at least part of the reason for withholding the tape. Maybe he and his wife were a little too chummy with people who didn't mind being chummy in 2003, but would find it immensely embarrassing right now.

Not being able to see it, no one will know.

There's more here, and had the New York Sun not reported on Ayers presence there, it's doubtful anyone would have known:

A spokeswoman for McCain said the senator based his allegation about Ayers on another newspaper article -- a New York Sun report in 2005 that Ayers had been at the same banquet.

The Sun article reported that Ayers had contributed to a commemorative testimonial book honoring Khalidi but did not specify whether that book was signed by dinner attendees or assembled beforehand. "A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers," authors Sol Stern and Fred Siegel reported.

McCain has spent weeks trying to make Obama's relationship with Ayers an issue in the campaign, saying that Obama had not been truthful with the American people about how close the two are.

The Los Angeles Times wrote in April about the banquet as part of a broader story examining Obama's relationship with the Palestinian community in Chicago. The paper issued a statement yesterday saying their source asked them not to release the video.

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the paper quoted Russ Stanton, editor of the LA Times, saying. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

Jamie Gold, the newspaper's readers' representative, said in a statement: "More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite -- the L.A. Times brought the matter to light."

Brought the matter to light? The way the LA Times story was written, you wouldn't know who was there except that some angry Palestinian voices had "challenged [Obama's] thinking."

Who was there never would have been brought to light at all by the LA Times, and the only reason we know about it is because of the persistence of the 2005 New York Sun piece:

...when Columbia academic officials made this choice they knew they were getting a Palestinian political activist. From 1976 to 1982, Mr. Khalidi was a director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA. Later he served on the PLO "guidance committee" at the Madrid peace conference.

In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi's wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia's SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)

Whoa, Daley too? He's the head of the movement to mainstream Bill Ayers, "Citizen of the Year."

I'll just bet they were chummy. I'd love to see the tape.

Precisely why they won't let me.

UPDATE: The LA Times' Khalidi tape coverup continues, and Ron Rosenbaum says that their latest response is "worthy of a Rumsfeld press conference."

Read it.

posted by Eric on 10.30.08 at 07:19 PM





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WashPost has the latest smear by the McSame camp:
"In two radio interviews on Wednesday, McCain claimed that the videotape would show that William Ayers also attended the party for Khalidi. According to the McCain campaign, he based this claim on a February 4, 2005 article in The New York Sun written by Sol Stern, a long-time Khalidi critic. But the Stern article does not say that Ayers was present at the party. Instead, it reports that Ayers contributed to a testimonial book that was presented to Khalidi at his farewell dinner. Obama and Chicago mayor Richard Daley also contributed testimonials for Khalidi.

"I never tried to say that Ayers was there," said Stern. "I didn't think it was a big deal at the time."

In other words, McSame lied.

The only association that matters on November 4th is the one between the Village Idiot from Texas and McSame:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/

Meyrav Levine   ·  October 30, 2008 08:50 PM

Eric , I wanted to see the video but it's become the defacto position of Youtube, weather by circumstance or design, that any video clip that is percieved to be pro McCain or anti Obama is relegated to the "not available" bin almost instantaniously.
Well maybe it's a policy of burying the video after 5K views or three days - whichever comes first.
I frequent HotAir, Patterico, Gateway Pundit, and Instapundit, and everyday for the last several months they have posted videos hosted by Youtube. For all the good it did they could have saved themselves the ink (or rather the electrons) because not one of those videos ever functioned for me.
For a while Michelle Malkin complained that youtube censored her videos (back when she first started Hot Air) and so she switched to something called redorbit.
Redorbit, plainly speaking, sucked. You were forced to view the vid from a streaming feed that didn't store the accrued video on my local machine. So if you have the patience what you get is a vid fed in two second increments which never resolved into a minute long whole.
What is needed, what would revolutionize the conservative voice, is a dedicated source for campaign related visual material which isn't subject to the whim of assholes like Meyrev Levine (bet you anything he/she/it is one of those Acorn Obama fuctionaries paid to astroturf selected blogs and newspapers).
Give it the same functionality and ease of use as youtube (I mean when youtube is functioning) except that videos are never taken down no matter how many people view it, and no liberal dogma allowed.
We could call it GOPTube. To set it up would cost something less then a McCain/Palin ad buy in a midwestern state, and it would reach the whole country.

Eric, you have pull. Talk to the right people, and let's get er done (if it won't help this election, there will be another one in two years).

Papertiger   ·  October 30, 2008 11:49 PM

Eric , I wanted to see the video but it's become the defacto position of Youtube, weather by circumstance or design, that any video clip that is percieved to be pro McCain or anti Obama is relegated to the "not available" bin almost instantaniously.
Well maybe it's a policy of burying the video after 5K views or three days - whichever comes first.
I frequent HotAir, Patterico, Gateway Pundit, and Instapundit, and everyday for the last several months they have posted videos hosted by Youtube. For all the good it did they could have saved themselves the ink (or rather the electrons) because not one of those videos ever functioned for me.
For a while Michelle Malkin complained that youtube censored her videos (back when she first started Hot Air) and so she switched to something called redorbit.
Redorbit, plainly speaking, sucked. You were forced to view the vid from a streaming feed that didn't store the accrued video on my local machine. So if you have the patience what you get is a vid fed in two second increments which never resolved into a minute long whole.
What is needed, what would revolutionize the conservative voice, is a dedicated source for campaign related visual material which isn't subject to the whim of assholes like Meyrev Levine (bet you anything he/she/it is one of those Acorn Obama fuctionaries paid to astroturf selected blogs and newspapers).
Give it the same functionality and ease of use as youtube (I mean when youtube is functioning) except that videos are never taken down no matter how many people view it, and no liberal dogma allowed.
We could call it GOPTube. To set it up would cost something less then a McCain/Palin ad buy in a midwestern state, and it would reach the whole country.

Eric, you have pull. Talk to the right people, and let's get er done (if it won't help this election, there will be another one in two years).

Papertiger   ·  October 30, 2008 11:52 PM

Sorry for the double post. :) Feel free to delete that extra one. We don't need it.

Papertiger   ·  October 30, 2008 11:57 PM

I just wanted to convey the announcement that LA Times editor Russ Stanton has won the 2008 Dan Rather Award.

http://www.root-1.co.il/stanton.htm

idov   ·  October 31, 2008 03:14 AM

There may be a blockbuster on there, but I suspect we will be disappointed by what's on the tape. And the longer the LA Times leaves us to wonder, the we will speculate, and so be more disappointed. When we see it, we'll be left wondering why they damaged their reputation so much to avoid releasing it.

That's usually how it works out.

tim maguire   ·  October 31, 2008 11:29 AM

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