Blumenthal: Why Kerry should sue the Sun [View All]

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Some of the British media are too happy doing Drudge's dirty work

Sidney Blumenthal

One question remains unanswered about the politically inspired lie that Senator John Kerry had had an affair with an "intern". Which interested source planted it with the rightwing internet hooligan Matt Drudge and with the conservative British newspapers that put it into wide public play? Its timing was fortuitous. Immediately after George Bush went into a tailspin, falling behind the Democratic presidential frontrunner, John Kerry, in the polls, Kerry became the subject of smears filled with remembrance of things past.

First, a phoney composite photograph was circulated of Kerry standing next to Jane Fonda at an anti-Vietnam war rally. Unfortunately, not only did Fonda denounce the ploy as a "dirty trick", but so did Republican senator John McCain, heroic Vietnam prisoner of war, Bush's rival for the nomination in 2000 and a close friend of Kerry's. The attempt to revive the dread of the Nixon era failed, and the scarlet letter of the Clinton years was unfurled. The Drudge Report, claiming 15 million readers, alleged that a young "intern" had a "mystery relationship" with Kerry and that several major US news organisations were already investigating. But none published a word, though political society in Washington and New York was instantly consumed with gossip.

On February 13, on the eve of Valentine's Day, Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper screeched, "New JFK rocked by sex scandal", naming the woman as Alexandra Polier and quoting her father as calling Kerry "a sleazeball". On February 15, the Tory papers, the Mail and the Telegraph, quoted her "friend": "This is not going to go away. What actually happened is much nastier than what is being reported." Murdoch's Sunday Times repeated the "sleazeball" quote and winked knowingly: "It is a tale of two Americas, as the Democrats might say."

Back in the US, frustrated rightwing media tried to force the issue, using the authority of the British imprimatur. Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host, broadcasting on more than 600 radio stations, boomed: "It's all over the UK press! It's front page!" He suggested that President Clinton was the source of the story in order to bump off Kerry and help Senator Hillary Clinton become president. The neoconservative former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote in National Review: "Isn't it curious how after a story like this breaks there turn out to be dozens of people who were in on the secret?" On CNN, the Sunday Times columnist and Drudge pal Andrew Sullivan held forth: "Can you anymore not talk about something that's on the front page of the Times of London, front page of the Drudge Report, on everybody's minds? There comes a point at which the media has to acknowledge people are talking."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1151093,00.html