Dick Morris vouches for Novak: "He's never proven wrong. He's always right"

[Karmadillo]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200711210006?f=h_top

<edit>

Morris' praise of Novak notwithstanding, Media Matters for America has identified numerous instances in which Novak has been "proven wrong" -- by others, and by himself, including:

Media Matters has documented Novak's continually evolving -- and frequently contradictory -- accounts of his July 8, 2003, conversation with then-deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, during which Armitage disclosed to Novak former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA employee. Novak -- who later outed Plame in his July 14, 2003, column, sparking a Justice Department inquiry into the leak of Plame's identity -- has claimed that Plame's identity "was given to me as an offhand manner" and that his original source (subsequently revealed to be Armitage) "told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part." But he also said, challenging Armitage's account, in a September 14, 2006, column: "Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column."

In his memoir, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum, July 2007), Novak wrote that in the exchange over Plame's identity, Armitage described the information as "real Evans and Novak." Novak added: "I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column."

Novak was quoted in a July 22, 2003, Newsday article saying of his interview: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," adding that his then-unnamed source "thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." When later asked to reconcile that quote with his claims that the revelation was "offhand," Novak claimed both that his comments were not "very artfully put," and that Newsday misquoted him.

In a June 4 column, Novak claimed that deputy White House political director Scott Jennings "targeted no candidate for support" during a January 26 political briefing for General Services Administration (GSA) administrator Lurita Doan and more than 30 of the agency's political appointees. In fact, according to a May 18 report by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, Jennings' briefing specifically targeted dozens of Republican candidates for support and Democratic candidates for opposition.

In his March 12 column, Novak accused Sen. Clinton of "re-inventing her past" because Clinton's March 4 speech in Selma, Alabama, included a "claim of her attachment to Martin Luther King Jr. as a high school student in 1963," suggesting that this conflicted with her description of herself as a "Goldwater girl" in her memoir, Living History (Simon & Schuster, June 2003). As Media Matters noted, however, Clinton wrote in Living History both that she heard King speak when she was a teenager and that she was a Goldwater girl.

more...

[pinto]

1. Oy, Dick Morris vouches for Novak? There's a joke there somewhere,

or two or three.

:eyes:

[Cha]

6. The tragic joke is

on the American People cause dick morris vouches for novakula and the corporatemediawhores call it in from their bar stool.

[Hekate]

2. Sure he's always right. Far right.

sheesh :eyes:

[NastyRiffraff]

3. Bwaaaahaaahaaa!

Dick Morris...Dick Morris vouches for Novak's always being right? That's like Al Capone vouching for legality, Nixon vouching for truthfulness, Bush vouching for competence.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. And since Toe-Sucker Morris is always wrong about everything,

I guess we don't have to worry about Novakula, because if Morris says he's always right he must therefore always be wrong, too.

[spag68]

5. Morris

He is really a creepy sort isn't he?

[dogman]

7. This was the true purpose of Novak's column.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/660273,CST-EDT-carol21.article

Snip>Column item damages both Clinton, Obama

Snip>Novak's item was just 123 words long, but it raised a whole host of questions, the big one being exactly WHAT scandalous information? "The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed," wrote Novak.

Snip>Is it fair?

"Well," said Novak, "I think people draw their own conclusions."

And of course, he's right. They will. But when any of us -- reporters and columnists included -- sticks the word "scandal" next to somebody's name without specifics or without surfacing the source, we've just poured gasoline on a fire of our own making.

And in this case, I would respectfully submit that in this already treacherous political season, both Obama and Clinton have been unnecessarily burned.