Friday, January 01, 2010

Stenography For A Sphincter

It might be a stretch to say that CNN is deliberately pushing the far right agenda in the following article; at a minimum, they're allowing themselves to be played:
(CNN) – A mass e-mail was sent on Tuesday from Carly Fiorina's senatorial campaign, appearing to not only come from the candidate herself, but from her personal BlackBerry.

While most campaigns send e-mails appearing to be written from the candidate, this one took the extra step of adding at the bottom, "Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device." This tag has raised questions about why the campaign, and others which have included similar tags, would take the extra step to tell readers what is highly unlikely: it was sent directly from Fiorina's BlackBerry.

...


"I doubt anyone believed Carly Fiorina typed out that entire e-mail on her BlackBerry specifically to the recipient and took the time to add in the FEC disclosure box," Erick Erickson, the editor-in-chief of RedState.com, said. "It's just silly. I think it undermines the credibility of online campaigns for candidates to do stuff like that."

"I think when online outreach tries to be too cute, people stop taking it seriously," Erickson added.
Evidently no one told CNN "Audience Interaction Producer" Eric Kuhn that people stopped taking Yumpin Yiminy seriously when RedState was founded.

More egregiously, Kuhn failed to inform readers that Yumpin has endorsed Fiorina's primary opponent, frothing wingnut Charles DeVore, and therefore has a substantial interest in attacking Fiorina's credibility. Erickson's not just some random asshole spouting off about trivia; he's an asshole who's working with a candidate's rival to defeat that candidate spouting off about trivia. (Sample santorum: "But as we fight our way back to power, I stand with Chuck DeVore because Chuck DeVore stands with me.")

It's not the asshole who's to be faulted for failing to disclose the conflict, he didn't write the article. That we know of. Perhaps it's just that Kuhn is an incompetent. But, at the Alex Castellanos network, that's far from the only explanation.

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