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In his Monday Morning Quarterback column today, SI’s Peter King says: “I think [Favre]’s the most charismatic and interesting player I’ve covered.” I think he’s right. Favre doesn’t really seem to have it in press conferences interviews, but if you watch footage of him in the locker room or on the sidelines, you can still see it come through.

This charisma also probably explains why Favre has often been excused by sportswriters, fans and even coaches and GMs for the various disasters he has been responsible for on the field. There was less of it this time, but when Favre threw the game away to the Giants in the NFC Championship game two years ago, the general feeling wasn’t “He let his team down” but rather “Oh, what a terrible way to end his career.” (Everyone foolishly figured it was the end of his career.)

Charisma is, obviously, an important quality for a quarterback, just like it is for any leader. Sadly, unlike elections, football games cannot be won solely by the presence of a charismatic leader. If they could, Eli Manning’s team would never have beaten Tom Brady’s team. 

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He’s “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”–Harry Reid, on candidate Barack Obama. 

“We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,”–Rudy Giuliani, on Obama’s National Security policy.

Which statement is false?

Which statement got more press coverage?

Why?

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This little item deserves a bit more attention, I think. First of all, I must admit I have a personal bias against Giuliani because, quite frankly, I am biased against jerks. The man is barely even a Republican in terms of his actual political policies (he used to be a Democrat, in fact) yet he has been using some of the worst elements of the Republican party to gain power for himself. That’s my opinion of him. 

But, his personal character aside, what’s actually interesting about this is that it seems to be part of a concerted effort to absolve Bush from blame for negligence in allowing 9/11 to happen.

The theory behind this goes like this: everybody makes a claim. They make it a lot. The claim will be analyzed, and, often, proven false; but that is irrelevant. The important thing is, if you get enough people saying it, someone who is utterly uninformed will hear it, and assume it’s true because he hasn’t got time to research it in depth. 

Like I said in my previous post, this isn’t the first time prominent people try to hammer home a stock line. I remember a montage on Rush Limbaugh’s show that illustrated this technique perfectly. This sort of thing goes on all the time in politics, and once you know about it, it becomes incredibly obvious. (Remember how every speech at the ’08 Democratic convention pointed out the similarities between McCain and Bush?)

That said, I don’t know if anyone has ever attempted revisionist history on this scale. I know the USSR infamously cropped pictures of people who’d displeased Stalin after they were executed, but this is something else entirely. 

What I wonder is:

1. Who is making this concerted effort?

2. Could it work? Will people really start to forget who was President on 9/11?

To be continued…

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http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2010/01/rudy-giuliani-no-domestic-attacks-under-bush-one-under-obama.html

This is an excellent lesson in how politics works, and in how political parties can play the press. 

Giuliani is not alone, you see:

http://rawstory.com/2009/2009/12/gop-strategist-matalin-bush-inherited-911-attacks-clinton/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzpy1GdIeCY

It is curious, I think, that they all have been having this memory lapse. 

In seriousness, though, this is by no means a new technique, but I do think it is a tad brazen to do it with regards to something as obvious as a terrorist attack.

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Just a quick point–it’s obvious if you think about it, but most people don’t:

It is nearly impossible for a journalist to be unbiased on any contentious issue. If you understand an issue well enough, you almost certainly have an opinion. If you have an opinion, you assume that your opinion reflects “The Truth”. And as a journalist, you must report “The Truth”.