Bob Herbert quotes random blog comment

Today Bob Herbert questions the nasty attacks on Barack Obama by Clinton surrogates -- a fine subject for a column. But then he transitions to a random quotation from the Internet:

The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics.

Consider, for example, the following Web posting (misspellings and all) from a mainstream news blog on Jan. 13:

“omg people get a grip. Can you imagine calling our president barak hussien obama ... I cant, I pray no one would be disrespectful enough to put this man in our whitehouse.”

Herbert's reference to a "Web posting" on a "mainstream news blog" suggests that the news organization wrote the quotation in question, when it was actually just a random comment on an ABC News blog post about Bob Kerrey's reference to Obama's middle name. Memo to pundits: Stop quoting random web commenters. You can find a crazy comment on any blog -- it just doesn't prove anything.

Comments

[Howard]

Giving Herbert the benefit of the doubt, I think he was pointing to the blog comment either as evidence that the Kerrey "smear" was "working" or as evidence of the degree to which politics has created divisive stances (a general theme in the article), or both.

I think he may have highlighted that it was on a "mainstream news site" to show that it was not a fringe statement (but of course a "fringe" statement can occur anywhere). I don't see that he was necessarily saying the comments were coming from Clinton supporters.

I disagree Herbert him regarding the Kerrey statements. Kerrey made an initial comment saying Obama's background was a strength but he suggested that in some ways it would be a handicap as a candidate (because of prejudices). It was very brief comment made following a speech.

When Kerrey was "called" on those comments he generally repeated them, causing more outrage from some people. I disagree about the "smear" label, but I can't know the Senator's real intent.

One thing that Herbert did was to draw selectively from each set of comments, to show a pattern of 'sowing concern' or 'starting rumors' or some such. I think its somewhat a case of misreporting what was said and then ascribing a motive to it.

It's also a bit excessive using the term "Clinton surrogates" so freely. An Obama supported is not an "Obama surrogate", nor is a Clinton critic an "Obama surrogate". But Herbert seems to use that type of qualification to define his Hillary surrogates.

[kadinca]

Giving Herbert the benefit of the doubt, I think he was pointing to the blog comment either as evidence that the Kerrey "smear" was "working" or as evidence of the degree to which politics has created divisive stances (a general theme in the article), or both

[zayıflama]

It's also a bit excessive using the term "Clinton surrogates" so freely. An Obama supported is not an "Obama surrogate", nor is a Clinton critic an "Obama surrogate".