MoveOn, Standby and Rathering

The brouhaha over the “General Betray Us” ad evokes mixed feelings in a veteran of advertising acceptance and pricing wars.

Today the Public Editor of the New York Times chides the paper for both the content of and charges for the MoveOn ad that has replaced troop withdrawal from Iraq as the main subject of political contention for almost two weeks.

First, should the Times have accepted the ad? Not without a change of headline. The executive in charge says he was influenced by the question mark, but that won’t wash. He discloses rejection of a previous MoveOn ad until a doctored photo of Dick Cheney was removed. Tacky, insulting, libelous word play on anybody’s name is just as unacceptable.

Standby pricing is tricky. Ostensibly used to fill unsold advertising space at the last minute, because press forms are no more flexible than airline seats, it is often used by overeager sales people to inflate ad lineage figures.

In this case, if MoveOn had not been guaranteed the ad would run that Monday, the price would be defensible. If the Times had retained the option to run it at its own convenience, that would have qualified as standby. But apparently that was not what happened.

Ordinarily, all this would be marginally interesting to media people, if the Republican attack machine had not jumped on it to divert attention from the real Iraq debate, exactly as they did in 2004 with Dan Rather’s reporting on George Bush’s evasion of combat service in Vietnam.

Rather is now suing CBS to correct that distortion, but somebody should be defending the Times from being Rathered over the Iraq war now. It’s too bad political parties don’t have the equivalent of a Public Editor to hold them accountable for their mistakes, few of which are as innocuous as those of newspapers.

Saddam Then, Now MoveOn

When our Way of Life is threatened, members of the United States Senate will stand up and be counted.

In October of 2002, the Upper Chamber voted to invade Iraq, depose Saddam Hussein and remove the threat of his Weapons of Mass Destruction by 77-23.

Five years later, the Senate did not flinch from its duty once again and voted yesterday to defend America from Advertising of General Destruction by 72-25.

The minority was populated by a dozen of the same misguided Democrats who fancied themselves candidates for a 21st century version of “Profiles in Courage” for opposing the Administration’s resolve to free the Middle East of anti-American influences back then--Senators Akaka, Bingaman, Boxer, Byrd, Durbin, Feingold, Inouye, Kennedy, Murray, Reed, Stabenow and Wyden.

President Bush set them straight at his press conference by pointing out forcefully that the MoveOn ad was a “disgusting...attack...on the U. S. military,” a virtual Pearl Harbor that “leaders in the Democrat party” failed to resist.

Some politicians never learn.

Using Generals Like Kleenex

It’s sad to see the piling-on. Beyond the infamous MoveOn ad, there are now stories about Petraeus’ penchant for ass-kissing and his presidential ambitions.

But character assassination won’t change what Bush is doing in Iraq, and impugning Petraeus is not only mean-spirited but unworthy of those who oppose the war on moral and ethical grounds.

The sighting of Colin Powell this week in a GQ interview is a reminder of how this Administration uses Generals like Kleenex to wipe their fingerprints off disastrous policies.

Powell claims he did all he could to warn Bush and Cheney off invading Iraq. Whether he did or not, Petraeus might want to take a good look at what Powell has to say about the Surge:

“Suppose I’m a battalion commander. My troops ask, ‘What do I do today, boss?’ ‘Let’s go fight the Shia militias!’ ‘What do I do tomorrow?’ ‘Let’s go fight the Sunni insurgents!’ ‘What do I do the day after tomorrow?’ ‘Let’s go chase Al Qaeda!” “What do we do the day after that?’ ‘We’re going to guard streets!’ Our kids are fantastic. But this is not sustainable. Our surge can work only with an Iraqi political and military surge.”

Petraeus might want to note that Powell is talking about a political surge there, not here.