Daily Howler - June 16, 2005

WOLF AND MCLEAN DEBATE KLEIN! How should Hillary deal with Klein? Dems simply have to decide: // link // print // previous // next //

THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2005

WHY WE NEED RULES FOR ACCUSERS: What are the press corps’ rules for accusers? The need for such rules is apparent again in the wake of the Terri Schiavo autopsy. In this matter, as in so many others, crackpot accusers seized control of the discourse with little regulation from the mainstream press. Indeed, one such accuser, Randall Terry, was still lobbing bombs last night, in the rogue state known as Scarborough Country. Terry knows nothing about medicine—but so what? He started by suggesting that the autopsy had just been wrong:

TERRY (6/15/05): In the last month of Terri’s life, you had innumerable friends and family go in to see her. And one by one they came in front of the camera and said, “Terri did this. Terri responded to this story”....Either all of them were lying or they were witnessing the activities of a “brain-dead person.”

Terry still thought that Terri Schiavo had been responding and trying to speak.