Swift Boat Veterans for What?
These days it seems the news is giving as much airtime to liars as it is to those who tell the truth.

Of course, "truth" has apparently become a pretty flexible word. Take the latest vector of the Republican smear campaign, the group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. These vets, who claim to have served with John Kerry, are on a mission to prove he was "no war hero." Their TV ad, highly publicized over the past week, is so false that not even the Bush campaign will be associated with it. The man who said he treated Kerry's first war wound (and claims he lied about his purple heart) is nowhere to be found on the candidate's medical records. In fact, none of the men who appear in the video were on Kerry's boat; they merely were in the country at the same time. All of the crew members of Kerry's boat joined him on stage for the Democratic Convention! Just which "truth" these veterans stand for is unclear. Maybe it's the same truth that Bush used when persuading the Congress to let him attack Iraq.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a fellow vet and friend of Kerry, publically derided the ad. In fact, McCain himself was similarly smeared during his 2000 primary run against...who else? None other than G. Dub. At this rate, though, I don't know what it would take for McCain to withdraw his support from the President.

Of all the talking heads out there, Jon Stewart seems to be the most astute, catching on to stories that the mainstream media glosses over. "But Traily," you say, "Jon Stewart's show airs on Comedy Central. It's fake news." That may be, but it's about as fair and balanced as, say, "The O'Reilly Factor," with humor instead of acute nausea. If Jon Stewart can't air on a "real" news network, neither should half the stuff on Fox News. As a matter of fact, I propose to rename Fox News "Comedy Right-of-Central." How's that for fair and balanced?