Check out this revealing piece on Inside.com (while it still exists). Bob Kerrey apparently called two old journalistic friends of his, Dennis Farney of the Wall Street Journal and David Kotok of the Omaha World-Herald, to get ahead of the New York Times story about his alleged war-crime. He hadn’t talked to them in years, but they had accompanied him on one of those trips down memory lane to Vietnam a few years back. The more I read about Kerrey’s spin-operation, the tackier it seems. (It worked, of course. Both Farney and Kotok cite only Kerrey’s recollections.) I’m also a little surprised at how many conservative outlets have reflexively backed Kerrey. The Journal even tried to smear reporter Gregory Vistica as a lefty, as if that in itself debunks the testimony of Gerhard Klann. John McCain writes a moving defense of Kerrey in today’s Journal, but he doesn’t address the main accusation against him, in fact, he comes close to assuming it’s true. (Doesn’t the fact that Newsweek killed Vistica’s story shore up his conservative credentials?) The truth is that plenty of good soldiers served in Vietnam, a war I consider just and defensible, without committing war-crimes. Defending Kerrey as somehow representative of all of them is a disservice to many who served without such atrocities. And plenty of good soldiers, reflecting on a terrible ordeal in their past, do not try to spin the story years later to their own personal advantage. Of course, as Mickey Kaus has observed, Kerrey’s victims can’t spin anything. Except in their graves.
PEELING THE SHRIMP: Can Kinsley get any funnier? Can his targets get any dumber?
FEASTING WITH PANTHERS: This’ll give Tina Rosenberg and Barney Frank a headache. Had a pleasant social evening at the Republican Unity Coalition’s reception for the new AIDS honcho, Scott Evertz. Lots of booze, cute guys, and, best of all, pharmaceutical company reps. Can you imagine the Democrats inviting the people who actually create the AIDS drugs to a reception of this kind? Gore would have appointed a hack who would have done nothing but hound them. Then on to dinner with more drug company reps. There’s a war on, after all – a war against the innovation and enterprise that saves lives – that will prompt even me to pass up an evening passed out with the beagle in favor of discussions about fusion inhibitors. These people need solidarity against the socialists at the New York Times. Still, the omens are not good. One of the things you hear from many drug company officials and researchers is how they are slowly pulling out of HIV research. Why? The “activists” who demand new drugs all the time at lower and lower prices have finally worked the researchers’ and investors’ last nerves. There’s more money in other diseases with far less hassle. I can’t really blame them but it’s chilling just the same. Good on yer, Tina. Eventually, you’ll have reduced the price of every anti-HIV drug to a pittance – only to find that none of them work any more. The next generation of meds? Oh, sorry, there isn’t one.
The Dish 