As if anyone needed more proof that the political media can and will say anything about the Clintons, no matter how baseless, insulting, or far-fetched, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank came through with a handy reminder.

This Week: Say Anything Solomon strikes again

Say anything

As if anyone needed more proof that the political media can and will say anything about the Clintons, no matter how baseless, insulting, or far-fetched, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank came through with a handy reminder.

In his January 17 “Washington Sketch” column, Milbank wrote about the postponement of a press conference scheduled for the day before in which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) were scheduled to discuss Iraq. The press conference was delayed for a day because McHugh fell ill during the trio's trip to Iraq and stayed behind in Germany to recover.

Milbank, however, suggested that the delay occurred so Clinton could avoid speaking on the day that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee. Milbank also mocked a Clinton spokesperson's explanation for the delay in announcing the new press conference, writing: “And we lost the phone number. And the dog ate my homework. And I think I hear my mom calling.”

As if it wasn't bad enough that Milbank suggested that the press conference was delayed because of Obama's announcement when Milbank knew the delay was because of McHugh's illness, Milbank's “dog ate my homework” snark wasn't even original.

On January 16, Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox wrote in response to Clinton's office's explanation for the postponement: “Also, the dog ate their Iraq report.” The next day, after the press conference occurred, Cox added:

The only small bit of unplanned levity was Rep. McHugh's confirmation that his “illness” yesterday was, in fact, exhaustion due to “dehydration,” otherwise known as “Lohanitis.” They're not even really trying to make this sound credible, are they?

So, Cox suggests a conspiracy theory involving a Republican member of Congress faking illness so that Hillary Clinton can avoid ... what? Holding a press conference the day Barack Obama announced he might run for president? As conspiracy theories go, that's both more unlikely and lamer than most.

(Interestingly, the Swampland bloggers have been quick to dismiss others as nutty conspiracy theorists. Washington bureau chief Jay Carney responded to Josh Marshall's posts at Talking Points Memo about the Bush administration's purging of U.S. attorneys with a dismissive “Of course! It all makes perfect conspiratorial sense!” And Cox herself derided as “the prerogative of conspiracy theorists everywhere” our contention that the rash of sophomoric news reports about the similarities between the names “Obama” and “Osama” contribute to people -- consciously or otherwise -- associating “Obama” and “Osama.” Criticizing “conspiracy theorists” while floating your own such theory -- that's the kind of thing a Swampland blogger would probably describe as the prerogative of hypocrites everywhere.

Not to be outdone, New York Times reporter Anne Kornblut suggested -- without bothering with such niceties as evidence -- that Clinton went so far as to fake a cell-phone conversation in order to avoid questions about Obama:

Brushing past reporters in the Senate, Mrs. Clinton -- conspicuously talking into her cell phone; whether there was anyone on the other end of the line, or not, could not be confirmed -- went into the chamber to vote, then posed for an all-ladies photograph with Diane Sawyer and female senators.

That's where we are: The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time, in a desperate race to the bottom, simply making things up about a leading potential presidential candidate in order to mock her.

As Bob Somerby explains, crediting Atrios (our own Duncan Black) for the insight: “Under 'the Clinton rules of journalism,' you can say any goddamn thing you want -- as long as you say it about the Clintons. This [sic] rules have already begun to affect the way Campaign 08 is covered.”

Indeed, the “Clinton rules of journalism” aren't just for the Clintons.

Not when ABC runs segments asking, “Just who the hell is Barack Obama? And why, in these dangerous times, should he be entrusted with the most powerful job on Earth?”

Not when Fox News host John Gibson devotes a segment to pointing out that Obama “is -- get this -- a cigarette smoker. The point is: What else do we not know about Barack Obama?”

Not when John Solomon, formerly of the Associated Press and now at The Washington Post, offers the latest in a continuing series of shoddy hatchet jobs on prominent Democrats. (More on that below.)

Simply put, you can say any damn thing you want about progressives.

Glenn Beck can publicly fantasize about killing Michael Moore and call Katrina survivors “scumbags” -- and be given a television show by CNN. (He was also recently hired to be a regular commentator on ABC's Good Morning America.)

Ann Coulter can publicly suggest assassinating a sitting president and say she wishes The New York Times building had been blown up -- and end up on the cover of Time.

Rush Limbaugh can call a teenage girl a dog, suggest a sitting president and first lady are responsible for the murder of their close friend, and generally behave like an all-around jerk -- and get hired by Disney-owned ESPN.

But worse than any of that, journalists employed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC and more -- the nation's most respected and most powerful news organizations -- can peddle a nonscandal like Whitewater for the better part of a decade, lie about Al Gore in order to call him a liar, belittle him for wearing Polo shirts and brown pants, call him crazy, call Howard Dean crazy, call John Kerry French, compare Barack Obama to dictators and terrorists because he has an unusual name and sometimes doesn't wear a necktie -- no, really, we aren't making this up: this is the garbage you see on CNN.

The media was more hostile to Al Gore than to George W. Bush in 2000, Mark Halperin and John Harris told us in The Way to Win -- an obvious statement, but not one expressed often enough. “Not every election is a fair fight,” they conclude.

Then, Halperin announced that the media had to “prove to conservatives that we understand their grievances” and that "[i]f I were a conservative, I understand why I would feel suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break at the end of an election. We've got to make sure we do better, so conservatives don't have to be concerned about that. It's just -- it's not fair."

Until progressives convince the Mark Halperins of the world that they have to prove to us that we're going to get a fair break, this isn't going to change.

Solomon strikes again

In a 1,100-word article co-written with political reporter Lois Romano and inexplicably placed on The Washington Post's front page, John Solomon suggestively reported that former Sen. John Edwards recently sold a home for $1.4 million more than he had paid for it. A sweetheart deal designed to line Edwards' pocket? That certainly seemed to be Solomon's implication -- he noted in the lead that the house was sold after it “had languished on the market.” And that's how the folks over at RedState.com chose to interpret it, comparing the Edwards sale with the scheme of a defense contractor who overpaid for former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham's house as a means of funneling money to him.

But in order to establish that Edwards was the beneficiary of a sweetheart deal, you have to show that the house sold for more than it should have -- that the $1.4 million difference between Edwards' purchase price and selling price was anomalous.

Solomon doesn't even try. His article omitted any mention of the appreciation of the Georgetown real estate market between 2002, when Edwards bought his house, and 2006, when he sold it. That context is crucial to understanding what the $1.4 million figure means; absent context, the number tells us absolutely nothing. It's just a gaudy-seeming number that doesn't do much to aid our understanding of the transaction.

Why not? Why would Solomon omit such a crucial piece of information?

Better yet: Why would he do it twice?

In October 2006, Solomon -- then at the AP -- wrote a similar hit piece on Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. In that article, he reported that Reid “collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale.”

Windfall.

Sure sounds shady, right? Sounds like that $1.1 million was the result of some sort of sweetheart deal in which Reid was paid more than market value for his property. And that's what Internet gossip Matt Drudge thought, hyping the story as a "sweetheart land deal." But, as with the Edwards article, Solomon omitted any mention, at all, of the increase in Las Vegas-area real estate values that occurred over the period in which Reid owned the land.

Twice in three months, Solomon has written an article in which he makes much of a real estate transaction in which a prominent Democrat appears to have made a million-dollar profit. Twice in three months, Solomon has hyped the gaudy number without placing it in context. In both cases, that context showed the profit to be far from atypical.

The context -- a simple assessment of the performance of the real estate market in question over the time in question -- is easy enough to include. It's essential to the story. And yet, Solomon omitted it. And, in both cases, including the context would have diminished the implication that the Democrat in question benefited from an improper transaction.

Solomon -- and his editors -- owe their readers an explanation for why this information was omitted.

But Solomon's omission of any comparative information with which to assess the sale price of Edwards' house wasn't the only problem with the Post article.

Solomon reported: “Edwards has run into controversy once before on a house sale. In 2002, he reached a deal to sell a Washington house to a U.S. lobbyist for Saudi Arabia and then refused to give back the lobbyist's $100,000 earnest money when the deal collapsed.”

But there is no explanation of why Edwards' refusal to return the earnest money would be controversial. The whole point of earnest money is that it is nonrefundable: It is money a buyer pays a seller to demonstrate seriousness; the only way that works is if the buyer does not get the money back if s/he backs out of the transaction. Put another way, earnest money is paid as part of a contractual agreement. If there was a contractual reason why Edwards should have returned the money, the lobbyist was free to take legal action -- and Solomon was free to report that reason. But Solomon didn't do so; he just called Edwards' apparently proper decision to keep the earnest money “controversial.”

Finally, Solomon's article seemed to suggest some impropriety related to Edwards' decision to sell the home to an LLC owned by Paul and Terry Klaassen. But the nature of that purported impropriety is unclear at best. So unclear that fellow Post reporter Jonathan Weisman wondered what the big deal is:

I for one was looking for more of a connection between the Edwards and the buyers. I didn't see it. Frankly, I bought a house from some people named Buckmaster DeWolf and Rosemary Ratcliffe. I love their names but I met them for about 15 minutes as we signed our papers. So what?

Insofar as Solomon's article explained the problem with Edwards selling a home to the Klaassens, he dwelled on the fact that Edwards is seeking support for his presidential campaign from unions that don't much like Klaassen.

But, as blogger Greg Sargent pointed out at The Horse's Mouth, Solomon quoted a representative of one of the unions, SEIU, saying he didn't find fault with the transaction. Solomon didn't bother to include a comment from the other union, UFCW. Nor, according to Sargent, did Solomon even contact UFCW:

Well, I've just gotten in touch with an official from that second union, and guess what: The official told me that UFCW doesn't see anything whatsoever wrong with what Edwards did. What's more, the official said that Solomon didn't even contact the union at all for comment on the story.

[...]

In his story Solomon is using the fact that these unions are at odds with the buyer of Edwards' home in order to suggest that there was something untoward about what Edwards did. Yet he didn't even contact one of the unions to see if they had a problem with the sale.

There are two basic reasons why the Edwards house sale could be front-page news in The Washington Post: because Edwards sold it for greater than market value in a sweetheart deal, or because the transaction with Klaassen carries huge political significance. But Solomon didn't include a single piece of information that would suggest the house sold for more than market value, and he didn't bother to contact one of the unions that supposedly would view the transaction negatively.

But that's a front-page story for John Solomon and The Washington Post: John Edwards sold a house for what may or may not have been a reasonable price in a transaction with which unions whose support he is courting have no problem.

Lest anyone think that the Post's overhyping of this Edwards non-story is typical of its treatment of the finances of presidential candidates, we'll point out that, in all of 1999 and 2000, the Post devoted a mere 26 words to then-candidate George W. Bush's sale of Harken stock in 1990. Bush sold his stock while sitting on Harken's board of directors and audit committee -- and shortly before the company's stock tanked in the wake of damaging SEC filings. As we have previously explained:

In the months before the 2000 election, newly disclosed documents revealed that shortly before he dumped his Harken stock, George W. Bush had been told that the company faced a “liquidity crisis” and was “in a state of noncompliance” with lenders and that its plan to raise money was being abandoned. The documents revealed that the SEC -- which, at the time, was run by a close ally of Bush's father, then-President George H. W. Bush -- never bothered to interview Bush about his stock sale during its investigation of the matter.

During his presidential campaign, The Washington Post devoted 26 words to Bush's sale of Harken stock. The paper completely ignored the documents the SEC made public just months before Election Day. Completely ignored them.

But John Edwards' sale of a house for less than the asking price -- that's front-page news.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.