MEDIA WATCH: New York Times does another front page pitch for Rahm Emanuel under the guise of a 'news' story...
How many times has "America's Newspaper of Record" featured one candidate in a local mayoral race (outside of New York City) on its front page? Well, on March 31, The New York Times did it again, featuring Rahm Emanuel, this time as he shape changes to try and round up enough votes to retain the office of mayor in Chicago. Front Page "news" stories touting Rahm Emanuel or his former boss President Barack Obama in The New York Times are nothing new. The Times began touting the policies of the Obama administration and its administrators even a month before Obama was sworn in, with a front page story featuring Obama and incoming U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. But that was only the beginning. Since then, the Times, which claims to be "America's Newspaper of Record," has been the newspaper where the touting of the "one percent" poses as "news."
Rahm Emanuel picture from The New York Times.According to the style rules of the Times, analysis and opinion pieces are supposed to be typeset "ragged right..." That is supposed to warn the reader that the article is not "news," which the Times pretends follows some kind of serious objectivity guidelines. No one who has followed the history of The New York Times, however, can take such gimmicks seriously, as the Times routinely propagandizes for its version of reality in its "news" stories. The March 30 - 31 story below is just a good journalism school example of the kind of propaganda as "news" that is routinely provided in The Times.
The March 31, 2015 Times story touting Rahm's wonders -- and the latest changes Rahm has made in his so-called "messaging" after Rahm was forced into the runoff -- again.
THE NEW YORK TIMES RAHM HAGIOGRAPHY FROM MARCH 31, 2015:
Rahm Emanuel, Chicago�s Rough-Edged Mayor, Tries the Sandpaper
By JULIE BOSMAN, The New York Times, MARCH 30, 2015 (New York Times, front page print edition, March 31, 2015)
CHICAGO � Alderman Scott Waguespack was in a conference room at City Hall in the spring of 2011 for a formal sit-down with this city�s newly elected mayor, Rahm Emanuel. Mr. Waguespack attempted some small talk, he said, but Mr. Emanuel was not much interested.
�He was like, �Yeah, yeah, whatever,�� recalled Mr. Waguespack, now a chief adversary of the mayor. �Then he said, �Let me tell you something,� and he went off at me. Just started yelling and swearing. He went so far off the handle that I almost got up and walked out.�
Mr. Emanuel, in an interview, remembered it quite differently. �If he�s claiming that, then why didn�t he say it when it happened, or a day afterwards, a week afterwards?� he said. �Four years after the fact? It never happened.�
When Mr. Emanuel returned here, to his hometown, to run for mayor in 2011, he carried with him decades of experience as a canny and powerful politician, a former campaign operative, a congressman and a top White House aide who knew how to make the wheels of government turn.
He also brought his well-known style: feisty, arrogant, brash, hot-tempered and so inclined toward profanity that a former boss, President Obama, once joked that the loss of part of a middle finger after a meat-slicer accident when Mr. Emanuel was a teenager �rendered him practically mute.�
As Mr. Emanuel approaches a runoff next Tuesday � an election prompted by his failure to win more than 50 percent of the vote in February � he is facing an uncomfortable fact. Many Chicagoans say that after four years, they have soured on him because of his hardball tactics toward unions, his decision to close dozens of public schools and, for some people, his personality.
There are signs, though, that the mayor, bruised by his performance in the February election, is trying to smooth his more serrated edges. On the stump and in debates, he has spoken of the pain endured by mothers who have lost their children to gun violence in the city. After he drew just 46 percent of the vote in February, he recorded a campaign ad in which he wore a V-neck sweater, sat in what appeared to be a living room and acknowledged his faults.
�They say your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness,� Mr. Emanuel said, his deep-set eyes staring into the camera. �I�m living proof of that. I can rub people the wrong way, or talk when I should listen.�
In an interview, Mr. Emanuel pointed out that in the February election, he won 36 of the city�s 50 wards and has pushed through a difficult agenda of education and pension reform.
�People voted for both sides of that coin,� he said.
But Mr. Emanuel also said he had learned that there were times during his first term when �I should have been doing the listening, not the talking.�
�I had to learn, and I�ve been honest, and I own my mistakes,� he said.
The stories of Mr. Emanuel�s fiery temperament are legion. During a highly publicized teachers� strike in 2012, Mr. Emanuel feuded with union members and their leader, Karen Lewis � once using an unprintable but concise insult during negotiations, effectively telling her to get lost. (Asked by reporters about the phrase, Mr. Emanuel pointed out that the meeting ended with a hug.)
While campaigning this month, Mr. Emanuel was confronted by a group of advocates about the closings of several mental health clinics during his first term. The advocates later said the conversation had ended with Mr. Emanuel pointing his finger, raising his voice and saying, �You�re gonna respect me!� A spokesman for Mr. Emanuel said in an email that the meeting had �ended cordially� and that �after respectfully listening to the residents, he asked that they respectfully listen to his point of view.�
�He got really arrogant after he was elected,� said Tiffany Armstrong, a fourth-grade South Side public school teacher who voted for Mr. Emanuel in 2011. Ms. Armstrong said she would not vote for him again because of what she considered the abrasive way he closed 50 schools, a decision she and others say unfairly affected low-income neighborhoods.
�I get the impression from him that we�re the children and he�s the parent,� Ms. Armstrong said. �If he had shown a little more empathy, he might not be so close to losing the election.�
William M. Daley, the brother and son of former Chicago mayors, said some of Mr. Emanuel�s campaign troubles could be attributed to his centrist politics being out of step with an ascendant left, represented by Mr. Emanuel�s opponent, Jesus G. Garcia.
A rally in Union Park during the 2012 teachers' strike. Mr. Emanuel "got really arrogant after he was elected,� said Tiffany Armstrong, a teacher who voted for him in 2011. Credit Nathan Weber for The New York Times �But I think it�s a lot his personality,� Mr. Daley said. �It is an acquired taste.�
Chicago does not embrace blandness in its mayors. Harold Washington, who served from 1983 to 1987, could be charismatic and funny. Both Richard J. Daley and his son Richard M. Daley were larger-than-life figures whose gruff and imperious personas could give way to sentimentality. (The younger Mr. Daley once sobbed at a news conference when describing the misbehavior of his teenage son, who had thrown an unauthorized party at the family�s weekend house in Michigan that ended in a brawl.)
But Mr. Emanuel does not entirely get the benefit of the doubt for his gruffness, in part because he spent much of his childhood in Wilmette, an affluent North Shore suburb of Chicago, and because many here suspect that he has ambitions to eventually return to Washington.
�Mayor Emanuel took office during unprecedented financial and educational crises,� said Steve Mayberry, a spokesman for the mayor. �That does not lend itself to a personality contest.�
Friends and colleagues of Mr. Emanuel say his brash personality is part of what makes him good at his job. (During his time in the Clinton administration, he was known as �the enforcer.�)
Paul Begala, a close friend of Mr. Emanuel�s for decades, insisted that the mayor had mellowed since a gathering of campaign aides at a Little Rock, Ark., restaurant in the days after Bill Clinton�s 1992 presidential victory. Mr. Emanuel repeatedly plunged a steak knife into a table while shouting the names of Mr. Clinton�s enemies and, after each name, �Dead!�
�It�s a true story,� Mr. Begala said. �I was there. He doesn�t do that anymore.�
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Mr. Begala said the importance of the job of mayor would play in Mr. Emanuel�s favor. �This is all about proven leadership,� he said. �He�s not running to be the friend. He�s running to be the mayor.�
He added, �It�s hard for me to imagine people not liking him, but this is one of those jobs where people need to respect him more than like him.�
One of the unions that have endorsed Mr. Emanuel began an ad campaign last week called �Rahm Love,� in which hospitality workers talked about the things he has done to make their lives better.
�They were two four-letter words that don�t normally go together,� Karen Kent, the president of the union, said of the campaign. �Our members talk about him and talk about Rahm love. They talk about him being a tough guy who stood up for them. He�s a tough guy and takes a tough stance.�
Others have told him that to endear himself to Chicagoans, he has to appear a little more sensitive.
Sitting around a conference table in a church in January, the Rev. Walter Turner, a pastor in a Baptist church on the South Side, gently delivered some advice.
�It would be helpful to show a more tender side,� Mr. Turner said he had told Mr. Emanuel.
�You�re right, Pastor,� Mr. Emanuel said, according to Mr. Turner. �I�m going to do what I can.�
By: Theresa D. Daniels
NY Times propaganda for Rahm
The ragged right typesetting the New York Times claim it uses when the article is opinion and not a news story hardly shows up here when the paragraphs are so short. Shame on the NY Times for being so partisan and smarmy.