Oh MoDo
by digby
Oh heck. Joe Biden just threw Maureen Dowd to the wolves:
In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday night, Vice President Joe Biden attacked one of the flashpoints of media coverage surrounding his mulling of a 2016 presidential bid. “[P]eople have written that, you know, Beau on his death bed said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to run,’ and, there was this sort of Hollywood moment that, you know, nothing like that ever, ever happened,” said Biden in an interview alongside his wife, Jill Biden, conducted by CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell.
Though the vice president didn’t single out any reporter by name, it’s a common omission among politicians who bash the media.
On Aug. 1, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd commandeered Beltway conversation with a piece titled, “Joe Biden in 2016: What Would Beau Do?” It told the story of Beau Biden, dying of brain cancer, delivering a message to his father. ” ‘Dad, I know you don’t give a damn about money,’ Beau told him, dismissing the idea that his father would take some sort of cushy job after the vice presidency to cash in. Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”
Does that sound like a Hollywood moment? Biden explained to O’Donnell that Beau Biden, who died at age 46, had been a steadfast adviser since he was in his late 20s. “Beau all along thought that I should run and I could win. But there was not what was sort of made out as kind of this Hollywood-esque thing that at the last minute Beau grabbed my hand and said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to run, like, win one for the Gipper.’ It wasn’t anything like that.”
The record left behind by Dowd is almost nonexistent. Like a celebrated, longtime, above-the-fray literary columnist, she didn’t deign to leave sourcing details in her piece, instead preferring her vast sense of authority. “Joe Biden is also talking to friends, family and donors about jumping in. The 72-year-old vice president has been having meetings at his Washington residence to explore the idea of taking on Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire,” wrote Dowd in a passage that dropped directly from the heavens into the content management system of the New York Times.
That was good enough for the news side of the New York Times, which cited the Dowd piece in a story on a possible Biden run that ran the same day. The lack of transparency in Dowd’s reporting opened itself up to further reporting, as Politico alleged early this month that Biden himself divulged his son’s wish to Dowd. That story, in turn, was based on “multiple sources.”
If it sounds like it’s too good to be true it probably is.
I asked yesterday on twitter when Maureen Dowd is going to be seen as a liability for the New York Times. Her old fashioned sexism is already an embarrassment. Now she’s being called a liar about the facts upon which the news reporters relied. Do they plan to do anything about this?
We don’t know that she lied, of course. Maybe Biden is lying. But I fail to see why he would walk back the story now that he’s out of the race if it were true. Logic says it was Dowd who embellished (at best.) And everyone in DC believed her. Maybe they should stop doing that.