Hugh Hewitt on the MSM and Kerry

A superb piece by Hugh Hewitt on the MSM coverage of the Kerry debacle. Many in the media have attempted to defend Kerry, insisting he didn't say what he said and had not insulted the military. And you've got to love Mark Halperin of ABC News telling Hugh Hewitt the other day that members of the military weren't "necessarily the best arbiters" of Kerry's sense of humor.

In Halperin's eyes, the Washington elites and media members can figure out what Kerry meant, but not those he criticized. Guess Halperin thinks members of the military are dumb, too.

Like Hugh, my traffic was way up yesterday. Everything's relative (Hugh's traffic was over 125,000 Wednesday!) but it was obvious to me as well, at this small blog, that the blogosphere was buzzing Wednesday. Yet while the story was humming on the Internet and talk radio, the old media treated it quite differently.

While the New York Post ran the now-famous photo rebuttal from the Minnesota National Guard on their front cover, I wonder how many papers ignored the photo? It certainly wasn't on the front page of the L.A. Times today -- nor was it on Page A15, where the Times buried the details of the Kerry story which led to record Internet traffic. One more example of an "industry willing its own destruction," to slightly paraphrase Hewitt. Page A15?!

On Page A1 the Times featured a more generic article on "foot in mouth itis" which gave the paper a chance to slam George Allen in Paragraphs 2 and 3. The paper had their page priorities completely reversed; the Page 1 story was the "sidebar" which should have run on the inside of the paper, while the story from A15 was the real "news."

Power Line has more on that great photo, including a letter from the father of a young lady who is in the photo. As Hewitt wrote, "Ridicule is the best revenge."

Thursday Afternoon Update: Don't miss this piece by Patterico, in which he points out that the New York Times not only buried the story, they flat out lied about what Kerry said.