Two weeks ago, reporter Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News -- the author of two books bashing Karl Rove for being "Bush's Brain" -- wrote an expose on liberal, abortion-loving Democrat Wendy Davis, who's been hyped from coast to coast as "single mom to political phenom." Lots of details aren't true. Even the Dallas paper's headline soft-pedaled it as "key facts blurred."
Guess who's reported nothing on air? ABC, NBC and PBS. CBS did one very defensive two-minute story on its morning show 11 days late. NPR only touched on it in an afternoon talk show.
There, on "Tell Me More" with host Michel Martin, Slater appeared and was pressed to talk about Christie. "The real problem for Christie is that this episode reinforces a destructive narrative" of bullying, Slater announced. "It is a damaging personal attribute that can undo him."
Apparently, Democrats never damage themselves with personal attributes like lying.
NBC is the most ridiculous offender on the Davis story because correspondent Maria Shriver repeated all the fluff about how "her personal story resonated across the nation" just three days before the Dallas Morning News story. She threw softballs: "Everybody says Wendy Davis is an overnight sensation. Does it irritate you that people call you an overnight sensation?" Davis replied: "I'm not an overnight sensation. I'm a Texan. And I'm a Texas success story. I am the epitome of hard work and optimism."
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She's the epitome of biographical fraud.
Shriver and the rest of the whitewash brigade utterly ignored that the story wasn't "single mom raises kids alone while attending Harvard Law School." Davis claimed, "By the time I was 19, I was already on my way to a divorce, living in a tiny trailer with my daughter." Slater noted that she was 21, not 19, when she divorced and lived in a trailer for "only a few months."
She married her second husband Jeff Davis and had a second daughter. Her husband paid for her final two years at Texas Christian University. When she was accepted to Harvard, Jeff Davis cashed in his 401(k) account and eventually took out a loan to pay for her final year there. "I was making really good money then, well over six figures," he said. The daughters -- Amber was 8, and Dru was 2 -- remained with the husband in Fort Worth, Texas, while Wendy Davis went to Boston for three years.
The worst part of the Slater story? The marriage came apart right around the time the final payment on her Harvard Law School loan was due. "It was ironic," he said. "I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left." The husband won custody of Dru, the daughter they had together. He even secured a restraining order against her. Feminists then assaulted anyone repeating this story as cavemen peddling a chauvinist narrative.
The one scandal story on "CBS This Morning" was loaded with Davis and her defenders. It started with Davis defiantly insisting, "You can play holier-than-life with my life story. But I draw the line when it comes to lying about my family." (Apparently, only she's allowed to lie about her family.) Then came her daughter Amber proclaiming tremulously that her mom was the "best mother in the world." It ended with Jay Root of the liberal Texas Tribune website attempting damage control: "The trailer, who paid for what in college? I don't think that's going to be the A-1 story throughout this entire campaign."
It was the A-1 story before it was exposed as fraudulent.
None of these national broadcast networks noticed the Davis fiascoes that followed. She protested, "I am proud of what I've been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn't walked a day in my shoes." Oops! Her opponent, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, is a paraplegic. Davis also dishonestly claimed Abbott fed the damaging story to Slater, who quickly said he never talked to Republicans for it.
The national print media weren't much better than TV. The New York Times noticed it, but USA Today and the Washington Post published no news story in print. You have to laugh at Time magazine's headline over a brief update: "A Storybook Tale Gets Some New Footnotes."
So laugh at any journalist who says Christie can never lie, or it will end his career. Lying never stopped anyone from being a national-media darling. Ask President Barack Obama or the Clintons.
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