To New Times' James King, Ben Quayle is a hunk-a hunk-a burnin' GOP love!
We here at PHXated celebrate polymorphous perversity as much as the next guy or gal, but we don’t see the sexual attraction of Ben Quayle.
He has his dad’s deer-in-the-headlights look. He’s spindly and nervous and dumb as a box of rocks.
And the single notable achievement in his life is writing for a porny web site.
We like our candidates to be up on the issues. We get turned on by the policy wonks.
A few years back, when the country was facing two mismanaged wars, trillions in debt, and a financial meltdown that threatened our way of life, Ben Quayle didn’t lend his voice to the debate.
Instead, he was on the hunt for foxy chicks for Dirty Scottsdale.
But for James King, one of the contributors to New Times' Valley Fever blog, Quayle is the boy-man of his dreams.
Here he is harping on Quayle’s opponent, Jon Hulburd, again for the crime of doing what any other candidate would do. i.e., pour some money in at the end of what’s turned out to be an unexpectedly close race.
Up to now, King’s been writing long posts trying to explain away Quayle’s lies about having worked for Dirty Scottsdale.
As we’ve said before, King’s a serious journalist and New Times is a serious place, but we think King’s being unacceptably partisan on this issue.
PHXated can see that Quayle is a dink and something of a creep, and finds his opponent, Jon Hulburd, to be a guy who’s very smart, up on the issues, and almost compulsively forthright. (He’s basing that contention on one interview and watching, over the weekend, Hulburd in action at a house party meet-and-greet.)
At the same time, we’ve attacked Hulburd’s crazy support for a continuation of the Bush tax cuts, among other things.
And I don’t want to get into the particulars, but we’ve also done something that had one of Hulburd’s top campaign people calling and screaming at us for days.
In other words, PHXated isn’t spinning for Hulburd.
King is definitely spinning for Quayle.
While getting granular in trying to defend Quayle’s handing of his Dirty Scottsdale scandal, King’s basically trying to make the point that Quayle successfully lied to reporters when they asked about his involvement, so it’s not fair either to a) attack him for the involvement or b) accuse him of lying.
That’s strikes us as a bit … extrajournalistic.
And it evades the point that Quayle was running around chasing chicas in Scottsdale when he could have been doing something a little more … public policy oriented.
And now King’s hammering on some lawsuits that were brought against Hulburd ten years ago. He published his first post on these mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Oct. 13… fortuitously timed for Ben Quayle to bring them up in a debate that started less than an hour later.
Another example: in writing about a recent Public Policy Polling poll of the district, King went out of his way to disparage PPP as a liberal outfit.
But in FiveThirtyEight.com’s rating of pollsters, Nate Silver puts PPP in the middle; in fact, the company gets much better scores than a lot of reputable outfits like CNN/Opinion Research, the LA Times/Bloomberg, and Gallup.
(The closeness of the Hulburd/Quayle race was a surprise, and it’s fair to question the findings in that one poll, as King also does; I’m just pointing out another instance where spin seems to be seeping in to King’s analysis as well. PHXated, by the by, went out of its way to note Silver’s skepticism of that particular poll.)
You can read all of PHXated’s Ben Quayle coverage here.
10:00 AM
Laurie Roberts: The Arizona Republic's "go-to newsgal"
Yesterday PHXated noted that the Arizona Republic, in keeping with its feeling that its terrestrial readers don’t want to be bothered with uncomfortable news about Little Benny Quayle, did not include, in its printed edition, a report of a fairly notable poll on the Quayle-Hulburd race.
It said that Quayle was actually trailing Hulburd, 46 to 44, and that his unfavorables were at 52 percent.
While it’s possible the poll was what the big-time analysts call an “outlier,” some of its other findings—support for John McCain and such—were in keeping with the distric’s conservative makeup.
Anyway, the Republic was in a quandary: Having played down as much as possible the previous bad news for Quayle—mostly stemming from his unsavory association with a skanky web site when he could have, you know, been involved in any sort of public service that might make him qualified to go to Congress—it was even more difficult for the paper to write about a poll that showed a big chunk of the electorate was turning up it nose at the candidate, plainly based on the information the paper hadn’t wanted to get out.
Fortunately, Laurie Roberts, a columnist in the local news section, comes through again. It was she who, after the Republican primary was over, told people about Quayle and DirtyScottsdale.com.
Now she’s again columnizing about news that the paper itself has never vouchsafed to readers:
The poll, by Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling, surveyed 655 likely voters and had a margin of error of 3.8 percent. It showed Hulburd and Quayle in a dead heat with 10 percent undecided.
While both men were viewed favorably by a third of those polled, Quayle was disliked by 52 percent, including half of the independents surveyed. Hulburd, meanwhile, was disliked by 20 percent all voters surveyed, with 47 percent unsure what to think.
Interestingly, Roberts cites some evidence of a contention by New Times' James King … basically, not only that Quayle never lied about his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale, but that Politico, the online political magazine, is backing away from its initial contention that he did:
In a recent profile, Politico wrote that Quayle “has always admitted to writing some posts under a pseudonym”. That’s a far cry from its August story, headlined “Ben Quayle changes story about Dirty Scottsdale website”.
[Quayle campaign manager] Heiler says Quayle was responding to questions about whether he was involved in founding the website. The reporter, he said, never directly asked whether he had written for the site.
PHXated’s not buying it, for reasons delineated in the James King post but will look into the question of whether Politico itself is now downplaying what it once trumpeted.
7:46 AM
No, seriously, James King DOES seem to heart Ben Quayle
As PHXated noted earlier today, New Times is an amazing paper with a lot of amazing reporters.
(Readers should know that PHXated worked for New Times in San Francisco way back when and counts the owners and editors among his friends.)
But James King, one of the paper’s frequent political reporters and bloggers, really seems to have a big ol' crush on Ben Quayle.
I’ve noted this a couple of times already, but am just now going back to read everything King’s written about Young Ben.
For starters, PHXated’s written about this already here and here.
Here’s another example.
The other day King trumpeted that Politico had “backed off” its story about Quayle and Dirty Scottsdale:
Here’s what apparently went down: the Politico reporter called Quayle at his house around 6 a.m. It’s an unlisted number but because Quayle’s wife’s father was in the hospital that morning, Quayle answered the phone.
The reporter asked Quayle if he was involved with founding The Dirty. He said no. The followup question asked if he was involved at all. Still thinking the reporter was referring to the founding of the Web site, Quayle answered no again. At no point did the reporter ask the candidate if he had written for the Web site.
Now, again, I respect King, and one shouldn’t be glib about the work of a serious reporter. But this is bullshit.
Again, here’s the original Politico passage:
“I did not have a role in founding that site,” Quayle, a lawyer who runs a small Scottsdale investment firm, told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday morning when asked whether he was one of the original contributors to the sex-themed site.
“I was not involved in the site,” he said when pressed about whether he had any role.
You know what happened; the reporter sensed that Quayle was choosing his words carefully. She said, “Did you have any role?” He replied, “I was not involved with the site” — which was, plainly, a lie.
What part of “did you have any role” does King not understand?
The reason I think King is carrying Quayle’s water is that he, like the Quayle campaign, is trying to split hairs on an ancillary issue.
The point is that Quayle was running around with folks putting up an ultraskanky web site. Now he’s a family-values Republican. The main issue is hypocrisy. This wasn’t ten or fifteen years ago. It was three years ago.
Then when questioned about it he lied. That’s another thing that Republicans are supposed to be all so moral about.
Then Quayle (and King) play the sympathy card, that Quayle was worried about his father-in-law and groggily picked up the phone at 6 a.m.
But he obviously had the presence of mind to try to finesse the issue in Clintonian fashion instead of just answering the question truthfully.
He could have said, “Oh, yeah, I used to know Nik Ritchie. I wrote some things for his web site but that’s it.”
A reporter who wasn’t spinning things Quayle’s way would a) bring up the hypocrisy; b) note that at the very least Quayle was being a weasel, at the worst lying, and c) note, as PHXated has consistently, that Quayle has been lying again when he says his story has been consistent.
… not to mention the fact that Quayle’s probably still lying when he says he wasn’t Brock Landers (why would Nik Ritchie make that up?), and that he was lying some more when he said he just posted “comments” on the site, and that he was lying some more when he told Politico that he hadn’t introduced the Dirty Scottsdale guy to some lawyers … and evaded the question when reporters asked him specifics about what he did do for the site:
“What kind of comments?” the reporter asked.
“This is four years ago,” Quayle replied. “This is hilarious this is being brought up. … This is a smear. This is a smear on me from a smear website being pushed by a smear campaign.”
3:40 PM
New Times on Ben Quayle: Does James King heart Ben Quayle a little too much?
The paper’s James King profiles the candidate at length. There’s a very funny graphic, by Jamie Peachey, that portrays Quayle as the 40-year-old virgin:
The story, while not a puff piece, lets Quayle off the hook on a couple of issues, notably the Dirty Scottsdale tale.
Besides being a hypocrite by being a family-values Republican with a history of working for a skanky, woman-hating web site, Quayle lied about it when he was first asked.
New Times is a good paper and King is one of its typically strong reporters.
But this doesn’t wash:
[I]t turns out that Quayle didn’t lie — he just didn’t volunteer information about his association with Dirty Scottsdale.
The Politico reporter who first called Quayle didn’t ask him whether he had written for the Web site. She asked if he was involved in the founding of The Dirty, to which Quayle answered no.
The reporter’s next question was, “You had nothing to do with it?” Quayle contends he thought the reporter still was referring to the establishment of The Dirty and answered no again.
[…]
But the damage was done. The claim that he initially lied about his involvement made the front page of the New York Times.
That’s plainly total bullshit.
Here’s the original Politico passage:
“I did not have a role in founding that site,” Quayle, a lawyer who runs a small Scottsdale investment firm, told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday morning when asked whether he was one of the original contributors to the sex-themed site.
“I was not involved in the site,” he said when pressed about whether he had any role.
In other words, Quayle tried to weasel around the question by framing his first answer carefully. (Note how the reporter includes her original question.)
But then, of course, she pressed him, and he specifically said he wasn’t involved in the site, when asked if he had any role.
It’s one thing to try to lie when asked a question like that, and it’s another level of deceit to try to pretend that your lie had been successful when it plainly hadn’t. That’s what Quayle’s been doing since.
King has it entirely wrong and should correct the story. Quayle plainly lied.
I think it’s fair to beat up on King about this because he’s given Quayle a pass as well on his cheesy little family mailer in which he posed with two little girls, even though he doesn’t have kids.
And finally, Quayle is never asked about his right-wing views.
Among other things, King could have asked him about his position on abortion, and specifically to what extent he would criminalize it if he had the chance.
He could also have asked him about the astate’s medical marijuana initiative—and whether he’d ever tried it himself.
11:47 AM
1New Times smacks Jon Hulburd
One of the weekly’s main political writers, John James King*, goes after Hulburd for a new ad that smacks his opponent, Little Benny Quayle, for “lying” about having kids in a campaign ad.
The Quayle campaign ad story is interesting. (It’s chronicled by PHXated here.)
His campaign sent out a mailing with a shot of Quayle cuddling two cute little girls; the legend said “A NEW GENERATION.”
In the copy below, we read: “Tiffany [his wife] and I live in this district and are going to raise our family here.”
Now, King’s not the only smart person I know who thinks Quayle is being unfairly hit on this issue.
But I don’t.
The intent of the mailer is plain. Two little girls … “raise our family.” Of course that’s the message the mailer was trying to get across.
And there are other slightly skeevy things the Quayle campaign does to protect his flank on this issue.
One of his other TV ads had Quayle saying, “I love Arizona. I was raised right”—a not-so-subtle attempt to get the idea across that he was “raised” in “Arizona,” when he wasn’t.
This is slightly tangential, but that line I kept reading about Quayle’s wife “managing a Fortune 500 company”—that was skeevy too.
And we never hear what Quayle does, because it’s true—he has had four or five different jobs in his undistinguished career, and that’s not counting his time writing for a porny web site, which he did lie about.
King’s right that Hulburd does take a lot of Republican positions, but this a benightedly dumb district—which sent Shadegg to Congress for years, and might do the same for the unqualified Quayle.
And as PHXated noted before, Hulburd is a smart guy with a solid background on most of the issues. How can you begrudge a guy for not embarking on a suicide mission?
Previously in PHXated:
The complete Dirty Scottsdale tale.
So … what exactly does Ben Quayle’s wife do?.
How the Arizona Republic took a dive on the tawdry Ben Quayle/Dirty Scottsdale story.
- PHXated misspelled King’s name originally. Apologies.
8:02 AM