It’s always interesting to see when the general news media determines when one of "our" issues is there issue — for example, a few weeks back the New York Times decided to give major coverage to the growing Jewish debate over Chuck Hagel’s possible nomination as secretary of defense. The implication being… if Hagel gets passed over or rejected, it could well be the pro-Israel pushback that did him in.
The flip side of the coin is that sometimes it’s just as interesting to see when "our" issues don’t register — for example, David Gregory’s interview with President Obama that aired Sunday on Meet the Press. Gregory framed the Hagel question around… the former senator’s opposition in the late 1990s to the naming of America’s first openly gay ambassador.
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So… who has it right? Is this a case of the Times stretching to cast the pro-Israel lobby as the bad guy or did Gregory miss the boat by going with the gay question?
Then there was the Log Cabin Republicans — a gay Republican group — that offered up both arguments in a full-page ad in the Times last week declaring that Hagel was "Wrong on Gay Rights. Wrong on Iran. Wrong on Israel."
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