Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Blade Axes Craddock

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Recently, some Virginia bloggers have been busy commenting on a WashingtonBlade.com story about Chris Craddock, the Republican candidate for the 67th Delegate District who recently defeated in last June’s primarry the former RINO incumbent, Gary Reese.

The WashingtonBlade.com story, entitled “Republican Candidate Defends Anti-Gay Primary” quotes Craddock as saying “Christian and gays despise each other.”

I’m not surprised that a publication like the Washington Blade would go out of its way to libel and misquote a conservative candidate. After all, they are on a mission: Promoting an extreme gay agenda, tearing down family units, and the moral fiber on which this country was founded.

What is surprising, however, is that professed serious Virginia bloggers would give any credence to the propaganda coming from the extremists at the WashingtonBlade.com.

Folks, here is Craddock’s entire quote, which the WashingtonBlade.com utterly misquoted by taking it entirely out of context:

“Many people say that Christians and gays hate each other, but I think we need to treat each other with respect.”

Obviously, the WashingtonBlade.com is only interested in promoting their agenda and will go to great lengths to distort a conservative candidate’s record. Candidates shouldn’t waste their time talking to so-called reporters from organizations like the WashingtonBlade.com who are only interested in promoting their biased, extremist agenda.

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  1. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    The Washington Blade is the publication that supposedly “outed” Jay Timmons, isn’t it? Clearly, the publication has a radical gay-rights agenda that, I would be willing to bet, even many Virginia gays are not comfortable with.

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The so called “agenda” of the Washington Blade isn’t radical. The idea that gays and lesbians deserve the same rights as everyone else is not far out in left field. The basic concept that two people who love each other should be able to share their lives, take care of each other, and have the same rights as everyone else is in no way “radical” no matter how many times conservatives scream that it is….

    The Washington Blade is not radical. The Washington Blade is just a bad newspaper with reporters and editors who don’t know what they’re doing. They’re idiots, not radicals.

    As a gay Virginian, I’m very comfortable with the idea that I deserve respect. I’m not all that comfy with the way the Blade tries to portray that respect, but don’t go around bashing their agenda as in any way radical. Equal rights isn’t all that crazy a concept…

  3. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “….organizations like the WashingtonBlade.com who are only interested in promoting their biased, extremist agenda.”

    I believe that covers a lot of territory. Even if an organization’s agendai is NOT extremist, it is still dangerous if it is biased in the extreme. Somehow we have to promote dialogs with differing viewpoints without resorting to a total balkanization of ideas.

    What is most disturbing is the total misrepresentation of fact, of the sort noted here. Even more disturbing than that is a willingness to not only spin out of all recognition the limited factual data we have, but to fabricate data out of the whole cloth to support a previously selected position.

    We see this in polls where the answer depends on how the question is asked, in think tanks designed from the ground up to support a position while posing as scholarly groups, and in supposedly neutral reporting which is designed to support one side of an argument only.

    Combined with a national proclivity to winner-take-all competition in every arena, it makes for potentialy unfortunate situations.

    True enough, we have free speech which requires us to allow such idiots to make mis-statements however antisocial, inflammatory, hateful, hurtful, they may be. We don’t have to listen to them, promote thier agenda by responding, or buy their publications. All we can hope is that a strong dose of benign neglect and rational truth will kepp the ball rolling uphill rather than down.

  4. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    I have to admit that I haven’t been following this scandal, so maybe I’m not up on things. (And I’m think I’m conflating it with the other instances of Republican candidates saying ridiculous things about gays. It’s hard to keep up.)

    That said, I’m puzzled. I read the original article in some respectable Virginia newspaper (I can’t remember which one), and that’s not at all what he was quoted as saying. Did the paper misquote him and subsequently correct themselves? Or is this a case of he and the paper disagreeing over what he said? Or something else entirely?

  5. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Anonymous 10:04, I must confess, I have never read the Washington Blade, and base my comments on second-hand information. I should not have written, “clearly, the publication has a radical gay-rights agenda.” I do not have enough information to make such a statement. You are quite correct, the episode noted by Phil above may be an example of bad very poor reporting, or bias on the part of an individual writer. It would be interesting to see, however, if the paper issues a clarification or retraction.

    Waldo, if you click through Phil’s link, I think you’ll see that Phil quoted the Blade quite accurately. The quote is highlighted in the cutline under Craddock’s photo.

    Phil, Craddock supposedly made the “Christians hate gays” statement in an interview with the Blade. How do you know that the quote is inaccurate? You did not state your source. Has Craddock issued a statement to that effect?

  6. The Jaded JD Avatar
    The Jaded JD

    I agree with Anon 10:04: the Blade is just a bad newspaper; I don’t read it (because I read it enough in the past to identify it as a bad newspaper and quit), so I don’t know whether it has an agenda or not.

    I am curious about Mr. Rodokanakis’s response to the article here. He presents ipse dixit the “entire quote” without establishing any foundation. Why should I give Mr. Rodokanakis any more benefit of the doubt that what he presents is more accurate than what the Blade presented? This isn’t an attack on Mr. Rodokanakis or his credibility–just a suggestion that, in future, it may be worthwhile to say something along the lines of, “I’ve spoken with Mr. Craddock, and he says his quote really was . . .” or, “It has been revealed in other periodicals of greater repute that Mr. Craddock’s quote really was . . .” or, “The Blade today retracted, publishing the full quote, which was . . .” (as the case may be). I know that Commonwealth Watch specifically asked Mr. Craddock to set the record straight and apparently was shunned. So the source of Mr. Rodokanakis’s information is of some interest.

    Finally, on a purely grammatical note, I thought “gay” remained an adjective. I wasn’t aware that the word had been become a noun, so that it could be pluralized. Completely irrespective of sexual orientation, the word “gays” seems silly when referring to a group of people, much the way “blacks” and “whites” do, when we have perfectly good nouns for referring to those demographics.

  7. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    Waldo, if you click through Phil’s link, I think you’ll see that Phil quoted the Blade quite accurately. The quote is highlighted in the cutline under Craddock’s photo.

    I’m sorry I was unclear. I wasn’t questioning Jim at all. I’m questioning how Jim knows (as you did) that Craddock was quoted incorrectly. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to know that, or why I would trust Craddock (about whom I know nothing) over the Washington Blade (about which I know a moderate amount).

    I’d been thinking that some media outlet other than the Blade broke this story about Craddock. A quick Google News query shows, however, that the Blade is the only media outlet to use this quote.

  8. Phil Rodokanakis Avatar
    Phil Rodokanakis

    Jim et al: Sorry for not being clearer in my earlier post. The Craddock quote comes from Chris Craddock himself. We corresponded with him on this issue after the blade story broke out. As you can tell, his quote was taken out of context. They simply dropped the last part of the sentence where Craddock said that “we should treat each other with respect” and only reported the first part making it sound that Craddock said that “Christian and gays dispise each other.”

  9. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Phil,

    For clarification, they also dropped the first part of the quote where he says “Many people say…” Thus making it sound like he was expressing his own opinion about gay people and Christians rather than his opinion of what “Many people” think.

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    This is a pretty serious charge. The Blade, in printing such a quote, would have taken Craddock’s comment and turned it on its head. Has the paper printed a retraction? I don’t see anything on Craddock’s website — I wonder why he’s not making a bigger deal out of such a serious charge? I’d certainly like to hear the Blade‘s side of all of this.

  11. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    No retraction yet. I’m not sure if the campaign has requested one or not. They certainly have not made it public on their web-site. I suspect that the main reason they haven’t as yet is that the discussion has pretty much been limited to blogs like this and the original Blade article. Given the small readership of the Blade, I suspect the campaign figures it best not to bring more attention to the misquote as this will likely lead to even more smearing from the left. If it stays quiet in the MSM you may not hear anything else from him on it.

    The fact that the MSM has not picked it up so far leads me to believe there is concern over the original article’s voracity. After all, they certainly jumped all over Brad Marrs when they had a clear link to a quote of his. Is there any doubt the local MSM would plaster this all over the news if they thought it was true?

  12. James Young Avatar
    James Young

    Sorry, Anon 10:04, but any one who or group that demands that society redefine a word and the institution it represents to satisfy their own actions is “radical” by any reasonable definition of the word.

    Or would you like to redefine “radical,” too?

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I think this recent study is relevant to the homophobia I see in the Virginia elections:

    Aug. 2, 2005

    Men overcompensate when their masculinity is threatened, Cornell study shows
    By Daniel Aloi
    ITHACA, N.Y. — Threaten a man’s masculinity and he will assume more macho attitudes, according to a study by a Cornell University researcher.

    “I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq War more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle,” said Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell. Willer is presenting his findings Aug. 15 at the American Sociological Association’s 100th annual meeting in Philadelphia.

    “Masculine overcompensation is the idea that men who are insecure about their masculinity will behave in an extremely masculine way as compensation. I wanted to test this idea and also explore whether overcompensation could help explain some attitudes like support for war and animosity to homosexuals,” Willer said.

    Willer administered a gender identity survey to a sample of male and female Cornell undergraduates in the fall of 2004. Participants were randomly assigned to receive feedback that their responses indicated either a masculine or a feminine identity. While women’s responses were unchanged regardless of the feedback they received, men’s reactions “were strongly affected by this feedback,” Willer said.

    “Masculinity-threatened men also reported feeling more ashamed, guilty, upset and hostile than did masculinity-confirmed men,” states Willer’s report, “Overdoing Gender: Testing the Masculine Overcompensation Thesis.”

    “The masculine overcompensation thesis has its roots in Freudian psychology, but it has become a popularly accepted idea that I felt should be empirically tested and evaluated,” Willer said.

    He questioned subjects about their political attitudes, including how they felt about a same-sex marriage ban and their support for President Bush’s handling of the Iraq War.

    “I created composites from subjects’ answers to these and other questions,” he said. “I also gave subjects a car-buying vignette, presented as part of a study of purchasing a new car.”

    Masculinity-threatened participants also showed more interest in buying an SUV. “There were no increases for other types of cars,” Willer said.

    The study produced “the predicted results,” he said. “The intention of the study was to explore whether masculine overcompensation exists and where. But the point isn’t to suggest these are the only factors that can explain these behaviors. Likewise, there may be a wide variety of other behaviors that could increase when men are concerned about their levels of masculinity.”

    In a separate study, Willer verified that support for the Iraq War, homophobia and interest in purchasing an SUV were all considered masculine by study participants.

    Willer said he and a colleague are planning additional research on subjects’ attitudes regarding violence toward women, using the same method for manipulating masculine insecurity.

    “I’m planning another follow-up to the study that involves taking testosterone samples from participants to see if testosterone levels are a mediating factor in this process,” he added.

    The research involved 111 Cornell undergraduates and was funded by the Department of Sociology at Cornell.

  14. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Anon. 7:04, I really don’t see what this study has to do with the poor journalistic practices of reporters at the Blade, but I do find it amusing. Unfortunately this study was probably funded with government grants and my humorous attitude quickly turned to anger at that realization. Oops, I guess I let my “threatened masculinity” show. I better go get in my SUV and ride to the pro-War Rally. 😉

  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I’ve seen no public statement from Craddock about this. He could be disregarding this incident because he doesn’t care to set the record straight, or because setting the record straight would call into question his false claim during the primary that the gay newspaper actually endorsed Gary Reese.

  16. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    What makes you so sure that Craddock was misquoted? Could be that he was embarassed when he saw what he told the Blade in print and now wants to avoid taking responsibility for saying something dumb. And why hasn’t he publicly disassociated himself from the comments attributed to him? He may think there’s no point in trying to get a correction from the Blade, but why not post something on his web site clearly stating his position?

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