by David Safier
The Star has an almost perfect record for avoiding stories that might put John McCain in a bad light. If a tree in the political forest falls on McCain's record or his credibility, no one in Southern Arizona hears it from the Star.
Here's the latest example. Yesterday I put together a thorough post about Fred Malek, who just co-hosted a McCain fundraiser in Virginia. The short version about Malek is this: He was a "Jew counter" for the Nixon administration — the Nixon tapes revealed a strong current of antisemitism in Nixon — tallying up the number of "ethnics," as they were euphemistically referred to, in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And more recently, he participated in defrauding the Connecticut state pension fund. He and his company paid a $250,000 fine, and someone else in the scheme went to jail.
Malek is a big time Republican fundraiser. He was also chair of McCain's campaign finance committee for his 2008 presidential campaign.
It looks like John Mr. Clean McCain doesn't care too much about the integrity of people who he hangs with and appoints to high positions in his campaign.
Am I simply being a nutty partisan to think this story is important enough to run in the Star? Maybe not, since the Republic saw fit to cover it this morning. The Republic story included a summary of Malek's Nixon connections, a comment from the McCain campaign and another from Democrats. I wish the story had also covered Malek's more recent financial transgressions, but you can't have everything.
But the Speak-No-Evil-about-McCain monkeys at the Star didn't think this story was worth reporting. John will retain his squeaky clean image in Southern Arizona if the Star has anything to say about it.