Forman Post on New CBS VP Featured Throughout Blogosphere

Aaron Keyak — February 26, 2009 – 6:07 pm | Barack Obama | Democrats | Election 2008 | Republicans | Stop the Smears Comments (2) Add a comment

This week, Huffington Post highlighted a piece titled, “CBS News Pick Claimed Democrats are Bad People,” by Ira N. Forman, NJDC Executive Director, as the most highly featured article on its front page. This post received over 330,000 views, more than 2100 comments, and was referenced throughout the blogosphere.

Here’s an excerpt.

What is CBS thinking? This guy is very far out there with his partisan rhetoric.

A decade ago, I debated Ballabon in New York. I represented the Democratic Jewish community while he spoke on behalf of Republican Jews. During the debate, Ballabon claimed that, after his most recent job in Washington, he became convinced that Democrats are inherently bad people and Republicans are fundamentally good people.

What planet does this guy come from? It’s astonishing that CBS News would name Ballabon to its senior management.

In fact, it is not atypical of Ballabon to use this kind of extreme partisan rhetoric. During the 2008 election, Ballabon said, “Obama is incredibly dangerous.”

During the 2004 elections, JTA reported, “AIPAC has touted this election [in 2004] as a ‘win-win’ proposition, noting Bush’s strong support for Israel and Kerry’s 100 percent pro-Israel voting record in the Senate.” In response, Ballabon wrote, “Bush and Kerry ‘win-win?’ Republicans and Democrats indistinguishable? It would be funny if Jews weren’t being killed.”

Ironically, Ballabon told JTA, following his new CBS News appointment, that he “always worked well with Democrats and Republicans.”

Forman’s post was picked up by AlterNet, Media Maters, Political Base, Jossip, Mediabistro,  Politico, JTA, Washington Monthly, Gawker, TPM, The Plum Line (A Washington Post Owned Blog), and others.

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