What is the point?

Look at the following grafs in Susan Haigh's latest AP piece and tell me which part doesn't make sense (I'll highlight it so will be easier to pick out).

Lieberman is petitioning his way onto the November ballot as an independent just in case. In what he calls the fight of his political life, the senator has tried to portray his rival as an inexperienced, flip-flopping millionaire whose only motivation for being liberal is to win the Senate seat.

"My opponent is spending a lot of his own money to tell people things that are not true about me," Lieberman recently told parishioners at a Hispanic church. "But you and I know each other. We are like familia," he said, using the Spanish word for family.

The Lieberman campaign cites Lamont's recent decision to drop his longtime membership at Greenwich's exclusive Round Hill Club golf course, where Prescott Bush - the father and grandfather of the two Bush presidents - once was the club's president. Lamont said the club was "not as diverse as it should be."

In the past, Lamont has donated $1,500 to Lieberman's campaigns, including $500 as recently as February 2005. Lamont's campaign manager, Tom Swan, explains that Lamont only gave the $500 to get into a fundraising event so he could question Lieberman about the Iraq war.

Now, can someone PLEASE tell me why the highlighted portion of Haigh's piece ever made it to print? Why is Haigh writing this crap when it now well known that the Lieberman camp is using this issue as a race baiting move? For God sakes, the graf doesn't make any sense when the read the piece AND the outrageous claim if left unchallenged!

Susan is a better journalist than this and should know better than to fall for this Lieberman trick. I heard from people that bloggers should not go after journalists but this type of nonsense has gone on throughout the entire campaign by journalists who should know better and it really needs to stop.

Why won't reporters like Haigh report on the real issues surrounding this race? Why do we have to read about crap like this with seven day to go until the primary?

As a reporter, I'm sure Susan was aware of the race baiting techniques of the Lieberman camp (she's based in Connecticut). Why then did she place this Lieberman talking point graf in her piece (again, unchallenged)?

Susan, here's a few questions for you. Believe me, I'm not trying to be harsh, I just want to understand where you're coming from so don't take this the wrong way.

What's the point of the reference to the country club in terms of your story?

Why are you bringing up this non-issue without challenging the Lieberman camp over their race-baiting tactics with their misleading flyer which was distributed in the inner cities last weekend? Why didn't you either cite the Lamont campaingn's response to this stupid non-issue which they clearly addressed in a July NYT piece (which was repeated here and by other reporters). In case you missed it, I'll post the it again.

But the Lamont campaign dismissed the tactic as a dirty trick. "We have been consistently disappointed with Senator Lieberman's tactics throughout the campaign," Lamont spokesperson Dupont-Diehl said. "We prefer to focus on the issues."

Lamont says the club isn't discriminatory, though he has acknowledged that the club isn't perfect on race. In the flyer the Lieberman camp left out a couple other of Lamont's quotes in the July Times story, which read as follows:

"It's not as diverse as it should be," Mr. Lamont said. "I didn't pay as much attention to that before the race began, to tell you the truth.

"They don't have any discriminatory policies," he added.

Matt Browner Hamlin nails it with his analysis of Haigh's piece.

Haigh has a responsibility to her readers, if not truth as such, to rebut false claims coming out of the Lieberman camp. Her piece on whole is really about Ned's success and his money - not exactly what voters want to be reading about one week before the primary (I'm not certain this wasn't written six months ago) - but her reproduction of Steinfels' attacks verbatim really Iraqs up this story.

Writing irrelevant pieces that carry unfounded partisan attacks pro-bono is no way to practice journalism, Susan. Let's try to do better the last week before the election. Voters might actually what to read about Lieberman's position on Iraq (wait, does he have one?) and why he thinks universal healthcare is a bad idea.

With one week until the election, is this the type of garbage we need to be reading about? People like Haigh and Mark Davis (both have been covering Connecticut politics for over 10 years) should know better then this type of smearing has to stop as it's a disservice to their readers/viewers.