Eric Boehlert himself, at

Crooks and Liars:

...Here's a key passage from my new book, Lapdogs:

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Incredibly, faced with an elaborate campaign hoax, most in the press didn't set their sights on the Swifties or the Bush campaign which refused to denounce the lies. Instead, the punditocracy, echoing Republican spin, collectively agreed that the smear campaign was really Kerry's fault. "In some ways you can certainly say that John Kerry brought this on himself," insisted Time magazine's Carney. "He should have known that this was coming because he has experienced it in previous campaigns. He knows that John O'Neill is out there."

ABC's Chris Bury made the same point during an appearance on CNN: "Because [[Kerry's military service] is the central tenet of John Kerry's campaign....once that issue is open, it's fair game."

In a sense they were right, it was fair game--just as questions about Bush's military service were fair game. But the Swifties never played fair-- they couldn't even keep their stories straight. As their dishonesty become obvious, journalists never adjusted their coverage. Instead, pundits and reporters diverted their eyes from the porous, poorly constructed smear campaign and focused the blame on the Kerry campaign. That saved reporters the trouble of labeling Vietnam veterans as liars (not to mention Bush's father, wife, and political advisor Karl Rove who all publicly signed off on the contents of the Swifty campaign), which in turn would have unleashed the fury of right-wing press critics. It also kept the Swift Boat storyline on familiar ground, one of tactics and process—were Kerry's consultants too slow in responding? Was their coordination between the Swifts and the Bush campaign, etc.? All of that should have been secondary to the central and pressing question—Were any of these allegations true?

Time concluded Kerry's slow footedness—his faulty political instinct—was "almost worse" that the Swift Boat charges themselves, which Times conceded were "reckless and unfair." [Emphasis added.] In the eyes of the D.C. media elite, not successfully knocking down libelous charges was "almost worse" than lobbing them. For reporters (like Republicans), the whole controversy was born at the Democratic convention when Kerry, they said, went overboard with his Vietnam references. "Fifty percent of the convention, or more, was about [Vietnam ], and his speech was about that," insisted New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney. With all that nostalgia, "There was not, I think it's fair to say, that much talk about what [Kerry] would do as president."

Fact: During his nearly 60-minutes convention address, Kerry made less than five references to his military service. By comparison, he devoted 19 paragraphs of his speech to buttressing national security, nine paragraphs to improving the economy, and six to addressing health insurance woes. But just one month later, journalists, echoing the talking points of Republicans, insisted the convention was all about Vietnam, which then somehow made it okay for partisan who had remained silent for 35 years to suddenly question Kerry's medal-winning service...