BY MARK SHIELDS

An incorrect statement left uncorrected leads often to deception, disillusion and dishonesty. Take this hypothetical: I’ve agreed to speak at a local event, and the emcee, in her introduction, says something like, “Mark Shields went to the University of Notre Dame, where he played basketball.” It’s true that Notre Dame is my alma mater and that I regularly played pickup games of basketball while there. But the misimpression would be created that I’d played (SET ITAL) for (END ITAL) my school on the men’s basketball team. Before long, another imaginative emcee embellishes the intro to read, “Shields was a star college basketball player.” And error would take wing.
Recently, Jay Nordlinger (whom I do not know) of National Review wrote: “The term ‘chickenhawk’ was coined by Mark Shields, a Democratic operative, columnist, and pundit. He used it to tar Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney (et al.) … The rule was this: If you did not serve in combat, you could not advocate American military action. … Only combat veterans had the right to support military action.”
Nordlinger is wrong on virtually every count. Forget that I did not coin “chicken hawk,” which was used as early as 1967 by Rep. Mo Udall, D-Ariz., in a speech opposing the Vietnam War, some 12 years before I ever worked for a newspaper. Forget that I have not worked in politics for 36 years.
More importantly, he incorrectly defined terms. For the record, the disparaging term “chicken hawk” was reserved for those American men who during the Vietnam War, when all males 18 or older were subject to the military draft, employed a student deferment, a family contact, a contrived medical malady or even a calling to divinity school to avoid serving and who then later, as wounded and decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam Robert Timberg unforgettably wrote in the 1996 book “The Nightingale’s Song,” would reappear “loudly endorsing a confrontational stance with the Soviet Union, aid to the Nicaraguan guerillas, and military ventures into Lebanon, Grenada, and the Persian Gulf.” Chicken hawks, Timberg continued, were “men whose testosterone gland abruptly began pumping after age twenty-six, when they were no longer vulnerable to the draft.”
Yes, former Vice President Dick Cheney — with his five student deferments and with his under-oath explanation “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service” (when 58,303 Americans of his generation were giving their lives in Vietnam) — who appears since never to have seen a world trouble spot where he would not want to send American soldiers and Marines, qualifies as a chicken hawk.
The chicken hawk can be counted on to endorse a national policy of military escalation, as long as it involves no personal participation.
U.S. Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, after his successful leadership in the Gulf War, dispatched all the fawning flatterers this way: “It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.” It would be irrational to say — and nobody I know has ever said it — that only Americans who have served in combat can advocate American military action. By that absurd standard, of the past 11 U.S. presidents since Harry Truman, only John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush would have been qualified to serve as commander in chief.
In the last analysis, character is destiny. Just as we would spurn the self-proclaimed tax reformer who turned out to be a tax evader, we refuse to honor the call to battle from those who, when summoned to defend their nation, went AWOL. The record is corrected.
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2015 MARK SHIELDS
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BY L. BRENT BOZELL AND TIM GRAHAM

The safest bet you can possibly make at the beginning of a presidential election cycle is that the “objective” national media will savage the Republican contenders with “investigative” journalism. Not just one Republican contender, but all the Republican contenders.
It’s a bit amazing to look back at 2012 and remember that every Republican candidate was punched in the kisser by “journalism” if and when he or she inched into the lead. Sarah Palin never declared, but she was slimed in 2011 by NBC star Savannah Guthrie, who casually tossed out author Joe McGinniss’s claims that she was a bad mother, that she and her husband used cocaine, and she had sex with an NBA star. Proof? Who needs it?
Then Michele Bachmann was investigated by ABC for charges her husband “prayed away the gay” as a therapist. The Washington Post was scandalized that Rick Perry painted over a rock with the N-word on a hunting property. Herman Cain faced nearly 100 network stories accusing him of sexual harassment before reporters offered a name of an accuser.
And the murder-go-round continued. ABC found the second Mrs. Newt Gingrich and asked her about his “skeletons” and mocked Newt for expounding on “family values.” Newsweek reported Mrs. Rick Santorum used to cohabitate with an abortionist before she met her husband. To conclude a perfect round of liberal bias, The Washington Post wrote an epic 5,400-word article alleging Mitt Romney pushed a kid down and gave him a haircut in 1965.
We’re barely into 2015 and it’s happening again. While apparently no one in the national media wants to notice the overstuffed baggage train that holds the Hillary Clinton scandals, those partisan sleuths are back on the case of discrediting the Republican challengers.
While they waited to slime Romney in 2012 until the primaries were over, the media are already ripping into Jeb Bush, who they believe is the front-runner. Politico ran with this headline: “Jeb ‘Put Me Through Hell’: Michael Schiavo knows as well as anyone what Jeb Bush can do with executive power. He thinks you ought to know too.” In other words, the villain of the Terri Schiavo story — who would rather pull the feeding tube out of his wife than let her parents have custody — thinks Jeb Bush is an evil man.
The Boston Globe dug into Jeb’s high school years, and it was summarized by The Hill newspaper: “Jeb Bush was a pot-smoking bully, say former classmates.” The Globe announced Jeb “bore little resemblance to his father, a star on many fronts at Andover, and might have been an even worse student than brother George. Classmates said he smoked a notable amount of pot — as many did — and sometimes bullied smaller students.”
The Globe didn’t do this to Obama — or their beloved John Kerry.
The other early front-runner in the polls is now Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Once again, The Washington Post was on the prowl, publishing a 2,200-word article wondering why Walker decided to walk away from Marquette University before graduating, and focusing on details like he didn’t perform well in French class and allegations of trashing a student newspaper in a student government election. Proof? Who needs it?
The Post never looked into Obama’s college years.
The New York Times made the Post look like deep thinkers. Columnist Gail Collins claimed Milwaukee teachers lost their jobs in 2010 due to Walker cutting state aid to education. Though he wasn’t sworn in as governor until 2011. The Times had to run a correction. The appetite for blood always remains.
But we ain’t seen nothing yet.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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