Carville soliciting help for Media Matters

Democratic strategist James Carville, using Secretary of State nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton’s e-mail list, sent out an e-mail Friday trying to recruit supporters and donations for Media Matters for America, the liberal media watchdog group.

With the subject line “It’s happening again,” Carville compares the scandal of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and his relationship to President-elect Obama to the scandals that followed the Clintons into office and proved a distraction througout both of President Clinton’s terms.

{mosads}Carville wrote that the Clintons “hadn’t even unpacked their boxes before the right-wing noise machine started hyping phony scandals and inventing gossip.”

“Too many in the media played a key role in spreading these smears, forgetting their responsibility as journalists and repeating fiction as fact,” Carville wrote. “Now it’s happening again. The same far-right fanatics and those in the media who disseminate their attacks far and wide are trying to derail the new Democratic administration before it’s even gotten off the ground. They spread gossip and suggest scandal where there is none, all in the interest of generating controversy instead of communicating the facts.”

While Carville never mentions the Blagojevich scandal by name, he appears to be referring to lingering questions about what Obama’s staff, specifically incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, might have said to Blagojevich, who was arrested on corruption charges that include trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat.

Carville boasts that when Jerome Corsi, author of the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth book in 2004, put out another book this year on Obama, Media Matters “absolutely destroyed his credibility with a detailed takedown of his smears and falsehoods.”

“If we want the new administration to be able to follow through on the promise of change, we need to fight the right-wing noise machine and keep the media honest,” Carville wrote. “We’ve seen how important that battle is, and Media Matters is out there fighting it every day. Let’s give ’em a hand.”

Carville said that whenever “a Bill O’Reilly or a Chris Matthews attacks progressive leaders or ideals, Media Matters is there to fight back, every day, in real time.”