Jack Cafferty

Jack Cafferty (born December 14, 1942 in Chicago , Illinois ) is an American journalist and television commentator.

Life and work

Cafferty began his journalistic career in Reno in 1960 . In 1973 he married Carol († September 5, 2008). The marriage had four children.

From 1977, Cafferty hosted national programs for a New York broadcaster.

From 1989 to 1992, Cafferty hosted Newsline New York for WNYW-TW and News at 7 for Fox 5.

From 1992 to 1998 Cafferty presented the program News at 10 for the local broadcasting station of the broadcaster WB 11 for New York.

In 2003–2004, Cafferty worked as a commentary for the breakfast show "American Morning," which airs on CNN from 7:00 am to 10:00 am. In 2005, Cafferty began working for the Situation Room show. Within this program, through which Wolf Blitzer leads as the main presenter, Cafferty presents a segment known as "The Cafferty Files", which is a mixture of comment and opinion forum: In the first slot in an early phase of the program, Cafferty is shown giving his opinion on a current topic and / or asks a question in the room about the position it asks the viewer to take. At a later point in time during the broadcast, he switched to Cafferty again, who presented a cross-section of the e-mails and blog comments that were sent to him by viewers on the question he raised.

Cafferty controversies

The direct and blatant manner in which Cafferty expresses his opinion as a political commentator has earned him recognition and criticism in the same way. The blatant way in which his rejection of certain events and people gets to the point has been branded on various occasions as tactless and even as offensive. In part, some of his television columns have given rise to contentious controversies.

The allegations of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which accused Cafferty of promoting a simplistic and tendentious view of the Middle East, can be cited as an example of this. The reason for this was a statement by Cafferty on September 23, 2004, in which Iraqi demonstrators responded to the demand that two researchers arrested by US troops be released with the comment: “Given the way these mutants treat women in their societies, the women are probably better off in US custody. ”( Given the way these mutants would treat women in their societies, women would probably be better off in a US prison ).

Cafferty's remarks in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics that the Chinese are "still the same crooks and thugs" as they have been for the past 50 years sparked widespread protests from the Chinese population in the United States. Although Cafferty made it clear in a later opinion piece in the Situation Room that his statement did not refer to the Chinese-born Americans or the Chinese people, but rather had the communist government in mind, there were large-scale demonstrations in front of the CNN building in Atlanta, in which several thousand people took part. According to Qin Gang, spokesman for China's foreign minister, CNN's broadcaster Jim Walton later apologized for Cafferty's comment in a letter to the Chinese government. On April 28, 2008, beauty salon owner Liang Shubing and teacher Li Lilan sued Cafferty and CNN for $ 1.3 billion in damages for "violating the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people."

Political opinions

Iraq war and Bush administration

Cafferty initially advocated the war in Iraq, but later turned around and became one of the most energetic critics of the US-led invasion of 2003 and the occupation that has continued since. He justified his previous stance on the grounds that he had been deceived by the post-9/11 hysteria and the "false claims" used by the US government to prepare for war. An example of his position on the Iraq question in recent years is a comment by Cafferty in which he summed up that the decision to occupy Iraq, in his opinion, was not based on any honorable motives (“I don't think for a single second there was anything honorable about the decision to invade a sovereign country? "). Rather, the Bush administration used September 11 as a pretext for the war in Iraq - a country that did nothing to harm the United States, posed no threat, and was not involved in September 11 either. With reference to "600 billion dollars" that the United States had already invested in the war, he further complained that some people made "a lot of money in wartime" and that, conspicuously, "a lot of money went to friends of the US government" ("People make a lot of money during wartime - $ 600 billion we've spent there so far - and a lot of that money has gone to friends of the administration.")

Cafferty also characterized former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2006 as an "obnoxious jerk and war criminal ", which earned him a reprimand from the President of CNN, and then insisted that the rest of those responsible for the war in Iraq are war criminals ("I will go to my grave as Jack Cafferty, private citizen, believing that these people committed war crimes.")

In American conservative circles, Cafferty is heavily criticized for these and similar attacks against the Republican government. The columnist Harvey Kushner , who compared Cafferty with the National Socialist propaganda minister and hate speech speaker Joseph Goebbels , could be cited as an example of the rejection he met with from the Republican camp .

Democratic Party

Cafferty hardly makes a secret of his preference for the Democratic Party. However, he regularly reproaches them for not having “courage” and for using their position of power in the US Congress inadequately to prevent the implementation of the policies of the Bush administration. For example, Cafferty repeatedly dismissed claims by the Democratic majority leader in Congress, Nancy Pelosi , that the Republicans would use filibuster tactics to prevent a change of course in Iraq policy in Congress, citing that it would be easy for the Democrats to change Iraq policy through a Refusing to force the granting of funds to finance the war (which they de facto control as a majority party), but that they are too cowardly for fear of loss of reputation. When Sarah Palin ran for Vice President in 2008, he said of her on September 26, 2008: "" if John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year old's heart beat away from being President of the United States, and if that doesn 't scare the hell out of you, it should! "( If John McCain wins, this woman will be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the office of President of the United States. That should scare her off ).

Conservative media

Cafferty qualified right-wing television station Fox News with the pun: "The F-word is Fox." (The F-word is Fox).

Awards

Cafferty has received the Emmy Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the New York Associated Press State Broadcasters Award, among others.

Fonts

• It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars And Losers Who Are Hurtin America , 2007.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://content.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1851400-2,00.html