Posted on 09/12/2008 1:04:24 PM PDT by mojito
Howard Kurtz's column in the Washington Post is surprisingly blunt and surprisingly revealing. The mainstream media, Kurtz says, are mad. Their anger, though, is oddly unidirectional:
"The media are getting mad. Whether it's the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches. Maybe it's a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there's anything new about that)."
There certainly isn't. Barack Obama has been manipulating the press for years. His manipulation didn't make the media mad, though, because reporters were willing accomplices who have been trying to get Obama elected. It's the thought that John McCain could be manipulating them that has the media seeing red:
News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it's the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes "age-appropriate" programs) or Palin's repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).
But the two examples Kurtz cites are ads that are indisputably true. Obama did support sex education down to kindergarten. Kurtz thinks that's OK, because the sex education for five-year-olds would be "age appropriate." He's entitled to that opinion, but my opinion, and that of most voters, is that any sex education for kindergartners is a terrible idea. In any event, whether you think teaching five-year-olds about sex is a good idea or a bad idea, the ad is true.
Likewise with the ad that says Governor Palin killed the Bridge to Nowhere: it's a simple fact that no one, including the Democratic Party in Alaska, thought to deny until Palin was selected to run for Vice-President. We wrote about it here. As the Anchorage Daily News reported on March 12, 2008:
Palin ruffled feathers when she announced - without giving the delegation advance notice - that the state was killing the Ketchikan bridge to Gravina Island, site of the airport and a few dozen residents.
If Kurtz or other members of the media want to criticize some other aspect of Palin's record they are welcome to do so, but the suggestion that she didn't kill the famous bridge is ridiculous.
That's not to say that there is no false advertising in the air this campaign season. We wrote here that Barack Obama's oft-repeated claim, in a television ad and elsewhere, that he "reach[ed] out to Senator Lugar...to help lock down loose nuclear weapons" is flatly untrue. It was Sam Nunn who "reached out to Senator Lugar" in 1991. Obama's minor amendment to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act in 2006 had nothing to do with "locking down loose nuclear weapons;" on the contrary, it specifically excluded them. Obama's amendment has turned out to be a bad idea, too. But these and other falsehoods by Obama aren't what the press is "getting mad" about, and reporters have no intention of reporting on them.
While noting that the media in general are "getting mad," Kurtz himself is mad about the "lipstick on a pig" flap:
"The lipstick imbroglio is evidence that the Drudge/Fox/New York Post axis can drive just about any story into mainstream land. Does anyone seriously believe that Barack Obama was calling Sarah Palin a pig?"
I'm not sure what Obama had in mind, but I find it odd that in pages of outrage devoted to the supposed excesses of the McCain campaign, Kurtz finds no room to mention the fact that prominent Democrats (not anonymous emailers, who are much worse) have said that Governor Palin is Pontius Pilate and that her primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.
The truth is that Sarah Palin has been the object of the most vicious and concerted smear campaign in modern American history. But that fact doesn't cause the media (or Howard Kurtz) to get mad.
It's not too hard to diagnose why, as Kurtz correctly says, "the media are getting mad." They're getting mad because their candidate is losing. They've spent years building him up and covering for his mistakes and shortcomings, and he is such a stiff that he can't coast across the finish line. I'd be mad too, I guess, but I think I'd have the decency not to take it out on Sarah Palin.
Mad that the MSM can't win an election for their guy.
Just like they couldn't win it for Jean Francois Kerry.
Mad that the public is sick and tired of their obnoxious partisan cheerleading.
Mad that bloggers and sites like FRee Republic exist to swat down their arrogance and pretensions of knowing what's best.
Poor cranky Mr. Kurtz. This whiny baby needs a time-out, and a nap.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091100793.html
These idiots cause the problems with the electoral process, then become angry and vindictive when people don’t accept their lies as sheep and choose to fight back.
This is really good news.
Hey Howie,
Take a bong hit for Barry.
When McCain and Palin win, the media loses big time.
No power base at all in DC.
They burned this bridge and won’t get a “do-over”.
Hey Howie,
Take a bong hit for Barry.
Yea their made did you see Bahba on the view she almost popped a vein. She looked so angry...wow
Obama is not manipulating the press, the press is manipulating itself for Obama. The press is giving Obama a multi-channel, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, campaign commercial. For free.
The NOW crowd and the MSM cannot believe that the highest ranking women in the USA is going to be a conservative member of the GOP. They were sure this was going to be an ultra liberal like Hillary or Nancy. If Sarah becomes VP it will shatter their image as the arbiters of what a modern woman has to be. They are in shock and must destroy this upstart woman. They are scared and desperate. It is going to be brutal over the next 50 days.
I have no doubt in my mind that when Sarah “provoked” the lsm, she did it on purpose, knowing that it would help her voters see them for what they are—a bunch of lying, over the top, scum sucking liars that good, normal citizens would no longer ignore.
The MSM are almost totally irrelevant. They are just now beginning to realize this. Those that the gods would make crazy, they first make mad.
When are all these reporters, journalists and hacks, who compromised their ethics to support and build up Barrack Obama going to turn their anger where it is best directed...AT BARRACK OBAMA.
I would be p.o.ed to if I was done in and made to look foolish by a big old fraud with a history of using people and his skin color to get where he wanted despite his complete and utter lack of qualifications. I’d be downright embarrassed for being such a sap for him.
What goes around, comes around. You can only abuse people for so long, until they say "so long."
Does anyone seriously believe that he wasn't?
Well, lets see, first we had the dotcom bubble, then the housing bubble, now we got the MSM inflating Obama far beyond his true value......... guess what come next.
Add: they can no longer control America's political conversation.
Righto! I want them to go after Palin with everything they can. It backfires everytime.
Normal everyday folks are going to stand firm and protect the Palin family.
yup I watched it. man they’re not even hiding their BIAS anymore.. straight out in the open. MSM is imploding as well.
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