They are going mental.
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.
“All hail the Drudge/Fox/New York Post axis “
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Drudge/Fox/New York Post/Free Republic...
The MSM is furious because when Palin was selected they figured all they had to do was point out to we the unwashed what a poor candidate she was and we would reject her. Instead, we gave them the proverbial finger. They hate being ignored, it so goes against their sense of being superior to the rest of us.
They are going mental.
Memo: To H. Kurtz.
From: H. Buzzard:
The answer is, Yes. Millions.
Read it and weep, a-wipe.
I wish someone would make an ambiguous remark about his ears, and see how funny he thinks that is.
I believe you. I also firmly believe he will try to enact reparations, and if the Congress is majority ‘rat, he just might be able to do it.
If you traffic in baryard epithets and metaphors, you're going to get some sh*t on yourself.
Don't know why these are not posting, but here's the addy, just in case: http://scotthong.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/palinwecandoit.jpg
They know that the "pig" in the cliche refers to something unattractive that can't be repackaged into something appealing.
If the question is did Obama mean to call Palin literally a "pig," then no.
If the question is did Obama not think through all the implications of what he was rhetorically saying (which was essentially that Palin was a candidate who could not be repackaged into something she's not), then yes, that's exactly what he was trying to say.
-PJ
I'm certain of it.
I say "lipstick" and you think of __________________
Obama knew full well what he was doing. So did the crowd.
O-bubble?
That's an easy one to figure out: overt threats, murder, assassinations, riots, kidnap for voter ransom, general anarchy.
Remember what happened in LA when the courts didn't lynch the cops who arrested Rodney King?
Go to YouTube and search “LA riots”.
It's been threatened by the self-appointed leaders of self-pity that riots happen when they don't get what they want.
But that's the whole point of all of the foreign investors screwing with American politics and propping up an empty suit. They made sure that an Obama/Biden ticket is a losing proposition.
The best self-defence the MSM can do for their sake is to report the dead honest truth. They aren't rich and cool enough like the entertainment celebrities who fly off to their 20th mansion in Europe to escape the chaos. The sooner the whole American MSM population sobers up, the easier it will be for the self-pity voter population to accept that life goes on. It's gone on with President Bush at the helm for 8 years, it will go on with a President McCain, and most likely a President Palin after him.
By propping up a false prophet, the MSM will be held responsible for their hate inspired propaganda against American voters and the American way of self-rule. The MSM will be responsible for the ensuing civil violence.
You bring up an interesting point. The lib cross-over voters in states with open primaries and the LSM helped get McCain on the GOP ticket, thinking he would be a weak opponent. Since the opposite has occurred, plus he had the temerity to pick a running mate like Sarah Palin, they are really hacked off. Their little plan has gone awry, unlike "Operation Chaos."
I can believe he may have been referring to McCain as the pig and Palin as the lipstick. Not that that's any better, but...
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