My readers have better memories than I do. Today, I got this in the mail from an reader who asks to be identified as “A Product of Pittsburgh Steelworkers”:
I had written to you before the election about how then Candidate Obama would no longer talk to a television station in Florida because he didn’t like some of the questions they asked Joe Biden. See your article Obama: Yes to Iran, No to WFTV from October 2008.
But even I would never have imagined that he would carry this over to an entire cable news network!
Again, he had said earlier that he [criticized Bush for the notion] that by not talking to people we are somehow punishing them. Now he is talking to the whole world, apologizing for the United States, but he won’t talk to Fox News!
I had asked in my October email, “Will he be this vindictive towards all Americans who don’t agree with him or his administration?” Well, he is and even more than I expected.
But I guess this gives you some degree of bragging rights. By writing your article, you can honestly tell your readers that “You read it here first on The Anchoress” about how Obama would later act towards those who don’t agree with him.”
Well, bragging rights are slim when I can’t even remember posting on it -the hazard of posting so much- but I must say, a chill ran through me when I read the italicized line above, and again when I heard this pronouncement from a White House podium.
Obama’s behavior is not presidential. Criticize Bush all you like, and yeah, he made it clear he didn’t much like the way the press covered him, but he talked to all of those news outlets who clearly hated him – hell, he talked to CBS even after the fake TANG episode with Dan Rather and Mary Mapes (whose fakery was recently exposed as even more egregious than we already knew). Bush spoke to Newsweek even after Evan Thomas promised to deliver “an additional ten to 15 percentage points to John Kerry” (which they managed, btw).
Obama, thin-skinned, more than a little cowardly and a bit petty, prefers to “punish” those members of the press who do not lay prostrate before him. And the mainstream press, because it is over-populated with spiteful perpetual adolescents who have become enthralled to the weird duality of hate/love that informs their politics, do not close ranks and say, “no, Mr. President, if you don’t talk to one of us, you don’t get your daily exposure from any of us.”
With one glaring exception, Obama’s media sycophants are so far up inside Obama, they cannot see their own futures. But then, they have voluntarily dissolved themselves, and tossed aside the public trust, in order to serve one man over the nation.
My issues, as always, are less about President Obama, than about the formerly free American press.
Longtime readers know that while I think Limbaugh is a genius at what he does I am not a regular listener -I am not a regular listener of anyone, anymore, on either the right or the left- but when I saw this yesterday, it actually turned my stomach:
Until about 2006, when he appears to have lost his mind, his humanity and his decency, I was a pretty regular viewer of “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” This crosses a terrible line. And I’m rather appalled by the silence of his two talking head guests. You’d think one of them would say, “that’s the line, dude; where is your decency?”
I mean, left or right, there should be some things -like wishing people will die, or calling them “meat”- that are simply not said, without someone there saying, “wait…walk that back, you’ve gone too far.” I’m a nobody, and my thoughts don’t matter, but I did tweet, when the Olympics went to Rio, that Limbaugh was “overdoing” his glee. When Ann Coulter (admittedly, I’m not a fan) has overdone it, I’ve said so, and taken some abuse for it, too. If anyone on the left has suggested Matthews needs to walk that back, yet, I have not seen it. If anyone – in particularly any good feminist- has suggested that Keith Olbermann, a good “liberal” should reconsider calling a woman “a mashed bag of meat with lipstick”, because he doesn’t like her, well, I haven’t heard about that, either.
Then, this morning I saw this hit piece on Limbaugh from Rick Sanchez, who appears content to call himself a journalist while spouting so-called (and repellent) Limbaugh “quotes” for which he offers neither audio nor textual proof.
It doesn’t matter, says Sanchez, and -apparently- CNN News, (recently declared a “real” news network by the Obama White House) that he has no proof, no record of Limbaugh uttering these foul words. The accusation is enough. An assertion is as good as the truth for Sanchez, and those working with him on their crusade to prevent a private citizen who has earned his wealth to be able to use it as he wishes.
The assertion is enough, and now it is “up to Limbaugh to prove he didn’t say it.”
Because, as we saw in Rathergate, professional journalists now want to be able to smear someone with any untruth they like, and demand that the victims of their slander “prove” a negative.
“Prove that you did not do what I said you did,” is not journalism. It is, frankly, the tactic of the schoolyard bully and the fascist. They are often one and the same. And they’ve learned that once a headline is “out there” retractions and corrections don’t much matter, to the narrative.
With a few professional exceptions, Jake Tapper springs immediately to mind, our mainstream media is as corrupt and dishonest as our congress. So, we’re in terrible trouble, if you haven’t yet figured that out.
As Mark Steyn notes, CNN can fact-check a comedy show, but not its own reporters.
I watch this attempt to keep Limbaugh from buying into a football team on the basis of words he did not say, and I think, if only he were Roman Polanski -they’d celebrate his interest in grown-up American athletes!
I am not going to post anymore, today. I have a cold and this took forever to write. As this month is both my birthday (yay!) and our wedding anniversary (Yayay!) my husband and I have decided that we’re taking some “time off” -he from meetings, incessant beepers and deadlines- me from reading and writing about the potential catastrophe and erosion of rights we’re looking at in our national future. I will schedule some random “Anchoress Reposts” to go up throughout the next few days, while I disappear.
In the meantime, here’s what I’ve got up on my tab bar, both political and faith-filled, to keep you reading:
Cuba: Fighting recession by going more capitalist. Only the US is currently trying to “fight” the recession by going more socialist.
Webster: Eleven O’ Clock always comes
Whole Foods Exec: On Free Markets
First Things: Obama and the Lama
The Corner: What is and is not acceptable to the NFL
America: Sell the Vatican?
Tapscott: Obama Seeks to Silence US Chamber of Commerce
Faith and Family: Do you Have a Difficult Child
ACORN: Louisiana doing what AG Holder won’t do
Divine Mercy: An Abortionist Turns to It
Terry Teachout: When Beauty Isn’t True
Pope Benedict: “God Walks with Man”
Goldberg: Reading Between the Lines of Obama’s Poetry
National Post: the Last Acceptable Prejudice
Surber: Buy Your Obama Flag!
Offensive: American Flag Ordered Down
McArdle: Is Obamacare Falling Apart
Deacon Greg: Candidate for Sainthood & Medal of Honor
Mark Steyn: Bureaucrats in your business
RedState: Holder Will Decide if you Belong to a Hate Group
Blankley: Washington is Nuts
Cantor: Spelling it out
NiceDeb: Defending Rush
Big Government: 2010 Census Boondoggle for the Left
Babe Herman: Best Baseball Story Ever
Krauthammer: America’s Decline is Intentional
Reich: You old folks are gonna die!
Belmont Club: More on That
St. Therese: Goes to Prison
Spruiell: Dissecting Obamacare
Cato: What does State Dept not want us to know about Honduras?
Costanza: The Opposite of America
Insurance Companies: Evil
MacNamara: Der Bingle and the Jesuits
to Rush ( His idea during the Clinton plague upon America ) I am starting a file on “The One,” mostly starting from the election date. 
The election results were long expected, but now that the day has arrived it’s quite a letdown, anyway. Reading about the joy expressed by Hamas and Syria and Italy and Indonesia… contemplating Obama’s Secretary of State, or (God help us) Defense… Thinking about the USA becoming just like Sweden, only with a real army, and aircraft carriers, and nukes… First Lady Michelle…
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
you too!
Okay this is a switch.
