These so-called moderators shed no light whatsoever on the Republican candidates or their policy positions. Their intent was to divert attention away from the abject failure that is the Obama administration and focus on the Republican candidates' warts, especially Newt Gingrich's. It's time for these pretentious, shallow mainstream media people to go away.
I was one of a few people who caught the Republican debate on ABC Saturday night. It was awful, mainly because moderators Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos continued to prove how irrelevant, out of touch and shallow the so-called mainstream media really is.
The style of questioning was more appropriate for American Idol, The X Factor and Jersey Shore than it was a serious debate among people vying for the highest office in the land. Rather than substantive policy questions, the entire debate was geared toward the usual Gossip Girl nonsense… “So and so said you’re an idiot. Do you agree with that?”
So, for 15 or 20 minutes we were treated to the spectacle of the candidates nitpicking each other instead of addressing the issues that really matter to voters. It got so bad that Gardasil came up again. It was exhausting to watch the pointless back and forth.
When health care came up, we had to suffer through the usual rehash of Romneycare and Newt’s flirtation with the individual mandate. I really don’t care what either candidate did or believed in the past about health care. What I really want to know is what their ideas about health care are going forward.
The low point of the evening came when the so-called moderators asked how important marital fidelity was in a presidential hopeful. This was an obvious dig at Newt and a blatant attempt to get the other candidates to take turns ripping on Newt. (Ironic, wasn’t it, that Stephanopoulos worked for a serial adulterer; I don’t recall the mainstream media or Stephanopoulos being overly concerned about marital fidelity and the presidency then.)
Perry was asked first, and blathered on about how faithful he is, etc. His response should have been: “Why don’t you ask Newt since you’re so obviously talking to him? I’ll pass on this until you ask a real policy question.” The candidates should have nipped the ridiculous questions in the bud and asked the moderators to ask real ones. Instead, they took the bait.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, but I trust this modern-day P.T. Barnum to ask better questions than clowns like Stephanopoulos, Sawyer, Williams, Cramer and Cooper.
It’s been eleven days now since Jimmy Hoffa dropped his infamous “take these son of bitches out” comment at an Obama Labor Day rally. Why hasn’t the press been hounding the White House for an apology or at least a comment about Hoffa’s remarks? When Rep. Joe Wilson yelled, “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care pep rally, which was true by the way, it was all we heard about for days on end. The press has basically ignored this event.
Does anyone think the President Bush could have gotten away without having to comment about something like Hoffa’s slur? Faith in President Obama’s leadership is unraveling, but one has to wonder how much worse it would be if the press wasn’t in love with him.
President Bush received a never ending stream of negative press. What was going “wrong” in Afghanistan and Iraq was always headline news. It’s as if the wars ended the day Obama was sworn in. This has been the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since the war began, yet it’s not even news. The economy is in tatters and the President still blames Bush after spending over a trillion dollars. After receiving non-stop adulation from the mainstream media for four years how does Obama spin his way out of this? The American people have tuned it out. These are very strange days.
Tasty at the ballpark, but downright disgusting when packaged as news.
There are various ways to describe the traditional media in America. By traditional, I mean the media that dominated American newsgathering and dissemination for most of its history, first with the metropolitan daily papers, then radio and finally weekly newsmagazines and the big three television networks: ABC, NBC and CBS.
To some degree, the first all-news cable network, CNN, was and is part of this traditional media mix. But it was the forerunner of the New Media, which has successfully fragmented the monopolistic hold traditional media had on reporting news.
The most common term used to describe traditional media is Mainstream. This misses the mark, however, because it is increasingly irrelevant and no longer in the mainstream of American life. Conservatives derisively refer to it as the Lamestream Media, the Dinosaur Media and the Drive-By Media, among others. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to hang onto Mainstream. I suppose it’s comforting to hearken back to a day when news was controlled by the elite few whose opinions were developed in the vacuum of academia, Manhattan, Chicago and Los Angeles.
It’s generally a bad time to be part of the media establishment. However, MSNBC has the solution. A brand new tagline! What is the tagline that’s going to restore American’s faith in the media? How about finding some on-air talent that appeals to the political mainstream? Instead, the marketing geniuses at MSNBC have come up with “Lean Foward.” Here’s the promo video for the new campaign.
Hmm… Lean forward? Doesn’t this sound suspiciously like the Great Leap Forward? I’m not the only one who caught this, of course, but is this campaign Chairman Mao Light? By some estimates the Great Leap Forward killed 45 million Chinese. What is MSNBC’s goal with this campaign?
The video above has all the typical progressive Utopian nonsense. “We are the United States of Come as You Are”? “Our differences are what unite us”? The narrator quotes from the Declaration of Independence but leaves out the bit about the Creator. You see, our differences are what unites us, unless of course, you believe in Jesus Christ, like Sarah Palin, or are against homosexual marriage. And please don’t come as you are if you’re to the right of Barbara Boxer.
Blame Arizona: When eight young black men violently beat up a Hispanic man for no apparent reason, leave it the Associated Press to speculate. What could possibly be the reason for the violence?
Residents of Port Richmond – where an influx of newcomers from Latin America over the past decade has transformed the community – alternately blame the attacks on the economy, unemployment and the debate over Arizona’s immigration law.
And although most of the suspects were described as young black men and investigated for bias crimes, a grand jury has indicted only one of seven people arrested on a hate-crime charge.
Just for a minute let’s imagine if a group of white men beat up a black man. Would the Associated Press write:
Residents of Port Richmond – where an influx of newcomers from Africa over the past decade has transformed the community – alternately blame the attacks on the economy, unemployment and the debate over Affirmative Action.
That would be an outrageous excuse for this type of violent behavior. There’s simply no excuse for this when it happens. Why is it happening? If you look at the history of civilization, newcomers are always greeted unfavorably by the locals. These black men are simply passing on the same ignorant prejudices that greeted the Irish, German, Catholic, Chinese, and Jewish immigrants that first came to America. In other words, they’re racists.
Gatekeeper Watch: Even TechCruch has succumbed to publishing articles discussing the decline of the mainstream media gatekeepers. Jon Orlin complains that hoaxes are more problematic today because the mainstream media isn’t there to protect us any longer.
This past week, formerly unknown actress Elyse Porterfield fooled millions playing Jenny, the fired Dry Erase girl, in a clever hoax. Right now, I guarantee other pranksters are dreaming up new schemes to fool you again. And journalists, who at one time were tasked with protecting the public from such lies, no longer have the same power to block them.
Club Soda has covered this meme well in the past. I wish I could get a nickel for every time I read an article like this. Liberals liked the status quo because they published nonsense for generations and no one could do anything about it. The reason Rush Limbaugh is so popular is because in 1990 the entire press was dominated by the Left. Limbaugh was the only easily accessed source for a conservative viewpoint.
Other than John Stossel, who is doing real investigative journalism about the inefficiencies of the government? The press isn’t interested in anything except faux objective reporting. “Objective reporting” does nothing except further the agenda of Democrats. That’s why, just like you can always find a cop at a donut shop, there’s sure to be a “journalist” at the proverbial Kinko’s fabricating the next “fake-but-accurate” news story.
Don’t Give into Fear: After using fear to sell the stimulus bill, ObamaCare, financial regulation, and cap and trade President Obama is now urging Americans who will listen to “don’t give into fear.” Then he proceeded to scare people.
On Monday, he warned of reliving a dreadful past, saying Republicans want voters “to be afraid of the future.” “The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” Obama said at a fundraiser in Wisconsin. “In November, you’re going to have that choice.”
If we could only relive the dreadful past of 5% unemployment.
Good-bye Cathy: This is probably the greatest news ever. The reign of terror sometimes known as the comic strip Cathy is finally over.
Cathy Guisewite, the strip’s creator, announced on Wednesday that she is ending the popular cartoon’s run, The Associated Press reported. Ms. Guisewite, 59, said that the autobiographical strip has been “the most astonishing form of therapy,” but that her “creative biological clock” was ticking, and she wants to try something else — although isn’t sure what.
Have you ever noticed that the greatest comic strips always end too soon and the mediocre ones live forever? Here’s hoping Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy have a few more great years ahead.
Way Too Early Poll: A poll in Iowa shows former Governor Mike Huckabee leading all other hopefuls. Gulp! There’s not enough Maker’s Mark in the world to wash that pain away.
Time is on Obama’s Side: It’s been known for a while that Time magazine is basically another branch of the White House. The “newsmagazine’s” bias has been on display for a long time, but its ass-kissing has reached an all-time low. When Mark Halperin writes an article entitled, “Obama’s Islamic-Center Stance: Why the GOP Shouldn’t Run Against It,” you can rest assured that the GOP should take the opposite advice.
“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”
John Adams
Ever since people started reporting on and analyzing the news on the Internet and other new media outside the traditional media outlets, the traditional media has been going through its own version of the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief…
Denial… “This can’t be happening.”
Anger… “Who the hell do these pajama-clad people think they are?”
Bargaining… “Okay. We hate you, so we’ll start doing the same thing.”
Depression… “Our business model sucks and we’re going out of business.”
Acceptance… “Everything will be okay since I can get a federal bailout and have the feds regulate and harass my competition out of business, all in the name of some nebulous public good!”
Fake but accurate: When traditional "journalists" are sure something's true but have no evidence, it's time to go to Kinko's! Image from michellemalkin.com.
Whenever a high-profile blogger gets it wrong, jumps the gun or takes something out of context, the traditional media launches into “I-told-you-so” mode, most recently and notably with the Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod fiasco. However, when one of their own does it, there’s nothing to see (Rathergate).
The traditional media would like nothing better than to consolidate their power in such a way that everyone but the traditional media is held accountable for their actions. I think they call it “accountability journalism,” or what I like to call “baby talk.”
This begs the question: who fact-checks the fact-checkers? Who holds those who wield the sword of accountability accountable? What the traditional media desire is a monopoly on accountability, which is convenient for a demonstrably biased group advancing specific political and ideological agendas. As “gatekeepers” they will ensure the unwashed masses stay outside the gates. Safely inside the gates, the gatekeepers can do whatever the hell they want. Who needs transparency when the gatekeepers are so ethically and morally pure?
Was Breitbart held accountable for posting an out-of-context video? Certainly. Now that the entire video is out and people can see it for themselves they can make their own judgment about it without a monopolistic “accountability” filter designed to tell them what to think.
Fake but accurate: Filmed from multiple angles with hundreds of cell phone cameras recording at the same moment, not one person has come forth with evidence that Tea Partiers screamed racial epithets at black Congressmen who purposely walked the gauntlet to incite the racism that supposedly infuses the Tea Party movement. The accusation may be fake, but the traditional media decided it was accurate so there was no need to verify the veracity of the claims. Now that's accountability journalism!
By the same token, when the media reported with absolute certainty that the N-word was hurled more than a dozen times at black legislators purposely running the Tea Party gauntlet on Capitol Hill, the blogosphere cast serious doubt on this assertion. The traditional media’s reaction? Ignore the evidence and mindlessly repeat a lie since it fits their worldview and narrative.
The traditional media believes the Tea Party is racist, primarily because the Tea Party opposes the first black president’s agenda. In the traditional media narrative, opposition to Obama equals racism. So if A=B is true, then naturally the stuff we make up, C, is true, even if it really didn’t happen.
Rathergate was based on the same thinking. Dan Rather and his colleagues at CBS believed that George W. Bush was a nincompoop and a shirker so they didn’t waste any time double-checking the documents sent to them by a dubious source that helped prove the point. When the documents were shown to be obvious forgeries, Rather and the traditional media circled the wagons. Their final defense? Fake but accurate! I don’t know about you, but I prefer news that’s genuine and accurate.
So, while the traditional media whines and moans about the lack of accountability in the blogosphere, talk radio and Fox News, we’re actually living in a time of hyper-accountability. You can’t publish, post or air anything without someone somewhere holding you to account.
There are obvious drawbacks to this Wild West information age, such as the ease of defamation, but that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make. Information is power, and once concentrated in too few hands it is dangerous.
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