Two months ago, the former Arkansas Governor, suffering from media neglect, was musing about “accompanying Paris Hilton to jail” to get some attention.
"One of the frustrations,” he said, “is that there is more attention on Britney Spears getting out of a car without underwear than there is about who is going to be the next president."
He can stop complaining. After his surprise second-place showing in Ames yesterday, Huckabee is going to be the flavor of the month. The fellow townsman of Bill Clinton from Hope, Ark. will be the talk of MSM and bloggers.
USA Today is reporting that Huckabee spent only $58 a vote in the Iowa straw poll against Brownback’s $148 and Romney’s who-knows, possibly over $1000. The Washington Post calls his showing “a win.” The preacher-musician is on his way to becoming the Republican rock star.
Fred Thompson may want to think twice about waiting for Labor Day to announce
Showing posts with label " MSM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label " MSM. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Case for Clobbering Candidates
Talk about “media bias” has a pornographic appeal for politicians and bloggers. Revealing MSM hypocrisy is as irresistible as finding Sen. Vitter on the D.C. Madam’s phone records.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Bill Clinton's Backside: Political Issue
The “Hillary Is 44” guerilla bloggers are giving her campaign a new dimension by attacking MSM. Their weapon of choice yesterday was the former President’s derriere.
Between Obama-bashing and enthusing over Joe Wilson’s endorsement is an item: “Big Media writers prove themselves to be numbskulls on the most basic of human levels.”
The object of ire is a passage from the New York Times account of the Clintons campaigning together in New Hampshire:
“Mr. Clinton seemed to struggle with the proper posture for him at his wife’s side, alternately sitting up straight on his stool or slouching slightly, crossing his legs or crossing his ankles, keeping his hands in his pocket or putting a hand on his chin.”
A “Hillary Is 44” media critic deconstructed this sabotage of the Clinton campaign:
“Why does such drivel make it onto a writer’s pad and through the filter of any conscious editor? Answer: because that silly drivel, not the news, is actually the center of the Big Media narrative. Notice, earlier in the article we learned that Bill Clinton ‘took a seat on a stool on stage’. Have you ever tried sitting on a wooden stool on a platform in summer heat?
“Ask any person the size of Bill Clinton how it feels to sit on a wooden stool?
“Padding foam does not help. ‘Natural’ padding does not help. The only thing to do is fidget. Move from one buttock to the other, hook shoe heels to foot rests, fold arms, unfold arms, elbows on knees, hands under buttocks, move head forward, move head back...Our plush padded princes of Big Media don’t know about plain wooden stools. They do know how to disguise the drivel as news to push their narrative.”
Now that this mainstream media villainy has been exposed, on to other serious issues: Bill’s hair styling? The war in Iraq? Hillary’s pants suits?
Between Obama-bashing and enthusing over Joe Wilson’s endorsement is an item: “Big Media writers prove themselves to be numbskulls on the most basic of human levels.”
The object of ire is a passage from the New York Times account of the Clintons campaigning together in New Hampshire:
“Mr. Clinton seemed to struggle with the proper posture for him at his wife’s side, alternately sitting up straight on his stool or slouching slightly, crossing his legs or crossing his ankles, keeping his hands in his pocket or putting a hand on his chin.”
A “Hillary Is 44” media critic deconstructed this sabotage of the Clinton campaign:
“Why does such drivel make it onto a writer’s pad and through the filter of any conscious editor? Answer: because that silly drivel, not the news, is actually the center of the Big Media narrative. Notice, earlier in the article we learned that Bill Clinton ‘took a seat on a stool on stage’. Have you ever tried sitting on a wooden stool on a platform in summer heat?
“Ask any person the size of Bill Clinton how it feels to sit on a wooden stool?
“Padding foam does not help. ‘Natural’ padding does not help. The only thing to do is fidget. Move from one buttock to the other, hook shoe heels to foot rests, fold arms, unfold arms, elbows on knees, hands under buttocks, move head forward, move head back...Our plush padded princes of Big Media don’t know about plain wooden stools. They do know how to disguise the drivel as news to push their narrative.”
Now that this mainstream media villainy has been exposed, on to other serious issues: Bill’s hair styling? The war in Iraq? Hillary’s pants suits?
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