How Much

Do you think the media is getting paid to push Obama on us? I think Tony Blankley wondered the same thing in his article, "Media Campaigns Hard for Obama." He states:

While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)

And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.

While I take exception to his claim of the "media as liberal and blinkered in its worldview for decades," a claim not borne out when Bush was running against Gore or Kerry, I do agree with his assessment that the media has been woefully inadequate in vetting Obama.

Blankley asserts:

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign. Thus, the public image of Obama is of a "man who never was."

I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real-life World War II British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Sicily in 1943. Operation Mincemeat involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as "Major William Martin, R.M.," which was put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a briefcase containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.

To make the operation credible, British intelligence concocted a fictional life for the corpse, creating a letter from a lover and tickets to a London theater -- all the details of a life, but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media have presented to the nation as Obama is not the real man.

Well, those of us who are still thinking human beings know that to be true. We have been presented a hopey-changey-unicorn riding man who has nefarious associates who must never be mentioned or investigated by the media; who has a dearth of experience and legislative accomplishments; who seems hell-bent on acquiring power for power alone, beginning with his time in the IL State Senate (Obama's Lost Years, "Obama And Me"); a man who has flipped and flopped so many times he should have been on the US Men's Gymnastics team; who has lied, and lied, and lied about his family, his upbringing, his career, and his opponents; and who has demonstrated an arrogance and sexism not usually on display by public officials, especially one who wants to be president. Yes, WE know who the real man is, and it is NOT the one the media has been hell-bent to promote.

Blankley continues:

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.

More appalling, a skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last weekend suggested that Gov. Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That show was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Talk about incest.

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

He noticed! Just like we non-Kool-Aide drinkers! Yes, we know FAR more about Governor Sarah Palin in a very short time than we have learned about Obama. And about those universities Obama attended - transcripts, please!!!

And here is an issue we have discussed a good bit.

It is about damn time someone else picked this up: But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.

Besides some outstanding work at No Quarter (Larry Johnson, LisaB, DrKate, Steve Diamond, and SusanUNPC, among others), Stanley Kurtz has been one of the very few journalists looking into the Ayers/Obama connection. He was a guest of Greta Van Susteren's last night, and was also on with Bill O'Reilly recently. Here is the LINK.

I have heard so many Obamabots, including members of my own family, tout Obama's line that Obama was only 8 when Ayers bombed those buildings. As if that is the only issue. Exceedingly narrow bits of truth can only take one so far, yet that is to what they are clinging. His relationship is much more expansive than he, or the MSM, would like us to know. Same with much of his time in the realm of Chicago-style politics:

Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great -- and unflattering -- details on Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.

The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."
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That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain's image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.

The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.

Well, he's got it right, IMHO, but for many people, the MSM is the only option they have. That is not a comforting thought. Especially when you have people like George Will trying to frame McCain's persona in a negative light. In his recent article, "McCain Loses His Head," he states:

It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

I'm sorry, George - you are going to attack McCain on temperament?? You mean, like THIS?



Yeah, okay. Thanks, George, for proving Blankley's point. I have seen more and more recently about McCain's temper, something I have not seen from him, but I have seen it PLENTY from Obama. Go back and look at the last debate he deigned to have with Senator Clinton, or anytime he was actually questioned about his policies and associates. He does not like for ANYONE to challenge or question him. Ah, just what we want in a world leader - a thin-skinned, arrogant, inexperienced, shallow man who got where he is today by getting any real challengers removed from his path. Perfect. Thanks, MSM!!! It is only our nation's health at stake, but keep it up and you'll get your wish fulfilled - another president on a par with George W. Bush. I can hardly wait...