Letters to the Editor
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I submitted a question to Kurtz
Although I neglected to copy it to my clipboard before I hit submit. D'oh! I'd love to see him innundated with inquiries into this topic. See if he's shameless enough to ignore it. I've got $10 Can. that says he is!!!1!
I, too, wonder how they justify it to themselves in a way that preserves their dignity. Really I can't imagine.
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Chuck Todd
"I don't necessarily blame Todd -- he might have been describing rather than defending the media's favorable treatment of McCain -- but the point is the same."
I'm not defending Todd, but I think it important to make this point clear. Todd is billed as MSNBC's "political director", and is essentially brought on to analyze the story itself and the metaverse of media. The fact that he isn't very critical of the media is certainly something you can peg him on; he actually, as Glenn rightly pointed out, disseminates active media disinformation by his lack of criticism. But he is not a journalist, and I think that's an important point, and his analysis was correct if uncritical. McCain does have enough bullshit in the bank with journalists to get away with this kind of thing.
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"Can the Democratic candidates really argue that they know more about foreign policy?"
Are the hacks liek Kurtz in the MSM qualified to make that judgement? Do they even understand what it is? I read Helena Cobban's Just World News. She seems to get it and usually scoops them by a few weeks to a few years.
http://justworldnews.org/
http://helenacobban.org/home.html
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ondolette -
you are funny!
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Publican
That is a great point.
If Hillary claimed an incorrect number of uninsured Americans as cause for UHC and was corrected by Bill Clinton on stage, would she get a pass for her long expertise and experience in health care policy?
Would Obama get a pass if he misquoted a statistic on black poverty?
Did John Kerry get any passes at all for his foreign policy expertise? Did he even get a mother fucking pass for his botched joke considering the fact he was a soldier himself and would hardly be the type to mock them?
No one on the left gets any passes for slips made in their acknowledged areas of expertise. It is remarkable.
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Sri Lanka expanded diplomatic relations with Israel
Those traitorous fucks. How dare they object to more than 5000 suicide bombings.
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Just William Timberman's tough luck....
Poor W.T. is stranded in the Arizona desserts with his bicycle and a flat tire.
A big moose with cuff links stops to bite William Timberman's bare ankles.
The house that W.T. lives in is filled with musty books, filled ashtrays, and funky butt-clothes.
He'll be lucky to find the piece of Easter bunny peach pie. Next Easter he'll clean up too late.
William Timberman will shout Yahoo! Then, if he's lucky he'll find this years stale peach pie.
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The Real Issue
What is missing from the media's display of hero worship is the respect for the American public one should expect from news organizations.
That "bank" that McCain is drawing on belongs to the reporters, not the public. When they decide to cash that check against the public's account they are robbing us all. Robbing us of the right to decide if McCain's "senior moment" is a repeated lapse of focus or the portents of senility.
When they downplay their theft they are belittling our judgement. They must decide for us who is worthy of trust on these issues.
And they obviously feel justified in doing so, because they don't even bother to lie about it.
The real issue is not McCain's obvious attempts to prepare us for another "pre-emptive war" (we used to call those "unprovoked attacks).
The real issue is the media's attempts to choose our next president for us by tailoring the news.
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That?
But how do you propose to explain the hood, the whip, and the optional ball gag?
Oh, that! The Easter Bunny left those here.
That'll be enough of that, WT.
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Red Snapper
I emailed Kurtz too.
Paraphrasing, I reminded him Obama was right about Iraq and being "right" should confer "credibility" as applied knowledge should count more than theoretical expertise.
I was polite but pointed and tried to convey that people like him are analyzing everything through this lens that says Republicans are Serious, Democrats are not. They never question the foundation of the lens itself.
Of course, this assumes for a second that Kurtz is honestly misguided but his record suggests he is more sinister than misinformed. But if he's disingenuous there's no real way to reach him anyway so there's no point flinging that at him.
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There would be only two choices for the media if McCain's statements had been made by Senators Clinton or Obama:
Either the Senators would have been characterized as misspeaking out of ignorance of foriegn affairs thus highlighting their inexperience and lack of credentials, or another instance of the Senators "misspeaking" would be used to establish a pattern of deceit thereby reflecting a serious character issue. Either would be Exhibit A in the nonstop MSM Fitness for Office trial that would ensue.
As to the second: Perhaps, if Senators Obama or Clinton had, say, visited a Baghdad market a year ago for a photo-op and touted it as a casual stroll - almost like being in Indiana - and proclaimed:
"Never have I been able to drive from the airport, never have I been able to go out into the city like I did today. The American people are not getting the picture of all that is happening here."
And then immediately it had come out that they had been guarded by 100 U.S. soldiers and 20 humvees and that the market had been cleared and snipers set up on the surrounding rooftops and that three Black Hawk helicopters and two Apache gunships hovered over head to guard them.
And then all the major newspapers had various quotes from angry Iraqi citizens calling the visit propoganda, followed by a severe denunciation on a cable news show by an extremely credible and brave journalist who's been on the ground in Iraq since the beginning of the war and wonders what part of "neverland" they are refering to.
Well that would be just the kind of pattern our mainstream media couldn't possibly gloss over, as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would sure enough find out. I mean those are the kind of patterns of outright deceit that "objectivity" precludes journalists from ignoring, right?