media

While Sarah Palin hides from and John McCain whines about the press -- which is really a way to show how "tough" you are -- Barack Obama walks in and sits down with anti-progressive Bill O'Reilly, who hardly could be considered a friendly personality.

Barack Obama has been in debates, town halls, interviews, small group meetings for 18 months now. You can't accuse him of hiding.

Come out of your shell, Sarah Palin! Let us see past the PR! What are you afraid of?

This does not surprise me at all.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.

You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.

During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

And yet the media have been wringing their hands over John McCain's whining about all the attention Barack Obama is getting.

Yes, John McCain's friend and campaign advisor Phil Gramm was right: This is a "nation of whiners" -- except the whiners are the McCain campaign and their supporters.

When John McCain draws 200,000 (voluntary) listeners -- that's three football stadiums' worth of people -- I would expect him to get some camera time.

But I would also like to see the news media wake up to how they've been giving John McCain a free pass on a number of issues. Where is the critical view of McCain's qualifications? Does flying in a plane and getting shot down really qualify him to be President? Or even give him the advantage on strategic foreign policy? When McCain claims "I know how to win wars," on what basis?

Instead, they keep giving him uncritical time while he slings some of the wildest charges, including the claim that Barack Obama is a traitor who would deliberately lose a war for political gain.

I guess it's to be expected, considering that -- as Sam Donaldson says -- journalists aren't interested in the truth.

[T]he reason political reporters are there is not to speak truth to power. Today's truth is tomorrow's falsity. But to make those who say we have the truth-- the politicians--explain it.

That isn't journalism, it's stenography. No wonder we ended up in Iraq. The media didn't have to check facts, they just had to make sure the microphone was on.

Have an opinion? So does everybody. In America, we take having an opinion a fact and expressing that opinion a right.

Except John McCain.

Now we’ve got the cables. We’ve got talk radio. We’ve got the bloggers. I hate the bloggers. We’ve got all kinds of sources of information.

And apparently he doesn't like it when us little people -- you know, those of us who haven't been entrenched in Washington D.C. power for decades, those of us who aren't married to multi-millionaires, those of us who dare question John McCain's qualifications -- speak out.

Okay, I exaggerated. John McCain hates only 26% of Americans.

Okay, maybe McCain misspoke again. How many passes does he need? Because as we've seen, the mainstream media just love to give John McCain passes. Witness how they hyperventilated in defending McCain against any question that McCain's Vietnam experience "flying in a plane" does not in itself qualify him to be president. (Note that the phrase was made by CBSs sputtering Bob Schieffer when challenging Wesley Clark.) McCain loves the press for loving him.

Bloggers are less likely to give John McCain, or any presidential candidate, a free pass. Maybe that's why McCain hates us so much?

Since the bedwetting conservatives are getting so stimulated by stirring up nonsense like "Barack Obama is a Muslim" and a "terrorist"....

http://www.moremuslimthanobama.com/moremuslimthanobama/

Too funnny!

Angry sentiments like Caryl Rivers' may be understandable, in a sense....

Does anyone wonder why women who support Hillary Clinton for president get (excuse the vernacular) PO'd at some of our fellow Democrats?

It's because very time we turn around, someone is dissing our candidate in ways that infuriate us. He (or she) is using sexist, insulting language about the first woman to mount a viable run for the presidency, in ways that, to say the least, we do not appreciate.

While many of us see Barack Obama as an exciting, able and worthy candidate, and will gladly vote for him if he is the nominee, we do not see the same respect given to Hillary Clinton.

But Hillary Clinton's problem is Hillary Clinton -- or, I should say, the absence of a sense of who Hillary Clinton really is.

When I didn't know much about her, back in 1996, I was something of a Hillary fan. I was looking for a button or bumper sticker that said, "12 more years! Bill in '96, Hillary in '00".

When Hillary ran for Senate, I was a supporter. I would have voted for her, had I still been living in New York.

But then something changed. I saw her numerous times on CSPAN, speaking here and there, and at least 90% of the time I was left cold, feeling like I wasn't getting a real sense of what she really believed. She started to project that focus-group-tested persona that hid all but the carefully constructed image.

And then there was the war, and how she claimed to "take responsibility for her vote" for the war -- without really taking responsibility at all, beyond just claiming she took responsibility. No apology. No remorse. Just self-righteousness.

And then all the strange votes and political positions she took, such as banning flag "desecration" and giving $10k to forced-pregnancy advocate Casey's campaign and on and on.

Even so, when she finally announced her run, I was hopeful. Her online announcement was, well, okay. At least she seemed like she was trying to be authentic. But she obviously did not "get" the netroots. Her top-down campaign of a few big donors and cultivating of lobbyist money was disconcerting.

Then she failed to clinch it all by Super Tuesday. Then we started to see many different Hillary Clintons. There was the A-student-who-has-all-the-answers Hillary Clinton. Then there was the teary-cares-so-much Hillary Clinton. Then there was the scolding Barack-has-to-answer-for-his-behavior Hillary Clinton. Then there was the I'm-honored-to-be-here-with-you-Barack Hillary Clinton. Then there was the Barack-cannot-be-trusted-to-be-ready Hillary Clinton. And then there's the Karl Rove-like rhetoric.

And now we get the "Stay the Course" Hillary Clinton.

And all this points up how Hillary Clinton is the DLC representative, and the way she's campaigning seems to be more about her control over the Party rather than gaining the nomination.

Is Hillary the victim of mean media coverage? Certainly in some ways. But even more, Hillary is the victim of Hillary. She has been her own undoing.