Posted on 10/06/2012 7:12:49 PM PDT by jfd1776
Nobody’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.
Even when those mistakes are conscious, there is always a chance to reverse them, if one catches oneself in time.
Take the wrong route; don’t be afraid to do a U-turn and correct the error. Wear the wrong necktie, dress right the next time to correct the impression. Make the wrong choice; don’t be afraid to make the right one next time.
The American news media, known collectively as “the MainStream Media” or MSM for decades now, has made a collective choice: most have been part and parcel of the Democratic Party, either admittedly or not, for generations.
They have acted as a cheering section for Democrat presidents and partisans, not only when it was contrary to their nation’s interest, but even when it was contrary to their own self-interest. Television ratings, newspaper circulation, and radio ad sales have long proven that blatant left-wing bias is the path to ruin of all but the niche outlets, but that hasn’t stopped them. They remain leftist; perhaps their consistency, at least, can be considered admirable.
But there have been moments when the leftist MSM, and even the Democratic Party itself, have stood up and acknowledged an error. It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while, lightning strikes.
When Lyndon Baines Johnson’s horrendous administration was costing the nation in every way – the streets becoming more dangerous, businesses fleeing the taxes and regulations of his growing welfare state, our soldiers ever more endangered in southeast Asia… the MSM and the Democratic Party leadership finally turned on him and forced him to withdraw from the 1968 reelection race. They had covered up for him for years, but by the winter of 1967-68, they had seen too much, and almost as a single body, they allowed daylight to shine on his administration, and the primaries were on.
Similarly, in 1979-80, the disaster of the Jimmy Carter presidency was there for all to see. Softball questions in the media, the most favorable spin imaginable for poor appointments, disastrous foreign policy judgment, and economic and societal “malaise” became shameful for a mass media that had simply reached the limit. Again, they stayed Democrat, but they had to show their independence from the mighty donkey, and did so by supporting a primary challenge. Again, that challenge was from the left – Senator Edward “Teddy” Kennedy, the midnight swimmer and noted socialist and deviant.
As was Hubert Humphrey in 1968, he too was the wrong choice, and this one failed in the primaries… but at least the vigorous 1980 challenge proved for the history books that the American left had some principles beyond just winning elections, that the American left was not prey for any cult of personality, willing to support the Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev or Brezhnev of the day like Pravda and Izvestia had to do an ocean away. They stood up, proudly, to oppose corruption or incompetence in 1968 and 1980. Never mind that they had enabled that corruption and incompetence, that combination of anti-American mismanagement and destructive policy for so long.
At least they confessed in the end that their hero wasn’t perfect, and supported some kind of fair contest for the leadership of their party. They could look back on their careers and say “remember how we did the right thing in spring, 1968? Remember how we fairly covered the Kennedy challenge in the winter of 1979-80 and at least gave it a chance? Oh, those were the days. We were brave, weren’t we?”
THEIR MOMENT OF SHAME:
When the historians write about the Obama years, many questions will be asked. The obvious ones, of course: How did a community organizer, a freshman senator with no accomplishments in his life, win the presidency? Why did the press cover for him after scandals like “Fast and Furious” and the Bengazi killings? Why did they allow his administration to change the way they count job losses, and even stranger, job creation? How on earth wasn’t the concept of “jobs saved or created,” as a way to gauge failed campaign promises, laughed out of the room the second it was first run up the flagpole?
Oh yes, the press has a great deal to answer for.
But most striking was the primary season in 2012. The historians will ask for a hundred years, why on earth wasn’t there a primary challenge? How on earth could the Democratic Party have let him coast to reelection unchallenged, when the Democratic Party rank-and-file was so broadly dispirited by his presidency?
The historians will count the numbers of federal, state and local Democrat politicians who found something else to do in September, so they wouldn’t have to attend the Democratic National Convention. Candidates for state and federal office avoiding joint appearances so they couldn’t be photographed alongside the party’s millstone; sharing the ticket with him would be bad enough, they didn’t want to be captured on film with him as well. And the vote dropoff in the primaries was stark, as downticket legislators would ring up more votes than the unchallenged incumbent president at the top of the primary ballot. Surely a real challenge would have done very well indeed. Why was there none?
Such numbers have been largely left out of the mainstream media coverage of the 2012 election thus far; they will not be left out of the history books. Not when the state of West Virginia saw a federal prisoner, Keith Judd, serving seventeen years for extortion, rack up 42% against Barack Obama in the presidential primary. When given an alternative to President Obama, nearly half the Democratic Party primary voters of West Virginia preferred an incarcerated criminal to the incumbent bearer of the party’s banner. This single snapshot indicates a level of ongoing disgust far beyond anything the media have been willing to admit. They’ve tried to keep it under wraps, hoping to enable their party champion to limp through one more election in time before it all explodes. Why???
IT'S NOT TOO LATE.
Still, it is never too late. The calendar allows the media one last chance for redemption. Just as Orthodox Christianity believes that a final perfect confession before the end can wipe the slate relatively clean, the calendar has a moment, the beginning of the debate season, when the press can start from scratch.
After the first presidential debate, the press starts issuing their editorials. They start covering the race in more detail than they had before, even since the conventions. They can pretend to begin anew, and can wear a straight face as they say “this is or isn’t the same person we’ve been covering before; it’s a whole new ballgame now.”
The press has known Mitt Romney for many years. He saved many companies in trouble, and he led the teams that built many other great firms from scratch. He turned around the Salt Lake City Olympics and did wonders as governor of Massachusetts. He’s the perfect nominee for a tough turnaround job, exactly what America needs today.
But the American people don’t really know him, so the press can pretend that they too are learning for the first time, after the first 2012 presidential debate, that Mitt Romney is indeed the right man for the job.
They don’t have to admit to making a mistake in 2008 by supporting the incumbent; they don’t have to say that they were snookered alongside the half of the voting public that were snookered too (with their help). The press is really luckier than the Catholic in the confessional; the press doesn’t have to admit error in the past so much as change their direction for the future.
The veil was dropped on Wednesday, October 3, 2012, A.D., and everything changed. Without the press to snip only the best soundbites to share with their readers, listeners, and viewers… without the softball questions of liberal reporters in the tank for the Democratic Party… directly confronted by the talented and brilliant Mitt Romney, the harsh lights of a stage and the cameras beaming their answers to over 70 million viewers… the world was finally able to fairly compare Barack Obama with a real executive, a real CEO who knows how to hire honest and talented appointees, who knows how to make good decisions, who knows how to prioritize, who knows how to keep his eye on the ball, who knows how to deliver.
By the end of the debate, Barack Obama looked like he was wishing he were back home in Indonesia, where at least he could have been eating dog instead of crow.
Within minutes, the response to the debate was overwhelmingly one-sided, with virtually none of the spin one sees after a draw or near-draw, claiming an underserved win “for their guy”. Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher, even the most partisan, most outrageous of the left-wing talking heads, all were agreeing that Obama’s performance was an embarrassment. The fact of Obama’s failure at the debate was so universally agreed-upon that we were waiting for Obama himself to tweet it.
The advice from the left – yes, from his own side! – started coming in the next morning. For the next debate, don’t smirk… for the next debate, don’t condescend… for the next debate, don’t mope, don’t look at your feet, don’t stammer… oh heck, just don’t go.
A CHANCE FOR REDEMPTION?
This fair coverage - at last - is a welcome and unexpected moment. Perhaps the final weeks of the campaign can be covered fairly, and the MSM can make up for some of their past failures, if only they do the right thing now.
It’s time for the press to do a 180 on the Obama moment. They can blame themselves, or others, they can blame his party or his spinmeisters, they can blame the city of Chicago or the unstoppable winds of history. It doesn’t matter who or what they blame, as long as they do.
As they write their editorials, they can say that the Democratic Party should have run someone else in this difficult year, and evade blame themselves, even as Democrat politicians can cast the blame back on the media. It doesn’t matter how they explain it, if at all.
But to save the country, and to save their consciences… perhaps even to save the Democratic Party… they must come around and acknowledge that Mitt Romney is the only logical choice for president in 2012.
They don’t have to convert to the Republican Party. They don’t have to become conservative. They don’t have to renounce any of the principles they currently hold, wise or foolish though those principles may be. They just need to wake up and acknowledge, in their coverage and in their editorials, that Barack Obama is out of his depth, that he’s the wrong man for the job in 2012, and that all the American people – conservative, liberal, and moderate – native-born and immigrants alike – young and old, rich and poor – need the country put aright again. And the man to do that is Mitt Romney, not Barack Obama.
The coverage has to change, and this is the MSM’s chance. Will they do it? Or will they continue stubbornly to charge off the cliffs like lemmings, as they have so often done in the past, pulling wagons behind them containing our nation’s very future?
There isn’t much time – for the Democrats, for the press, for any of us.
What will they do for the historians of the future? Will they give the chapter a happy ending – that the press and the Democrats saw the contest clearly before the end - much like Darth Vader's final scene in "The Empire Strikes Back," come to think of it - and patriotically choose country over party, supporting the right man by acclamation?
Or will they stay true to type, leaving the history books to be written like the Greek tragedies, a constant progression toward disaster that the audience sees coming, but which the obstinacy or foolishness of the actors onstage renders an immovable course?
We will watch, wonder, and worry, as we wait for the editorials and the final month of news stories… ever pitying any nation that outsources its political information to a hyperpartisan and self-blinding elite.
Copyright 2012 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based Customs broker and trade compliance trainer. A former chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has now been a recovering politician since 1997. His columns regularly appear in Illinois Review.
Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, and follow on Twitter at @johnfdileo.
I address it in my Illinois Review column this week, here, if you're interested:
I think the “lame-stream” media is long past redemption at this point. The fact that Obama got elected in the first place due in no small part to their help forever cost them whatever modicum of the public’s trust they may have had prior.
It is too late. The establishment media is the enemy. It should be destroyed. On social media sites (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.), always downvote a page from an establishment media source, regardless of the topic or content.
Corrupt groups tend not to be self-correcting. It usually takes burnt-to-the-ground elimination for true correction to occur.
Having said that, I do not suggest taking action to do that. God is able on his own to get that done in his time, in his way.
Nope...sorry.
It IS too late. They are whores and traitors and nothing can make up for the misery they have inflicted on the regular Joe in this country.
They are enemies. They are ignorant. They are arrogant.
They must be defeated.
I’m afraid this is unrealistic. The left turned against LBJ and threw him in the trash purely because he was blamed for continuing the Vietnamese War. By that time the left’s strongest desire was to cut and run, which LBJ refused to do, fast enough to suit them.
And the left turned against Jimmy Carter not because he was a leftist, but because he proved to be incompetent at achieving leftist goals. As you point out, they abandoned him for someone even further to the left.
The Journolist scandal after the Rathergate scandal after the CNN-SaddamHussein scandal should have forever put the contemporary business model in the grave.
And they have the nerve to continue mocking and denying those who point out their bias.
I saw something much different back then. The MSM employees finally yielded to the "anti-war", pro-Ho demonstrators and their red, blue, and yellow "protest banners" (Viet Cong flags actually but the MSM employees dared not mention the connection.)
The 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus radical, psycho spoiled brats were celebrated in the establishment MSM as the most intelligent generation ever!. (They are now arguably that very establishment that praised them and they hold themselves and their ideological issue in even higher regard.)
These 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus radical, spoiled brats and their underground press (Berkely Barb, East Village Other, Ramparts, and more) had been after LBJ for years. They had virtually taken over the Democratic Party by 1968.. the take over was finalized in the 1970s.
By 1968 these radicals owned the MSM; to wit, Walter "North Viet Nam's most trusted man in America" Cronkite finally admitted his ideological preference and came out foursquare with the "anti-war", pro-Communist, one-world government radicals.
“If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.” LBJ
Opposing LBJ had nothing to do with the streets rioting (the MSM backed protesting the war and "racism"), businesses taxes and regulations and the growing welfare state (the MSM favored both); the only concern the hijacked Party and the MSM had about our soldiers in southeast Asia was how soon can we get them out of there and let the Communist win.
The worldwide MSM and entertainment world have been pro-leftist FROM DAY ONE, and there’s no actual end in sight, as they continue to get worse and worse! The MSM, and the rest of the left, will do all that they can do to “trip up” Mitt Romney, all they way to general election day, and they will do all that they can do to make Mitt Romney look very bad, during the next debates.
Any “fair Coverage” by the MSM of the debate aftermath was not their first choice. However, due to the fact that there were millions of witnesses to the stomping that was visited upon ‘The One’, the MSM knew that to try to portray it as something less would be to totally expose themselves as the democrat propaganda machine that they are. Therefore, I give them no credit. Any microscopic shred of credibility they had with me has evaporated over the last 4 years. Perhaps when 1960’s leftists are no longer running the journalism schools and their pupils either wise up or retire, the MSM will start to regain some credibility. Until then, NO SALE!
A Freeper on another thread mentioned that when the nation collapses as a result of Leftist policy failures that were perpetuated by the bias in the Media, that we should go after them and bring them before the American people for their betrayal.
After all, Liberals would have never had the positions of power they’ve enjoyed over the last 50 year’s had it not been for the blatant dishonesty and corruption in the media.
In a representative republic, we the people vote on our representatives based on what information we can gather from the media. The people can’t make informed and responsible choices if the truth is kept from us.
The media basically enjoys unlimited constitutional protections based on the notion that they are the responsible for keeping the people accurately informed and they have failed in that responsibility. For that they should be held accountable.
No mercy for traitors.
None.
Few people living today in this nation will live long enough to see, let alone reap the benefits of what will be required to undo/fix the heap of a mess liberals have built. Their 'redemption' will need be earned when they individually or collectively meet the Maker!!!
The Most Interesting President in the World.
I do not often speak the truth, but when I do, I prefer to lie. Stay stupid my friends.
He can lower the unemployment rate without creating a job.
He can brag about non existing accomplishments over the last
2-1/2 years, while being in office for four.
He can move his lips while reading a teleprompter and nobody
cares.
He can envision the day when the country runs solely on the
gas he expels in his sleep.
He can double gas prices, while claiming increased drilling.
He speaks with numerous accents, while speaking the same
language.
He can bow to foreign leaders, but remain pompous at home.
When he loses a debate, the press makes his excuses.
He can provide security to his White House advisors, yet
leave embassies vulnerable.
He can party in Vegas, but tells others not to go.
He plays golf constantly, in spite of his swing.
He is so cool, global warming has ceased.
An ounce of his sweat sells on MSNBC as cologne.
With just his attitude, he can stop world terrorism.
Even his dog is on food stamps.
Hugo Chavez has him listed as his emergency contact.
His organ donor card lists his teleprompter.
He disrespects Israel, but yet expects the Jewish vote.
He can regulate dust, while talking dirty.
Ahmadinejad finds sanction in his policies.
He gives his Secret Service agents a sense of insecurity.
When he plays chess against himself, he rarely loses.
He can say “the fact of the matter” with a straight face.
His driver’s license picture was taken in Hollywood.
He believes Air Force “One” was named after him.
When dealt a bad hand he whines like a baby, yet has the job
of a man.
He can lower expectations just by entering a room.
For he is: “The Most Interesting President in the World”
The MSM will try to undercut Romney in the next debate. We need to start putting them on notice that we will be watching REAL CLOSE and publicizing and criticizing every tactic they try.
Didn’t waste my time reading whole article on this one. I’m too young to remember the MSM during Vietnam, but seeing them cheer the terrorists for so many years during Iraq conviced me they have no mercy or charity in their heart, only Satanic hatred for America. They and their cohorts are my enemy every bit as much as al-Queda itself.
oops, make that al-Qaeda
oops, make that al-Qaeda
(but don't hold your breath )-:
The MSM will continue to be in the tank for the Democrats until they just wither away from the lack of an audience. What I fear if Obama is re-elected is that by regulatory fiat from the FCC and DHS, talk radio, Fox News and Internet blogs will be muzzled leaving the MSM in command of all the news again. I hope talk radio and Fox have plans to move overseas and continue to broadcast by shortwave and satellite from beyond the Obama curtain.
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