Posted on 11/09/2008 5:51:05 AM PST by NCjim
To answer the question of my headline, no CBS isn't joking. CBS is actually pretending that the Old Media must be "won over" by a President Obama. It makes one wonder just how much more the press can be in love with The One? As multiple studies have shown, the Old Media has been far more in Obama’s corner than not yet now CBS wants to pretend they are skeptical of Obama? Now CBS wants to act as if they will be tough on him unless he appeases them? I know I said CBS was serious with this report, but it still seems like a joke of epic proportions.
Just catch this absurd CBS headline and subhead: How Obama Can Win Over The Media - MarketWatch Media Columnist Explains What Obama Must Do To Become America's "Communicator-In-Chief" [1]... I know, I know. When you've stopped laughing, you can continue on.
The very beginning of this farce is blind for its inability at introspection. CBS writer Jon Friedman starts his story at what he calls "an election-night party thrown by Time Warner." But it was not a mere party it was an Obama celebration. At the party, Friedman asks the managing editor of Time magazine what advice he has for Obama and editor Rick Stengel seriously says that Obama must have "a new era of transparency."
Obviously Stengel, Friedman, CBS and the bulk of the Old Media establishment didn't care a whit about "transparency," at least if Obama's campaign itself is any example. For instance, few of them cared much about the lack of transparency in Obama's donor base. Millions of dollars were likely donated to Obama's campaign illegally yet not a word was ever uttered by the largest number of Old Media establishments. The Old Media obviously wasn't interested in the transparency of Obama's past. The media didn't care much about looking into Rev. Wright until the Internet beat the bushes for the story and never did say a word about his communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. The media didn't bother to look into the "missing years" during Obama's college years, they didn't explore his ACORN connections and were disinterested in his votes to safeguard infanticide. All these things came out on the Internet and the New Media long before any slight interest in them was shown by the Old Media.
This is in marked contrast with how the media attempted to destroy -- and is still out to destroy -- Governor Sarah Palin. Whereas the media had nothing to say about Obama's past, it was salivating to look into Palin's. It went so far as to demand the medical records of her baby, for Heaven's sake!
Yet, now Time's Stengel wants to act all self-important as if Obama needs to be "transparent" in office to win him over? And if he doesn't, what then? Is the Old Media suddenly going to fall out of love? That would be hard to believe.
After this bit of clueless pontificating, CBS writer Stengel really unleashed a funny. Friedman claims he once met Obama at an October dinner party thrown by a magazine conference in Phoenix.
Obama clearly enjoyed meeting people and making small talk. But I thought I got a glimpse of a slightly churlish Obama, too, when I asked him, rather bluntly, if he was worried about peaking in popularity with the media any time soon.
He cocked his head and took in my question, looking displeased at being buttonholed in such a friendly setting.
"No," he declared, throwing cold water on my theory. He then explained that he was confident he could continue to do well.
And here is just one more example of how the media has covered for Barack Obama. Friedman uses "churlish" when for any other politician he'd have used the word "arrogant."
Friedman goes on to complain that Obama was "guarded" on the campaign trail and advises the new president to "lighten up a bit." Here one can't help but ask why the press has made so little of this fact? Any other candidate that haughtily kept the press at such arms length would have been distrusted, even obliterated, by that same press. But, not Obama. For him they looked the other way.
I go back to the back-of-the-plane stories where several media types were a bit put off by the fact that Obama never bothered himself much to walk into the area on his campaign plane where the media sat salivating for just a glimpse of their messiah. He rarely walked among them to lay on hands and when he did he was not personable or glib, but standoffish and full of simple campaign trail boilerplate. Several media types have reported that even after being on the trail with the candidate of "change" for a year or more they never did get to see him in a loose, unguarded moment. A few reporters have offhandedly noted that they just didn't know him after all this time but shrugged it off as a simple curiosity.
The result is that they've allowed Obama to get away with this arrogant and distant behavior. This snobbish man has been treated with awe instead of being treated with a journalist’s skeptical eye by nearly every journalist that covered him. The media would have allowed no one else but The One to get away with this sort of behavior without sharp rebuke.
The press has spent 8 years eviscerating George W. Bush for his lack of media glad-handing. The media similarly spent a month attacking Governor Sarah Palin for ignoring them on the campaign trail. Yet few in the press said a word about Obama's refusal to give them much for four years and for the last month of the campaign studiously ignored the fact that Joe Biden suddenly disappeared from public view.
And now Jon Friedman and CBS want to pretend that the Old Media must be "won over" by a President Obama? He's been leading them around like puppies for years, why would he expect they'd now all of a sudden want to hold him accountable for anything?
Far from issuing serious journalism, I think Jon Friedman is auditioning to get a spot on a sitcom writing staff with this one.
In keeping with the recent Washinton Post article, admitting the paper had an Obama bias during the election, the MSM is showing its contempt and disdain for the intelligence of the public by assuming no one noticed its criminal complicity in the election of the Messiah. A wholesale attempt to repurchase lost credibility.
I am boycotting it because I don’t want to see or hear the Messiah. Even Fox news.
hmm
Their mentality is monolithic, they will not tolerate any dissent. Brace yourselves folks, this really could get nasty.
well put
Fox is dead to me... I never watch the others... Internet, FR, Rush, Sean, Schnitt, Ingraham and Levin... all others are suspect liars.
LLS
The MSM has sold its heart, soul and credibility for Obama, and the problem it now has is convincing the public that anything it says about Obama for the next four years can be believed. The media must continue to sell Obama or admit it was wrong (the Washington Post is already trying to back pedal out of its commitment to ‘All Obama, All the Time’). One might wonder how incompetent or corrupt Obama would have to be to draw criticism from the MSM? Or will the so-called ‘news’ get more and more grotesque and convoluted to protect the media’s wholesale defection from journalism to propaganda? And how bad will it have to get before the public unplugs entirely from print and electronic media?
Absurd! The MSM has been in the tank all along and is continuing it’s mindless, fawning adulation - I just can’t watch anymore, not even Foxnews which has sorely disappointed.
No, they will not. They do not care about objectivity or honest reporting. Their sole mission is to elect a liberal to every post available, not to convey actual news.
The last election didn't do much to dispel this idea.
CBS wants the Fairness Doctrine NOW. The Obamanation can prove himself to CBS by getting it enacted posthaste.
you are correct, Obama has insulted Nancy Reagan and already created a little bit of an international incident with Poland. Haven’t read about it in any paper. Mean while false stories and accusations about Palin abound!!! There was a run on knee pads resulting in a shortage with the reporters waiting in line to smoke Obama’s pole so not all of them are considered to be won over....
We got it in spades up here in Canada. One august and "a name you can trust" was reported to be saying "Good news" as a state was declared for President-elect Obama. Canadian woman info babes were very jaunty. One gleefully noted Governor Palin under duress and the special crew that went up on behalf of those who claimed monetary overspending. Taxpayers dollars at work. I wonder what these worthies would say if Americans covered a Canadian election and told THEM to anoint Stephen Harper?
Of course in baseball terms, a man is coming up to bat. He will face some pretty hard pitchers. No bean balls here. He will have his chance and that is right and proper.
What a meaty target all of us have. Americans and Canadians. Ah yes, the purveyors of the Jenningsonian philosophy. Or is it Dan Rather who quoth: "There are some things the public does not need to know". We are at least going to have some fun. Watching the press and their penchant for carping, their snide digs. Their absolutely unprofession verbal murder of GWB,now amost redundant What goes around, comes around.
He is forced to avoid an answer about how much he is going to raise the capital gains taxes (something he HAS to do to fund his fantasies) because when he does that, the economy goes down the shitter because anyone with any sense will pull out before it's enacted. The resulting crash will make the '29 crash look like a cake walk.
He simply can't lower taxes for 95% of the people by taxing the remaining 5%. He can't pay $40/hour to college students for 'service' work. He can't give 'rebates' with a Federal Deficit in the trillions (for long). He can't buy up all the houses that have been defaulted. In the end, he can bluster, posture, and he can blame. Substantively, he can do nothing but hasten the demise.
Excellent summation of how the One is going to kill this country. The only question left is how long will it take?
If he will pretend to let them influence him, they will fawn over him and get him on Mt. Rushmore by 2025. This is a last desperate cry for help, coupled with a whorish guarantee of historical greatness. I think both sides will be happy soon.
Today's Raleigh News & Observer has a Special Obama Edition including a poster page. I'm sure that had McCain won, they would have done the same for him. Right.
And they wonder why ad revenues and circulation continually decrease. During the week the paper is so thin that it is in danger of blowing away from the driveways where it is delivered.
This MUST be from the onion!
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