Jon Friedman is a comedian, writer, and producer living in New York City. He founded Tremendous Rabbit Productions
Posted on 11/28/2008 11:58:37 AM PST by lewisglad
I'm starting to feel a little guilty about the media's treatment of President-elect Barack Obama -- and I may not be the only one.
Chalk it up to a phenomenon I'd like to call "Obama-remorse." You know how you feel buyer's remorse after you've spent a lot of dough on some big-ticket item, only to realize that you might have made a mistake? Well, it's going to happen to the president-elect as well.
Perhaps this sort of recognition prompted Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz to do an incisive piece called "A Giddy Sense of Boosterism" on Nov. 17. As Kurtz noted, the media have tripped over themselves to celebrate and cash in on Obama's victory.
NBC News is preparing a DVD called "Yes, We Can: The Barack Obama Story." ABC and USA Today are racing to publish a book on the election. HBO is readying a documentary on the campaign, too.
As I see it, the media are having second thoughts about their performance over the past year.
First, they gave Sen. Hillary Clinton the cold shoulder and all but rolled out a red carpet for Obama during the Democratic primary season. Perhaps Amy Poehler's eerily spot-on send-up of Clinton on "Saturday Night Live" helped reduce the New York senator to a caricature, making it even easier for the reporters to consign her to a complementary role.
Once Clinton was dispatched, they lavished favorable attention on Obama, as his opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain, was forced to watch from the shadows.
Yes, I'm thrilled that he won the election, underscoring the American ideal that we live in a foreword-thinking democracy, where any man or woman can rise to the highest office in the land. And I'm proud that even Obama's staunchest foes -- particularly the man he defeated, John McCain -- seem to be willing to accept his victory and pledge to help him turn around the economy and cure the nation's other ills.
Adulation Express
But I also feel guilty because I know that the media's Adulation Express -- never to be confused with McCain's old Straight Talk Express -- is going to hit a few speed bumps before it inexorably grinds to a halt.
It's inevitable. Look at what happened to Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate.
When McCain first nominated her, she could do no wrong in the media's eyes. She was hailed for her aw-shucks demeanor, in contrast to the inveterate Beltway sharpies, and her unlikely ascent to such a big job (I suspect that Tina Fey's brilliant impersonation of Palin on "Saturday Night Live" owed as much to Palin's newness as it did to Fey's uncanny ability to look and sound like the governor of Alaska. Most SNL viewers had no frame of reference for Palin, other than her speech at the Republican National Convention, so Fey didn't have to worry about competing with a hardened image of Palin).
It's inevitable, too, that Obama will eventually have his turn under the microscope. When the media start picking apart some of his Cabinet choices or his pronouncements on the state of the economy or his declarations about Iraq, he may be surprised to find that the afterglow of his stunning victory turns sour so fast.
MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Have the media treated President-elect Barack Obama too kindly for the past year - and, if so, should that kind of treatment end now that he has won the election?
“There was NO media honeymoon for Governor Palin. None.”
I was reading the FR thread on tracking the plane picking up Gov. Palin early Fri. morning. The wife had one of the network morning shows on. Two gals were in the middle of their Obamsm when one said that McCain had chosen “some woman from Alaska” as his running mate. Neither had the slightest idea who Gov. Palin was, but were more than willing to denigrate her.
Ha! Like this is going to happen. After watching the media give the Clinton admin pass after pass on their scandals during those 8 years (and even after - Berger), I have no doubt that we'll see the same from the lapdog media during the Obama's hopefully lone term.
Huh?
On what planet was that?
Gov Plain was viciously attacked, smeared, and a was subject to a campaign of personal destruction by the media vermin within 1 minute of her nomination. And the vicious, nasty, deranged attacks on Gov Plain are yet to stop since then.
Interesting.
And in what distant, remote galaxy did the media behave that way?
Because in this one, once she scored her series of direct hits on The One, it was out to destroy her from the very start.
The media knows that it is bad news that sells and bad news with a scapegoat sells best of all. When the US economy tanks under Obama’s leadership, the MSM may cease being his lapdog and be looking for blood.
Hmmmmm? I must have missed that. Looked to me like the media declared all out war on SP beginning about an hour before McCains formal announcement.
They know he will be an abject failure and they are trying to distance from him. Too late.
Exactly!
What the hell???
I wish this puke had written that damnable lie at the top of his fishwrap. I wouldn't have had to slog through the rest of his slop.
Nah. Obama and the media will never give Hillary any credit for anything. They will be about making Obama look good for the next 4 years.
I suggest public hangings. In the interest of helping the MSM atone for their sins, of course. Always like to be helpful.
Jon Friedman is a comedian, writer, and producer living in New York City. He founded Tremendous Rabbit Productions
I'm pretty sure that's a tattoo, not a sticker.
Nah. They will just blame Bush. I am going to make a prediction. For the next 100 years and maybe beyond that, anything that goes wrong in the entire world or possibly even the entire galaxy, solar system, whatever, will be tied to Bush policy in some way.
Don't count on it. The MSM has degraded even further since the Clinton days, when they merely downplayed his rottenness.
They've now gone over into full-bore Democrat Media and Disinformation Department mode. We're looking at a community that, as one poster put it, "has moved from being the Fourth Estate, into being a fifth column in this country."
One thing the 2008 election proved to me, is that the MSM is no longer simply liberally biased. They're now a full-fledged force for Marxism, and a part of the radical left-wing political machine in America. There is NOTHING that emanates from them that is of any useful purpose to patriotic Americans.
well the media is still going to tally their pro - obama stories with the anti-obama stories for ALL of 2008, they will not partition the pre-november 2008 stories.
Of course now we have the new phenomenon of SELLING the coverage as a keepsake!
“Post-Obasmic Reality Check Disorder.”
otherwise known as PORCD.
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