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?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Well if'n ya includes Oprah's and Jesse's, then it's a multiple Obasm!!!
Next comes the buyer's remorse!!!
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.
These people think they can get back their credibility by putting out this sort of nonsense. It isn’t going to happen. They will fool most of the people (52%) most of the time, but even those they fool know they are far from unbiased.
We will see more of this ‘aw shucks, guess we messed up’ BS in the coming months, and it will have all the sincerity of a three dollar bill.
Uh, wasn't that supposed to happen in the last year or so, BEFORE he got elected?
>It’s inevitable, too, that Obama will eventually have his turn under the microscope.<
So what? By then he will have ascended the throne in the WH.
It’s the same mentality that spreads AIDS. People doing crazy crap they know better than to do...yet they do it anyway...and cry about feeling guilty about what they did and how they’ve messed things up. Nothing new about how these liberals operate...
Where’s the BARF and Projectile Vomit Alert!!!
The ‘Power’ of the MSM as ‘Kingmaker’!
“To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Join the Resistance!
“When McCain first nominated her, she could do no wrong in the media’s eyes”
I also call B.S. The pregnancy stories began almost immediately.
My BS alert just went off. At no time, NO TIME, did the media view Sarah Palin with any degree of favorability. They attacked her from the minute that she was nominated, and they are still attacking her now, though perhaps with less intensity. The media HATES her, and they didn't hide that hate.
They hate her as they hate anybody with any degree of self-determination that can achieve without hiding behind the crumbly pillars of affirmative action or any other socialist prop. They hate her like they hate anybody that hasn't spent their time in some left-wing ivy league college/indoctrination center. They hate her because she goes against the grain, against the establishment. And most of all, they hate her because she is conservative.
foreword-thinking
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You might expect that someone who voted for Obama would write something like this.
Hey Jon Friedman, show us your cojones...
Write a comprehensive story about nObama hiding his birth certificate. THEN, I’ll be impressed.
It’s just an effort by the media to distance themselves from Obama so that they can disclaim responsibility for his inevitably failed policies.
“They will fool most of the people (52%) most of the time, but even those they fool know they are far from unbiased.”
I doubt that the Obama catholics entertain this opinion. They still bless themselves when he shows up on TV.
SO WHAT? The media need to go bankrupt, but we realize that won't happen with this administration or the next, they will just "bail them out"...
Don’t woory. AIDS can’t be spread because it DOESN’T EXIST! The only manifestation can be found in male homosexuals and IV drug users. The manifestation of clinical disease states is the end result of massive insult to their immune systems through the systemic effects of massive repeated doses of illegal drugs, alkyl nitrites, anti-fungals, anti-bacterials, anti-virals, anti-infectives, and overwhelming chronic STDs. You are completely safe. The HIV test is a sham since it only detects antibodies, not active retroviral antigenic particles.
If that actually happened, the time lapse was less than 30 seconds.
Since the fourth estate gladly transmogrified themselves into the fifth column enemy of We The People, as they avoided proper vetting of this fraudulent Marxist Chicago squirrel, the media need to be tried for treason and summarily hung at dawn, preferrably sooner rather than later. Filthy bass turds.
They know the media is whoring itself for Obama. They just don’t care because they think they have all that is just and good on their side, so it’s all for the best.
“When McCain first nominated her [Palin], she could do no wrong in the media’s eyes.”
Gee. That’s not quite the way I remember it. I remember a 24/7 slagging of the Governor that has not let up to this day.
The author sounds like one of those reporters who, in the 1980’s, called Ronald Reagan a dunce and a Nazi and then, when Reagan died, spent a bunch of time reminiscing about how he and Ronnie won the cold war together.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.