Posted on 10/19/2010 7:26:21 AM PDT by La Lydia
The media narrative by now is set in concrete: The voters are teed off, rising up, mad as hell and ready to wreak havoc. There is a whiff, if you read between the lines, that the expected outcome is somehow unjust. The Democrats are going to get their backsides handed to them, in this telling, because the Obama administration has clumsily failed to explain what it’s done for the folks, and because of slightly scary passions unleashed by the Tea Party crazies...
I’m not saying this is intentional, or that the MSM are mangling the midterms. Many voters are angry...and it’s their right to toss out whoever they deem to be the bums. But on some level, many journalists believe the White House has accomplished a heckuva lot, and they see the Tea Partiers as inchoate and maddeningly inconsistent—denouncing big bad government while clinging to their Medicare and Social Security benefits. It’s as if the pundits are collectively engaged in a group grope, feeling their way around this strange and sharp-toothed political animal that resembles nothing they’ve encountered before.
Few have gone as far as the late Peter Jennings, explaining the 1994 Gingrich takeover by declaring that “the voters had a temper tantrum.” But news organizations were late to the Tea Party phenomenon, and are still grappling to explain it...They were blindsided by Scott Brown’s win and Lisa Murkowski’s loss.
“The media profile is of an angry, racist rabble, and that doesn’t match the people I’ve seen in focus groups,” says Republican pollster Whit Ayres, describing the Tea Party. “There’s a predisposition in the liberal elements of the media to paint Republicans as unsophisticated rubes who don’t appreciate all the wonderful things the Obama administration and the Democratic Party have done for the country. It’s out of touch with the reality.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
“slightly scary passions unleashed by the Tea Party crazies...”
“the Tea Partiers as inchoate and maddeningly inconsistent?denouncing big bad government while clinging to their Medicare and Social Security benefits.”
Howard Kurtz proving he has no clue...
“the Tea Partiers as inchoate and maddeningly inconsistent?denouncing big bad government while clinging to their Medicare and Social Security benefits.”
Go ahead Howard. Spend all day every day telling the American people that they’re all a bunch of hypocrites. That will certainly calm things down AND improve your circulation numbers! /sarc
Re-read the column.
On the merits, journalists are right that Obama’s accomplishments have been minimized. Health care reform, however it pans out, was a huge achievement; the overall package remains unpopular, the individual parts (such as not excluding kids for preexisting conditions) not so much. Tightening financial regulation was a heavy lift against the forces of Wall Street. Even the much-derided stimulus law saved plenty of jobs.
And that is the Beltway liberal view of things. All of those were liberal special-interest fiascos, and folks on Main Street see right through the MSM jibberish that Kurtz writes here.
All that has been overshadowed because many voters believe the president bobbled the economy while setting his sights on social engineering. But here, too, the short attention span of today’s journalism played a role. The health care and banking battles were covered ad nauseum, but once they passed, the press lost interest and moved on to mosque mess and the Koran-burning preacher and whatever other diversions were available.
And wrong again. If the MSM had done their jobs all along, and accurately reported on these stories, these fiascos might never have come to pass.
As for his comment about the media annoiting Obama, I can only say, duh!
“...while clinging to their Medicare and Social Security benefits”
Because, having paid into this fraud for 40 years...they now expect gov’mt to yield the return that was promised? Rather than give it away to a bunch of illegals? WTF???!!!
Two years ago, Kurtz was one of the ones doing the anointing. Irony abounds.
Okay, this is something that's been gnawing at me for a long time, and Kurtz is the first person I've seen float it, with this little throwaway "the media says it's unjust".
We all remember the oh-so-wonderful "power sharing" the last round of big winning Repubs agreed to, in yet another ridiculous and futile attempt to get Democrats and other assorted communists to like them. What scares to the bejeebers out of me is that, should November prove to be as big a "tsunami" as predicted, the mantra pounded away at will be "Oh, it's just sooooooo UNFAIR that there are so many Republicans in Congress --- it's tyranny of the majority --- it doesn't matter if more people voted for them, think of all those "disenfranchised" Americans who aren't being represented. Oh woe is us, woe is us! The Republicans MUST be REQUIRED to let Democrats do X, Y or Z.... Democrats MUST be allowed to continue to have control of X, Y, or Z.... all in the name of FAIRNESS."
I truly believe the Democrats and their media allies will begin pushing this crap in an all-out attempt to bully the Repubs into holding back anything resembling a conservative (read: not communist) agenda. I swear, the new folks coming in have GOT to be ready to slash and burn.
This is a year in which facts—the preferred currency of the reality-based media—often don’t seem to matter. Journalists report that Sharron Angle had favored privatizing Social Security, spoke of people considering “Second Amendment remedies” and counseled rape victims to turn “a lemon situation into lemonade” by giving birth—and she’s still competitive with Harry Reid. Media outlets report that Christine O’Donnell, the onetime witchcraft dabbler, opposes masturbation and considers evolution “a myth,” and she laughs it off (while trailing in the race). New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino calls gay pride parades “disgusting,” hurls baseless charges about Andrew Cuomo’s sex life (after fathering a child out of wedlock himself) and tells a New York Post columnist “I’ll take you out”—and still hasn’t been laughed out of the race.
Notice this phrase. He refers to the New York media as "Reality-based media". His purpose is to establish a premise. What is he contrasting? Which media is not reality based? Talk radio? Fox News?
Second, notice how he establishes the premise that all the positions he mentions for these candidates should, if things were "normal", disqualify them from public office. Really? Many of them are Biblical truths held by western civilization for centuries, until the last 50 years. Also, notice that most of them are social issues. Issues the tea party has specifically not addressed since its concerns are primarily fiscal. (The Left have been trying to divide the tea party by introducing social issues into the debate.) Pro-life, sexual purity, God as creator, then he throws in a fiscal issue like privatizing social security just for cover. If you support them, according to Howie, you should not even be considered to serve in public office.
With two weeks to go, the gloves are off and old power centers are in complete panic. Death throes are never pretty.
Once again, us boobs just don’t get it.
I wonder if Obama has the time to explain it to us again.
The only answers they can come up with are “Blame Bush” or accusing finger-pointing “racist”—nothing else computes for them.
Their response is either lies or name-calling. They have nothing else. Facts are never on their side.
Go back and carefully read the first two paragraphs, and you will see that Kurtz was not making those points himself, but rather he was characterizing the prevailing narrative in the leftard media. IMHO Kurtz is right on the money in his call-out of that prevailing narrative.
You should read Howie’s tweets to his MSM friends...all snark about conservatives, Republicans, the Tea Party people. He is always planning his next campaign move against them.
Make no mistake, the MSM campaign daily against us.
I would prefer that the govt refund every penny that my husband and I have paid in and we can invest it and pay our own insurance out of it, easily.
But now the Boomers are going to get the royal shaft, and this chump thinks that giving away our hard earned money by force is Okey Dokey! Raising the retirement rate is OK! Taking more is OK! We were promised to pay into our own retirement, not everyone elses..
And then when medicaid kicks in, we will have some young idiot giving the shaft to medical treatment that these chumps promised..and now its all our fault!
They think were mad now? Just wait!
I hope so! Next year, the Obama Regime is going to spend $4T of our $14T gross national product, at the federal level alone, and with a substantial chunk of that going to liberal special interests that are being paid off for supporting a corrupt election process. That's 28% of what productive Americans create, with too much of it going to pure waste or even worse. I sure hope he'll get on the networks many times between now and the elections to explain how he is so much better qualified to spend our money than we are and how we'd be even better off if we reelected the Democrats so our taxes could be even higher and the debt our children could pay off would grow muchbigger.
“Go back and carefully read the first two paragraphs, and you will see that Kurtz was not making those points himself, but rather he was characterizing the prevailing narrative in the leftard media.”
Hmm, read it again, and have to agree with your take. I do think that Kurtz is agreeing at least somewhat with the leftard media “between the lines,” but you are correct, he is more “characterizing the prevailing narrative in the leftard media.”
S’what I get for FReeping before my first full cup o’ joe...
“...it is war...it is the war of the Democrats against the Baby Boom...who have paid into and now are poised to reap the “benefits” of Social Security and Medicare...it is the war of those who created these fraudulent programs ...which have fleeced 45 years of taxes from the Baby Boom..and never intended to grant them the “benefits” they were conned into allowing to be withheld from their paychecks. It is a personal war...because by hastening them to their graves...they intend to fleece their descendants of their estates.”
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