Posted on 08/02/2011 11:34:08 AM PDT by freespirited
Look, I am past exhausted talking about liberal media bias. It’s real, we all know it, and people who deny it aren’t even fooling themselves. But some things just have to be pointed out. This morning I watched the first 15 minutes of the Today Show. I don’t particularly love or even like the program, but I find it useful to see what the producers think is the big news of the day. And sometimes Chuck Todd is on, and I like him. If I sound defensive about watching the show it’s only because I am.
Anyway, the first ten minutes was about Gabby Giffords’ return to the House yesterday. I’m not sure it merited the full ten minutes or trumped the hard news that later followed, but it’s a great story and everyone is rooting for the lady, so I’m fine with it.
But think about this for a second. The Giffords shooting sent the media elite in this country into a bout of St. Vitus’s dance that would have warranted an army of exorcists in previous ages. Sarah Palin’s Facebook map was an evil totem that forced some guy to go on a shooting spree. The New York Times, the Washington Post, all three broadcast networks — particularly NBC whose senior foreign-affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, devotes, by my rough reckoning, ten times as much air time to whining about Sarah Palin as she does about anything having to do with foreign affairs — flooded the zone with “Have you no shame” finger wagging. A memo went forth demanding that everyone at MSNBC get their dresses over their heads about the evil “tone” from the right. Media Matters went into overdrive working the interns 24/7 to “prove” that Republicans deliberately foment violence with their evil targets on their evil congressional maps.
Everyone “knew” the shooter was a tea partier. Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t even a conservative. He was a sick, demented, nutball. And it still didn’t matter! More bleating and caterwauling about the “tone” followed. More chin stroking and tut-tutting from Meet the Press roundtables and “very special segments” on the Today Show. More pizzas were ordered for the Media Matters galley slaves.
Finally, president Obama, our national-healer, gives a speech. It was a good speech. Indeed it was one of the first speeches in a long while that got anything like bipartisan support. Civility. New tone. No more martial metaphors. These were the takeaways.
So flashforward to this week. Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the Founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair. Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said.
Then last night, on the very day Gabby Giffords heroically returns to cast her first vote since that tragic attack seven months ago, the vice president of the United States calls the Republican party a bunch of terrorists.
No one cares. I hate the “if this were Bush” game so we’re in luck. Instead imagine if this was Dick Cheney calling the Progressive Caucus (or whatever they’re called) a “bunch of terrorists” on the day Giffords returned to the Congress. Would the mainstream media notice or care? Would Meet the Press debate whether this raises “troubling questions” about the White House’s sensitivity? Would Andrea Mitchell find some way to blame Sarah Palin for Dick Cheney’s viciousness? Would Keith Olbermann explode like a mouse subjected to the Ramone’s music in Rock and Roll High School? Something inside me hidden away shouts, “Hell yes they would!”
The Today Show even had Debbie Wasserman Schultz on this morning for five minutes talking about Giffords. No one thought to ask her what she thought of Biden’s comments? It’s not like she’s the Democratic party’s national spokesperson or anything. Oh, wait. She is!
Instead, after the full ten minutes on Giffords, we get an update about the debt-limit situation (which is supposedly an Armageddon-level issue) and Kelly O’Donnell basically carries water for Biden on the issue by completely muddying whether he said anything of the sort at all. (His office says, no, no the vice president didn’t call them terrorists, he just politely agreed with all the Democratic congressmen in the room that they “acted like terrorists.” Ah, this is a distinction a team of a million Jesuits working around the clock would have a hard time slicing.)
And yet you know the next time there’s the slightest, remotely exploitable tragedy or hint of violence, the same reporters, editors, producers, and politicians are going to insist that blood was spilled because of the right wing’s rhetoric.
Well, go to Hell. All of you.
Obviously, you DON’T know what you hear.
What you haven’t figured out yet is you don’t get to fight against one without fighting against the other.
ooH
Don’t forget “and forced 100,000 American citiizens onto trains and interred them at concentration camps”
who was helpin her vote and wipin the drool off her chin ???
Thank you.
from the first photo's her family released after the accident, to the pic of her in the House yesterday...someone did a lot of photo shopping touch up...
I sympathize with her and her family..but common sense must prevail.
No statement Joe Biden has EVER made was managed very carefully. He is the classic engage mouth prior to brain speaker.
Super Committee? I don’t like the sound of that. I see what you mean. This is gloom and doom, which I recall he had with regards to Clinton’s first budget, but then he got excited before the fact, and it was just a sales pitch to try to stop the tax increase. This is more matter-of-fact and after the fact.
Well said! Personally, if being in favor of the Constitution and against an ever-expanding federal leviathan qualifies as such, I’m proud to have the jackass Biden call me a terrorist.
I thought it was Rich Lowry.....
BRAVO JONAH! Totally agree!
bump
I, for one, agree wholeheartedly with you. These others can call me a ‘Candy Ass RINO’ but I don’t care. We only have one house in Congress. We have no choice but to compromise. This deal has changed the debate, and that is important. We can win the war one battle at a time and we are. Expecting too much too soon under these circumstances will only harm our cause in the long run. Carry on.
“Jonah Goldberg fired Ann Coulter from NRO. I never forgave him. I thought it was Rich Lowry..... “
Both. JG was running NRO and Lowry is the NR editor. they have lived up to Ann’s description of them as “girly men”.
They are using very violent terms to describe the anti debt people. In fact, they are using the one group that it is “ok” to hate and kill, terrorists.
That is very deliberate.
Good quuestion
Sorry, did you find the post where I relayed what I heard (or thought I heard)? Right around #57
There is no “complete victory” when conservatives don’t even control ONE house of Congress. It is BS to make there was.
No, Rush was being deceptive since ANY plan would have been amended. Anyone who has ever watched the Congress knows this.
We don’t have an “advantage” to press. We have a conservative minority in the House. Nothing will happen until there is a conservative majority in the House and, at a minimum, a Republican Senate.
The pressure comes from the media and the deluded electorate not the Democrats per se. Plus, there are the clowns constantly attacking the GOP for being RINOs and not doing more.
I don’t care what Reid is talking about.
You act as though the Michaels of the world just pop up and exploit the People, they don’t. They are what the People WANTED.
No the converse of Von Clauswitz’s maxim is NOT true. Unless you are talking about ancient Rome maybe. There is almost never a “final victory”. We do not kill the enemy or destroy their property. It is very little like war. This is why Rush’s analogy was deceptive. There was NO final or complete victory.
Wizards like me understand enough about politics to see through false analogy and invalid arguments even when used by those we admire.
Isn’t it interesting that that fact is rarely referenced.
I haven’t “figured it out” because it isn’t true. Alan West is as much an ally as conservatives have, your inability to recognize that makes your opinion less than valuable.
My fight is with the Lovers of Losers (they only support those who MIGHT get 2% of the vote), who devote themselves to calling anyone capable of getting elected a “RINO”, who hysterically oppose anyone who might have a different opinion about what to do, who have NO loyalty to anyone but unrealistic ideas and who try and divide the GOP at every instance.
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