VDH is right on target, as usual:
For years now we have been preached to that Guantanamo is a gulag where Korans are stomped and flushed (not laptops provided to the chief architect of 9/11), that we waged a foolhardy, amoral, and hopelessly ‘lost’ war against the Iraqi people, that the rich plundered the economy on the backs of the poor, and that the Constitution was burned so that covert agencies could play James Bond. I could go on, but you get the picture.
Given all that, are we now suddenly — in 1984-fashion — around late January either to be told all that was not quite so, or will we simply hear no more about how these Bush legacies have ruined America — or what exactly is the party line to be? There is still such a thing, after all, as Google.
The point is that somewhere around early to mid-2007 ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Newsweek, Time, etc. chose to become — in the manner that they selected, emphasized, and presented their news stories — a quasi-official Obama media, or at least a quasi-official what-they-thought-Obama-was news media. Chris Matthews’ asinine statement about his investment in the success of the Obama administration was merely a crude summation of the creed of the more sober and judicious.
I don’t really think they can now pull off an Animal-Farm-like ‘two-legs were bad’, ‘now two-legs good’ complete turn-about just because they’ve taken over the manor. I do think that the media’s unprofessional lobbying for the cause of Obama — not now, but in a decade or two — will become a classic case study in any graduate class on journalistic ethics.
If there has been anything we have learned from this election, it’s that the only thing that matters to the MSM is the D next to the name. The same policies under Bush that were evil are now thought of as, well, necessary.
While 52% of the nation fell for one of the biggest con jobs in American history by electing the most inexperience politician to come around in a century, we can take solace that we didn’t fall for the MSM and their baloney. I mean look at the headlines now:
Obama Steps Up to the Plate on the Economy
Hope springs eternal for Obama presidency
or the talking heads sputtering:
Obama Cabinet Unparalleled in ‘Brain Power’.
They stopped trying to hide their bias long ago, and as VDH said….10 years from now there will be classes on the idiocy the MSM displayed over the last few years.
See author page
The only thing that will prevent the use of this election as a ‘bad example’ to students of print journalism is… in ten years there my be no mass print journalism to be a student of.
I agree with Annie B., there will probably be no more free journalism after Obama.
Here is another interesting outlook of what is to become of America after Obama:
The New World devised by Maurice Strong and George Soros
By: Judi McCleod
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6485
Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and Glenn Beck.
Electoral Map 2008
Electoral Map 2004
Looking at the maps above made me think of the extent to which the American People has been swindled during this last electoral cycle. Note that the ‘redness’ of the map actually increased in 08. (Red=republicans Blue=Democrats amazingly)
The results of the elections do not reflect the ‘will of the people’, but amounts to a veritable ‘coup d’état’ perpetrated against the American people without firing a single shot and in plain sight. Three major aspects of the campaign come to mind to justify this statement.
1. The Democrats had close to 7 times more money available from donations than the Republicans. A lot of these moneys were collected from anonymous sources and even from outside of the US. ( $ 460,000,000.00 vs. 85,000,000.00 ?)
2. The so called ‘main stream media’ which is the major source of information for most of the populace exhibited an amazing level of bias in reporting and even engaged in actually ‘promoting’ the Democratic candidates while never showing any interest in the most salient questions relating to the background, experience and prior associations of the candidates. (Example: If it had surfaced the information that McCain had for 20 years participated in weekly meetings of the KKK this would have spelled doom for his candidacy. Not so for Obama and the Church of Rev. Wright.)
3. The ‘community organization’ type of movements assisted the Democrats in collecting or ‘bringing out the vote drives’. In a military type of disciplined effort they may have been able to gather perhaps a few million votes in key states and were instrumental to closing the deal.
Given these circumstances however, we still have the amazing fact that the Democrats never at any one time really pulled ahead in the polls which signifies that the election was won through the effects of unfair and illegal manipulation of factors exterior to the public opinion. (52 % to 46 % ?) Without any of the three factors mentioned above they would not have won.
The MSM took but one election cycle to forfeit their credibility for years to come. The mere sight of some of these talking heads makes me reach for my remote to silence them. There was time when they were somewhat believable. Not any more. As things unravle, as they certainly will, it will be interesting to see how they either continue to cover for the new administration or come to grips with themselves and choose to report the truth. Choose to report the truth, what’s that?
Joe Blowe, I agree with you. I never believe that Obama won this election. I am sure it is all fraud especially with Acorn. And I read this on another blog and I agree with it:
“A few months ago I posted a comment made by a hard tech specialist. His concern was that because of the new voting machines and expert hacking techniques, our election process was at high risk and the votes could be manipulated without anyone being the wiser. If the chinese could hack into the Pentagon computers, I’m sure that anyone paid enough incentive money with good equipment can hack into any radio station or any website. Teenagers can do this for godssake. I believe that with Soros’s huge financial funding, this country HAS been fraudulently hacked and hijacked by the Obama/Soros camp and their accomplises in our own government. I don’t even believe the actual final count in the election.”
Yes, it’s really funny the way your MSM spins everything Obama does as good and everything Bush does as bad. It’s getting to the point where even us chinese start to say, your media is just as biased as ours is.
Don’t talk about the mainland, but in SEAsia, many of the english newspapers are affiliated to the NYT, eg: The Straits Times in Singapore and IHT(International Herald Tribune) regionwide.
Thus, in our local newspapers, GWB is always referred to as the “lame duck president” responsible for all the problems in america and the world, while Obama is portrayed as a lightbringing messiah come to bring world peace, and solve all our problems, a symbol of racial diverity but harmony, tolerance, intelligence and everything good.
Sadly I just see him as crook from chicago, with a radical marxist idealogy, out to grab power and money forhimself and his cronies. The way the guy pumps out hundreds of lies without blinking an eye and expects you to believe them, is a real insult to anyone with intelligence above that of an orang-utan.
Not only did he and his buddies Pelosi, Reid, Dodd and Rahm contribute greatly to the housing bust and stockmarket crash by protecting Fannie and Freddie from the proper regulation that would have precluded them from their insane activities(that triggered the crash), but he’s managed to get his buddies even more power instead of having them held to account for their corruption and bad judgement.
Every investor in the world who has lost money in the last year should put a big part of the blame on Obama and his cronies.
America, despite its flaws, is supposed to be the benchmark of the fair political process, with transparency and accountability. It’s thus very sad and amusing to see how things have now come to pass.
One of my colleagues asked if Obama had served in the army.
I said, “No, but he served in his local MAFIA.”
An Institution Dies
November 25, 2008 by texasdarlin
Now? The reporters are now lining up to confess failure. How pathetic. If they know now, they knew then. I’m not sure what is more pathetic: the indisputable fact of their failure, or their admission after the fact. As if writing a faux-intellectual Monday-morning critique of their industry’s gross negligence somehow excuses it, now that it’s water under society’s bridge.
We tried. We blasted out the word from our little anonymous corners of the blogosphere, over and over again. We tried to tell the world how fucked up the Media was, how irresponsibly biased in their coverage of the presidential candidates. We were laughed down, ignored, scolded for being bad sports.
We, the nobody bloggers, worked our fingers to the bone, many of us sacrificing whole chunks of our lives, because the paid professional media class — en masse — refused to be independent. They committed voluntary malpractice, regurgitating faxed or emailed campaign talking points as “news” instead of checking essential facts, much less pursuing an actual story.
History might mark the death of journalism as Americans knew it in the year 2008, who knows. Certainly it should. But I do know that had these over-paid hacks performed merely 25% of what they should have, the outcome of this election would likely have been quite different. Likely we would have had our first female president, or our first female vice-president. Had the sloths who call themselves “reporters” and their corporate employers actually cared about the role that a free and independent media should exercise in a democratic election, the candidate named Obama who has accomplished nothing but a series of personality-based milestones in his life would have been stopped at the door for lack of either a real resume or a real birth certificate. [And please, don’t accuse me of clinging to the birth certificate issue. I refer to it figuratively, for all the missing records and documents of Barack Obama’s life.]
And still, they — the Mainstream Media — don’t give a rat’s ass about their duty.
Still, they don’t.
Because as I write this, the United States Supreme Court has granted a full conference to a regular citizen named Leo Donofrio, on the issue of Barack Obama’s status as a natural-born citizen. I’m told that the US Supreme Court has not granted such a full conference for any matter in 3 decades.
Mind you, this is the US Supreme Court. Not an insignificant district court of the first instance. But the U.S. Supreme Court, charged with interpreting our nation’s Constitution, charged with explaining the meaning of “natural born citizen.” The buck stops with this Court and its authority. Regardless of whether they decide to let Mr. Donofrio’s case proceed — the very fact that a full conference has been granted — is newsworthy. Right? Even downright historic. Yes, it is, which is why we the bloggers are unsurprised that no one in the Mainstream Media, not one reputable journalist or organization, has reported the story.
I mourn the death of American Journalism, an institution I once proudly embraced.
No doubt in my mind that all of the schemes mentioned in comments above have been used to place Obama in office. Many in my area continue to display McCain/Palin yard signs. PEBO is a round peg who has been sledge-hammered into a square opening. He’s also a very small man where values are concerned; consider that a signmaker remains at his disposal: “The Office of PRESIDENT elect” is constantly displayed beneath his visage. I am not certain that ‘elect’ is in smaller letters, for the way it displays on my screen it is impossible to tell. But I would not put it past him to do as much.
In addition to the legacy MSM has plied for itself, I personally would love to see the likes of Chris Matthews, Campbell Brown, and their ilk, vetted in a manner not unlike that bestowed upon Hillary and Sarah. Any chance that could happen?
@sigmundringeck:
Yes, sigmundringeck, he is one of many crooks from Chicago. He was my Senator and as disappointed as I’ve been with him as a Senator supposedly representing my state, I’d prefer that he was still my Senator, not President-elect.
Unfortunately, this country is about to experience Chicago style governance, eventually the country will get a clue, hopefully, not to late.
Here are some of the cronies he brought along with him. Sources are provided in the following article, but there’s still much more….out there on other local appointments if one was interested in doing the research our MSM doesn’t do. Am posting this because I’m sure you would recognize names and situations. You probably have a better understanding of the events mentioned in the article than we do.
Thumbs up to Bloomberg.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aNCFKvAMUQ6w&refer
Unparalleled brain power? They said that about the carter administration before the took office and we see how that went.
BTW, I don’t think massive vote fraud or anything like that is what won obama the election. Massive propaganda from the MSM and massive ignorance on the obama voters is what did it.
When does the “impeach Obama” campaign start?
The MSM did stop hiding its bias a long time ago. That fact scares the daylights out of me. They stopped being journalists and started being a propaganda machine. Even more scary: 1.) many probably don’t realize it and 2.) the ones that do realize it don’t see the danger because they assume their worldview is the correct one.
Mike Gray,
Everyone thinks their world view is the correct one or it wouldn’t be their world view. However, world views should not be reflected in by journalists in their reporting of the news.
Just as there has traditionally been with the print media, where there is a distinction between the editorial page and the front page, there are programs on news channels that are editorial in nature. Examples are Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman on MSNBC, who project an unabashed liberal/Democratic bias, and Fox and Friends and Sean Hannity on Fox who offer a clear conservative/Republican bias.
If you think the MSM gave Bill Clinton a pass we live in parallel universes.
Dave Noble,
You’re right to point out that obviously everyone thinks their worldview is correct. However, that should not give way to objectivity in journalism.
Certainly, you’re also right about the difference between the editorial and front pages and the corresponding television programming. However, even in the print media today, it’s difficult to miss the loaded headlines and “code words” that slant stories one way (or the other, in some cases).
I’d never claim that Bill Clinton got a pass in the media, however, the issue is much more than criticism of GWB or Bill Clinton, or premature praise of Obama. Virtually every issue sees the same kind of journalistic slant. Immigration, Second Amendment, abortion, economy, Iraq. You name it.
Unfortunately, the media lost Tim Russert whom I had great respect for his ability and willingness to grill everyone that crossed his path, regardless of party.
Missy,
Excellent article from Bloomberg that you have linked in your comment #9. Like I always say: “Like attracts like”.
From the article:
“Take a good look at some of the 17 people our nation’s president-elect chose last week for his Transition Economic Advisory Board. And then try saying with a straight face that these are the leaders who should be advising him on how to navigate through the worst financial crisis
Robert Rubbin, Ann Mulcahy, Richard Parsons, William Daley, Laura Tyson, Penny Pritzker, Warren Buffet, William Donaldson, Rahm Emanuel, etc.
(Go to the article and find out how corrupted these people are)
Many of them should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama’s inner circle. Did Obama learn nothing from the ill-fated choice of James Johnson, the former Fannie Mae boss, to lead his vice- presidential search committee?”
Thanks Missy, for the article.
I do acknowledge that electing Obama is great for black racial pride and shows the world that america is not racist. That is something to be proud of. But after that, I think Obama is a crook and he won’t do the best that can be done for your country. Maybe that will benefit us, though.
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Thanks again for the article, Missy, but may I please ventilate a bit on the the partisanship of bloomberg?
Bloomberg——-another Obama-fawning media outhouse.
The most incredible article on bloomberg was the one where they were promoting MUSHROOMS as the latest save-the-world biofuel.
Thus it is amazing to find such fair and balanced article such as you directed me to on Bloomberg.
Bloomberg has been fawning over Obama for months, IMHO.