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 wasDick 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? WouldMeet 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 inRock 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!
Come on! [in honor of the late Warner Wolf]
A Politically Correct person (statist) may say anything, and is always correct.
A less-Government person (Tea Party) is always wrong.
The two statements above are self-evident and need no proof.
The Tea Party must be labeled as terrorist, because the statists must frighten people from voting for them. The statists have run on campaigns of scaring people since … well … since the beginning of time. In the U.S. the terrorism began in March of 1933, when we were told that it was the President’s way, OR ELSE. The country followed him for eight years, and no improvement was seen. But he was still beloved.
It is natural for the party of terror (the statists) to label their enemies as terrorist. This is a mental problem, known as transfer.
Point a finger, my Mother used to say, and three fingers point back at you.
So Hope and Change will be replaced by PANIC AND TERROR for the next 20 years or so.
You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
@mathman:
And the biggest reason that the statists can run with the rhetoric they do, is that the electorate, as a whole, is stupid and ignorant. When the liberal/progressives rail against any government spending cuts, and claim that babies will die and grandma will be left without any help, many people believe them, even though the truth is that no program is ever actually cut. And the blame for the electorates’ stupidity and ignorance falls squarely on the shoulders of the MSM, who have been inundated with liberal/progressives pushing the same lies as the politicians do, and never reporting the truth about any issue. Pundits such as Chris Mathews are hailed as smart and intelligent while those like Rush are labeled as evil, and the electorate buys that BS, even though Mathews is as dumb as a bag of hammers and Rush is more likely to tell it like it is.
My guess is that the liberal/progressives will wish to keep the electorate stupid and ignorant, so that they can continue doing what they will.
Disclamier: I very much respect all the suffering and pain that Mrs Gifford has endured, and her remarkable recovery. I also wish only the best for here, and her family. But I thought that propaganda trick was excellent on the part of politicians! And then praising the poor and pitiful pages! They managed to distract the majority of voters and Americans that very little if any real changes were made in another so called historic bill. I think Mrs Gifford deserved so much more than to treated as a prime time trick in all their little antics that they use so often, yet are believed in by the public so much.
And why our conservatives cannot learn practical and easy to use communication skills which counter the libdems propaganda is totally beyond me. I have noticed that a few are starting to actually use the same techniques as the libdems. And finally Bohner goes on TV and makes the statement “Its all about ideology now!”
Really Mr. Bonehead! Its about darn time that they wake up and smell the stuff that they have been shoveling all these years. The conservatives will never, ever win the public over if they don’t learn how to fight like the libdems. Period. I used to like to tape a political debate between a republican and a democrat/liberal and then show them in my classes as an example of how to best your opponent in a war of words, and gain the audiences approval as you shamed and humilated your opponent Those same classes are taught to business students in some schools as well. Yet it appears that our consevatives have never heard of common sense, communication skills, and fighting back.
@Gary G. Swenchonis:
Amen to that. As important as fighting the Statist agenda is, you would never get THAT from watching Republicans in action. They fight like little children.
The energy expended on fighting for their cause suggests little enthusiasm for the US Constitution that they swear to uphold. The vast majority of those “serving” in our government are Statists serving only their own agenda not the US Constitution.