Friday, February 03, 2006

Lessons On The Liberal Media

Part 1

Liberal war opponents were clearly correct about the self-defeating stupidity of Bush's Iraq misadventure, but pundits treat their foresight as a kind of disqualifying handicap. Mallaby's colleague Richard Cohen lauded Joe Biden because he "voted to authorize the president to go to war but has since characterized that vote as 'a mistake,'" which, Cohen notes, "approximately reflects my own position." Woe unto those who were right in the first place. Among media war boosters, George Packer cannot find room in the 467 pages of his celebrated war history, The Assassins' Gate, for the words "I was wrong." Those who recognized the Bush Administration's lethal combination of dishonesty, ideology and incompetence--in plain view at the time--are dismissed by Packer as possessing "second-rate minds."

More importantly....Part 2

When Bill Clinton lied about a few blowjobs, the Washington press corps treated his actions as a threat to the Republic. As John Harris observes in his history of the period, The Survivor, on the night Clinton offered his prime-time, post-testimony national apology, network commentary was overwhelmingly negative. Calls for Clinton to resign reigned on pundit television and on the op-ed pages throughout the ordeal--often couched in terms of doing so "for the children." But Clinton pollster Mark Penn would soon find, Harris explains, that "a clear majority of viewers thought Clinton's remarks were fine.... It was only hard-core Republicans and political 'elites'--the kind of people quoted by the networks--who were dissatisfied with the speech." This would prove, Harris observes, "a vivid example of the dichotomy in public opinion that had existed all year." Indeed, Clinton's approval rating hovered between the mid-sixties and the low seventies through the entire ordeal.
Oddly, given the many obvious and quite consequential differences between a blowjob and a botched war effort, the Washington press corps appears to have reached a consensus that the former is a far more serious matter...........


While the punditocracy, much like a scorned lover, resented Clinton, it cannot shake its affection for Bush, no matter how much contempt he showers on their collective heads. As Chris Matthews proclaimed, "Everybody sort of likes the President, except for the real whack-jobs." Today the percentage of Americans who say they actually "like" Bush, according to a New York Times/CBS Poll, is 37 percent. That figure is consistent with Harris Interactive polls reported around Thanksgiving, just before the above statements were made, showing that about 64 percent of Americans believe the Bush Administration "generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends...while fewer than a third of Americans believe the information provided by the Administration is generally accurate."
But the insider press corps cannot connect Bush's war lies to his unpopularity, because it has so much difficulty acknowledging either one. Nor have its members--so many of whom, not just Judy Miller, helped lay the groundwork for this Administration's criminal deception by parroting its lies and propaganda--seen fit to take responsibility for their role.


I understand that tv in general is a relative evaluation. If you think every show should be like a church service then certainly the media, in general, is quite liberal. Frankly because most people in the real world don't think every show should be like a church service. When it comes to news and politics thinking we have a "liberal media" is a thought for the truly brainwashed or those with a very low ability to make a cognitive thought. A few "facts" here and there is not proof. The overall storyline is.(read above again if you don't get this, and click on the links). Thank you for learning. Believe me, many of us (would) appreciate it greatly.

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