"Go on, then, in your generous enterprise with gratitude to Heaven for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory ... that these American States may never cease to be free and independent." –Samuel Adams
As we approach the 2012 presidential election campaign the left-wing media (which is most of the mainstream media) is gearing up its sycophantic support of Barak Obama and all of the left-wing progressives in his camp.
For conservatives and many thoughtful independents this barrage of progressive clap-trap will burn your brain if you don’t have a way to filter it out. I suggest ear muffs. Here are a few recent examples of what I am talking about.
The Boston Globe exhibited a sample hatchet job on Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour on its front page, titled "Amid strained clinics, foe assails ‘ObamaCare.'" The story-- less a news story than an unpaid political ad for Obama and ObamaCare -- portrays Barbour as heartless and "out of touch with low-income people." Here are the opening paragraphs:
“The plight of health care's have-nots is vividly illustrated alongside a highway on the outskirts of Yazoo City, the hometown of Mississippi governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Haley Barbour.”
“Tucked into a crumbling strip mall with a dollar store called Dirt Cheap, a bare-bones clinic with a peeling facade serves dozens of impoverished patients daily. It is among the limited sources of primary care for about a half million residents who lack insurance in Mississippi, 18 percent of the population.”
The prose drips with sentimentality for the "plight" of those who have to go to – eek! – a clinic. In a strip mall. Next to the Dirt Cheap store! Horrors! Boston Globe reporters wouldn't be caught dead in a strip mall. But, the obvious question raised here: if they have a clinic, how does that make them "health care have-nots"?
Later in the article we learn that the clinic is one of many in the Jackson metropolitan area run by the Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center, a non-profit whose mission is to serve "the uninsured and under-served." I'm not from Mississippi, but it seems like a reputable organization, performing a needed service, a local solution provided with a minimum of expense and layers of bureaucracy.
Barbour responds; “Most of the health disparities in Mississippi are not because of the inability to get access or afford health care. They are because of diet, alcohol, because of drugs, the very high incidence of illegitimacy that leads to high incidence of low-birth weight children. I grew up in a society where if it wasn't fried you were asking, "Why not?"
Imagine, a Presidential candidate refusing federal money and preaching individual responsibility. I like the guy, despite the Globe's efforts.
News Busters reports the following refereeing to the way the New York Times reported on the 2006 Duke Lacrosse rape case: “It was a tiny item in the New York Times -- a brief at the bottom of page B14 of Tuesday's sports section, under Lacrosse: “Crystal Mangum, who falsely accused three Duke players of raping her in 2006, was charged with murder in the death of her boyfriend.” The man died two weeks after Mangum stabbed him, and Mangum has now been charged with murder.”
“The Times may prefer to forget that name, but it was far more interested in Crystal Mangum back in 2006. More than any other media outlet, the Times trumpeted her rape accusations against three Duke Lacrosse players, accusations that quickly fell apart in a mass of contradictions and shifting stories.”
“Yet even as the case fell apart and other liberal media outlets were backing away, the Times issued a now-notorious, error-riddled 5,000-word lead story by Duff Wilson on August 25, 2006, concluding that there was enough evidence against the players for Michael Nifong, the soon-to-be-disgraced-and-jailed local prosecutor, to bring the case to trial:
“By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.”
“Perhaps most atrocious was former columnist Selena Roberts, who made a habit of slurring the innocent Duke Lacrosse players. Even after the players had been all but formally cleared of the sexual assault, she continued to blame white privilege: “Don't mess with Duke, though. To shine a light on its integrity has been treated by the irrational mighty as a threat to white privilege. Feel free to excoriate the African-American basketball stars and football behemoths for the misdeeds of all athletes, but lay off the lacrosse pipeline to Wall Street, excuse the khaki-pants crowd of SAT wonder kids.”
Even one of the paper’s overly respectful public editors, Barney Calame, tore a few polite holes into his paper’s coverage in an April 2007 column after the players were officially declared innocent.
But blogger KC Johnson, a history professor and expert on the case, lambasted Wilson's error-riddled article and Calame's half-defense of it:
“ Calame, in short, appears unable or unwilling to consider how the Times' failure in the lacrosse case -- and having the thesis of a paper's major article publicly dismissed as untrue surely constitutes a failure -- was attributable to reporters and editors allowing their worldviews to distort the facts....Calame avoids mentioning that Wilson's article contained four factual errors -- each of which made Nifong's case appear stronger than it actually was. To date, the Times has left three of these errors entirely uncorrected, and the fourth corrected in a misleading fashion.”
The Times's sorry coverage was a focus of much media debate. Another former Times public editor, Daniel Okrent, called the paper’s coverage “heartbreaking”: “I think The Times's coverage was heartbreaking. 'I understand why they jumped on the story when they did, but it showed everything that's wrong with American journalism.'"
Ms. Roberts and the Times should be ashamed. When I was working as a land surveyor we used to joke that our profession was the second oldest profession – after prostitution. Now I believe journalism ranks right up there with the oldest profession. If I had made error or omissions, like Ms. Roberts, in my practice I would have had my license suspended or revoked. One of the major problems journalism is that there is no accountability for libelous reporting. The gonzo journalists like Roberts just go on to the next story as if nothing was wrong with their reporting.
Another example is the latest Time magazine’s 100 edition. Turn a few pages of the "Time 100" – ostensibly the "most influential people in the world" – and you can easily see it as a gimmick, and not a serious attempt to measure influence. Look no further than the media. In the new 2011 list, one media name stands out – Joe Scarborough, the liberal-pleasing, progressive "Republican" MSNBC host Mark Levin calls "The Morning Schmo." There are no Fox News hosts and no liberal-media TV stars and no talk-radio titans. Time editor Richard Stengel is a guest on the Scarborough show, and they often hype the new Time magazine cover, so declaring him influential looks very much like a bit of commercial/political pork-barreling. The tribute to Joe came from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (the two Manhattan centrists have been talked up as a presidential dream team)
The closing of Borders book stores isn’t that newsworthy, but The Washington Post on Monday somehow turned it into a celebration of how liberal books sell well (and conservative titles don’t) in blue Maryland. Reporters Larissa Roso and Michael Rosenwald began at a store at Rockville’s White Flint Mall:
“Many shoppers, such as Francie Kranzberg, went straight for the political stuff: a copy of "Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies About the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual," by Michael Wolraich. "I’m looking for Keith Olbermann’s book, too," she said.”
“At the White Flint store, there were enough copies of Jonah Goldberg’s "Proud to Be Right" to supply at least a dozen book clubs. But there was only one copy of Walter Mondale’s autobiography, "The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics."
It was just yesterday the Congress Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) proclaimed the reason brick and mortar book stores were closing was the increasing use of Apple’s iPad and reading devises such as Amazon’s Kindle. No doubt both are wrong and the reason Borders is closing is due the outlandish prices they charge for books in comparison to what they cost on online outlets like Amazon. It’s just that the lefty journalists like the ambience of Borders – the expansive Starbucks coffee and the classical music.
Sarah Palin no doubts draws more fire from the cowardly left than any other political figure. This recent example reported in Fox News by Steven Crowder is way over the top. “The topic of Sarah Palin has been open season to the media, entertainment industry and club comics alike. Unlike the propped up golden family in the White House, the Hollywood establishment has deemed the doggy pile-on the Palin family as both safe and acceptable. All too eager to appease the establishment, we’ve seen A to Z list stars line up to take their shots at society’s new favorite whipping post.”
Worst of all is that more recently, the attacks on Palin’s special needs son “Trig” have become increasingly insidious. I mean, I get it. If I were a leftist, I’d know that the best way to break a mother is to assault her child. Underhanded and despicable? Without a doubt. Effective? Most definitely. Wonkette recently posted an article regarding Trig Palin’s birthday. They had this to say about the infant’s dreams:
“What’s he dreaming about? Nothing. He’s retarded.”
“When I read this, I’m reminded of Dennis Miller saying, “I consider everyone and everything to be comedic fair game, except for the helpless.” Hmmm, would “the helpless” include a special needs child, unable to speak on his own behalf? I wouldn’t know. Remember, I’m just a simple Conservative.”
“Cowards.”
“Of course, as the Alaska Dispatch reports, Wonkette's freelancer was cowed into apologizing: “After some advertisers, like Papa John's and Huggies, began pulling ads from the outlet, Wonkette added an update to the post apologizing for using the word "retarded" there and expressing delineated regret. A subsequent email from Wonkette's editor to AdAge expressed more facetious regret and reiterated at length the publication's call for Sarah Palin to no longer "use her special-needs child as a crass political prop."
For my final example I cite the latest incident with Kobe By rant, the Los Angeles Lakers star basketball player. Back in 2007, The New York Times was delighted when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the TV networks and against FCC fines for fleeting profanities on broadcast TV. "If Bush Can Blurt a Curse, So Can Network TV," the Times wrote in its Page One headline.
But in 2011, when gays are outraged that NBA star Kobe Bryant was caught on television during a game mouthing the "gay F-bomb" at a referee, and the
We live in society where all cultural and ethical mores have all but vanished from our media. The left is shameless in its reporting and feels and immunity to the truth. They throw bomb after bomb at us without a thought to what is true and what is fiction derived in their minds. So get ready for the next 18 months as Obama’s left-wing sycophants sling clap-trap and hogwash at us on a daily basis. The only remedy I can recommend is a good pair of ear muffs – the kind worn by those guys on the flight line.
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