The media may turn against President Obama eventually,
but for the moment we have to endure a lot of fawning, uncritical press.
The contrast with the abuse President Bush got from the media is incredible.
The media - both in Europe and America
- have really disgraced themselves with their partisan behaviour
since Obama announced his run for President in 2007.
The exposure of some of the contents of
"JournoList", a private email list for prominent leftie journalists,
has given a good insight into their incredible bias for Obama.
Major network news shows ran 69 stories about Sarah Palin.
37 stories were negative.
2 were positive.
Not a single evening news show ran a positive story about Palin.
Two pictures from
the 2008 US election sum up the unthinking left-wing bias of much of the US media.
Look at the treatment
by
Us Weekly
celebrity magazine
of
Barack Obama
versus
their treatment of
Sarah Palin.
From here.
As John Nolte
says:
"Barack's cover could've just as easily read; REZKO, AYERS, & RACIST CHURCH."
ABC's bias for Obama
Sample questions from
Charles Gibson of ABC's
interview
of Sarah Palin,
candidate for Vice-President,
11-12 Sept 2008:
Sample questions from
Charles Gibson of ABC's
interview
of
Barack Obama,
candidate for President,
4 June 2008:
Governor, let me start by asking you a question .. and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"
And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs?
Did you ever travel outside the country prior to your trip to Kuwait and Germany last year?
Have you ever met a foreign head of state?
I'm talking about somebody who's a head of state, who can negotiate for that country. Ever met one?
Are we fighting a holy war?
But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?
Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?
Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?
What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?
Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?
(And lots more hostile and aggressive questions.)
Senator, I'm curious about your feelings last night. It was an historic moment. Has it sunk in yet?
When everybody clears out, the staff is gone, you're in your hotel room at night and you're alone -- do you say to yourself: "Son of a gun, I've done this?"
Did you truly, in your gut, think that a black man could win the nomination of a major party to be president of the United States?
On what criteria and what timetable will you choose a vice president?
On what three issues will this campaign turn to you?
Do you worry that it could turn on race, age and class?
Will you go to Iraq?
Is the hardest part of all this behind you or ahead of you?
The picture of you in the paper, this morning, with your wife, watching the Clinton speech. What did you think of the Clinton speech?
She didn't exactly acknowledge your victory.
And finally your daughters. What did they say to you? Did they take it as a matter of course that Daddy could be nominated to be president? They never knew what older people know in terms of discrimination, although they may still feel some. What did they say about that?
I watched closely your countenance last night, your mien, as you stood in that hall. You didn't smile much.
Has the joyfulness of this hit home yet? Do you take joy from it?
It is obvious that Palin's questions are not only harder,
but the interview is more hostile.
And she was only running for Vice-President!
Obama was running for President!
See discussion
here.
The pro-Obama bias has continued after the election.
The media has too much invested in this guy to change anytime soon.
Iowahawk's hilarious slag of Newsweek's absurd bias, May 2009:
"Just wait baby, I'll make you forget all your old magazines. I'll be cooler and thinner and more sanctimonious and money-losing than all of them. Even Harpers. ...
Wait a minute! Were your eyes just wandering over at the magazine rack? For your information the dentist is a Republican, so don't think you're going to find a copy of the Nation over there. Stop that! I will not be ignored! If you don't start reading me again this minute, I'm going to ..."
Newsweek editor calls Obama "sort of God", June 2009.
Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle On Obama's Double-Homicide, The Onion, 14 Apr 2009,
brilliantly nails the absurd media bias supportive of Obama.
"More than a week after President Barack Obama's cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.
"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8.
"Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in."
...
Since the killings took place, reporters across the country have struggled to come up with an appropriate take on the ruthless crime,
with some wondering whether it warrants front-page coverage,
and others questioning its relevance in a fast-changing media landscape.
...
"There's been some debate around the office about whether we should report on this at all," Washington Post senior reporter Bill Tracy said while on assignment
at a local dog show."
If you want criticism of Obama's appalling speeches
and grovelling around the world,
you need the Internet, because the regular media won't do it:
"End Of The Cold War", the leftie Independent absurdly gushes about Obama's trip to Moscow, 7 July 2009.
Did they ever credit Reagan (or Bush senior) with the end of the actual
Cold War?
Gary Younge, The Guardian, 16 January 2010, is baffled at why Obama's popularity has dropped so far in his first year.
Imagine any other politician (Tory or Labour, say)
whose approval rating had dropped.
The Guardian would blame the politician, of course.
Here, they blame the electorate.
The voters must be "racist" or something.
This line was tired in 2008.
Are people like Gary Younge going to wheel it out forever?
Will it be written in the schoolbooks?
"America's first black President, Barack Obama, was voted out of office in 2012
because of the inherent racism of the American people."
John McGuirk
fisks Gary Younge's article:
"Gary Younge doesn't want the real answer to the question his article poses. He seeks to explain why Obama has a lower approval rating than any President at this stage of his term since Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he goes to the one part of the country that rejected him more soundly than any other? There was no argument for going to Virginia? Or North Carolina? States that he won but now has low rating in? Nah.
This article isn't supposed to be about analysis. It's supposed to be about explaining away something that Guardian readers dislike (Obama's ratings falling) with something that appeals to their prejudices".
Brian Micklethwait, 23 Jan 2010, points out that the "racist" explanation for Obama's decline in popularity makes no sense:
"how come those who are now backlashing ... picked Obama to be President in the first place? ... Did a lot of Americans deliberately pick Obama, so that they could later hurl racist abuse at him? Come on. Obama's presence in the White House is evidence that racism in America is abating. Millions upon millions of Americans wanted Obama to do well and were eager to give him a chance because he is black. But, they are now disappointed. Are they disappointed because he is black? Have they only just noticed?"
Bush as Hitler, Swastika-Mania: A Retrospective, by Zombie, Aug 14, 2009:
"Hitler and swastikas were referenced incessantly at basically every single protest during the Bush administration. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying".
Hilarious story of a CNN journalist
who used a Bush-Hitler comparison approvingly in a 2006 story
... and got offended by an Obama-Hitler comparison in 2009.
It's not just the media.
Obama's Press Secretary
Robert Gibbs
complained in 2009
of the partisan debate over healthcare.
He idiotically says:
"Imagine five years ago somebody comparing healthcare reform to 9/11.
Imagine just a few years ago, had somebody walked around with images of Hitler."
As Victor Davis Hanson says: "Has Robert Gibbs Been on Mars?"
He points out that not only did moron street protesters (endlessly) compare Bush to Hitler,
but leading Democrats did too.
Victor Davis Hanson roundup, September 22, 2009, of all the complaints from
the Democrats and the left
that criticism of Obama is "racist".
He points out that calling someone racist is a great strategy:
"There are no downsides to the charge. It is akin to calling someone a wife-beater or molester. Conversation turns to "No, I'm really not!" It ends all discussion. The perpetrator suffers no censure."
Nov 2004:
LA Weekly
runs this cover
in response to the re-election of Bush.
Aug 2009:
LA Weekly
complains about this anonymous poster of Obama,
sniffing that:
"The only thing missing is a noose."
(That is, that Obama's critics are racists.)
See also
unapologetic followup:
"I do believe the poster appeals to people who see in it a validation of their own racial prejudices
...
the fears of the art lovers who champion the Obama Socialism poster are all about race - about losing their skin privileges, about the possible airing of old crimes and grievances committed against blacks."
In other words, anyone who criticises the great leader is a racist!
July 2008: Vanity Fair
(a big media magazine, published worldwide)
draws Bush as The Joker.
Aug 2009:
The media throws a hissy fit about anonymous (non-media, non-published)
poster of Obama as The Joker.
The original image.
From this Flickr feed.
Amusingly, contrary to the confident assertions that the image was racist,
it turned out to be the work of a young left-wing Palestinian-American,
Firas Alkhateeb
(or Firas Al Khateeb
or Firas Khateeb).
In an interview
he says he
prefers Obama to Bush,
and doesn't like the way someone added "socialism" to his picture.
"To accuse him of being a socialist is really ... immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?"
Flickr censored
the above image
on spurious grounds.
Try search.
Montage of Bush demonisation over the years.
See original.
From here.
Death of a President (2006),
a mainstream film about the fictional assassination of Bush.
I wonder if we will soon see films about the assassination of Obama?
by
John Ziegler (2009).
Since 1995.
