David Olive wrote an excellent article in yesterday's Toronto Star about the John McCain circus of lies. Leave it to the Canadian media to cut through the spin with an ease that puts the American media to shame (not a difficult job by any stretch).
The article, entitled News media abetting 'carnival of lies', makes the obvious point of John McCain's strategy to lie consistently and shamelessly, providing a laundry list of examples to illustrate his point (e.g. "Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election", lipstick-gate). The most important point he made in doing so, however, was to expose the media's complicity in abetting this series of lies out of fear of appearing "biased":
Calling anyone a liar, much less a chronic one, is an allegation not to be made lightly. But journalists go beyond caution. When McCain tells a stretcher, as Mark Twain called them, journos look for a matching Obama fib for the sake of "equivalency."
Olive's thesis was corroborated with frightening transparency on Thursday's Larry King Live, featuring the standard talking heads from both sides, as well as Viveca Novak of factcheck.org: **Disclaimer - may contain scenes of Bay Buchanan. Many thanks to jazzence.
This type of clip is what the MSM does on an incessant basis. They will look for a transgression on one side, mine endlessly to find an "equal" transgression on the other side, and then present it to the public as a wash. McCain accuses Obama of being a pedophile. Obama accuses McCain of sharing politics with Rush Limbaugh. They're the same thing. It's a wash!
Of course, this analysis, dishonest in its own right, ignores the role that McCain has as the aggressor and instigator. To avoid being subject to this "false equivalency" spin, the only option Obama has is to hit back:
Thus Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, in addressing McCain's veracity problem, feels obliged to assert that "neither candidate is running the honest, confront-the-hard questions campaign he promised." Apparently Obama should ignore the lies and hope that reciting his universal health plan will carry the day. And ignore the fate of Dems who turned the other cheek, like the swift-boated John Kerry.
Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place: either Obama plays the nice guy and crumbles under the weight of egregious and baseless smears, or Obama retorts and is accused of being every bit as negative and shameless as his Republican counterpart.
This is the Fox News Doctrine at its finest - the right-wing strategy of "working the refs" and creating a paradigm where all other media outlets are now judged solely on their appearance of false neutrality, rather than the strength of their reporting. Neutrality no longer means providing the same opportunity for all candidates and holding them to the same standard. Neutrality now means media outlets must do everything within their power to keep each candidate equal, even when one is clearly inferior. This need for false equivalency is now priority #1, and has come at the sacrifice of sober, intellectually consistent political commentary.