Could you imagine a media world where, whenever the leader of the other party spoke at a staged event, news reports, even televised ones, spent several paragraphs explaining how staged it was?
Welcome to the media world of the GOP:
CNN's Joe Johns at a Democratic Social Security event (emphasis mine):
JOHNS: But at this
carefully scripted event, Democrats were taking very little risk of their own,
taking no questions from the audience. The real people who got to speak were invited guests sitting on the stage.
[...]
JOHNS: It was basically a rally, with New York Senator Charles Schumer even leading a chant.
[...]
JOHNS: A far cry from the free-wheeling town meeting last week featuring Senate Republican whip Rick Santorum, who was peppered with often critical questions and skeptical comments from Democrats who had infiltrated the crowd. Here in New York, almost no evidence of dissenting views.
Yes, you see, the Republicans are completely open with their town halls. They believe in a little thing called freedom of speech! Maybe the Democrats should try that sometime. My favorite part:
Democrats said it was OK because the president was across the river in New Jersey making his best case.
No, it's "OK" because the President is doing THE EXACT SAME THING TO THE NTH DEGREE just across the river. You see, it's de rigueur (sorry, "freedom standard procedure") for the president to hold closed forums while the media makes no such castigation about it -- it's rarely even mentioned. In fact,
in Dana Bash's piece just prior about the president's event? No mention.
To be fair, Johns did have a quote from a partisan source, Lautenberg, that defended against the reporter's criticism, asking, "Is there a better scripted event than George Bush today, President Bush today, in New Jersey having vetted the whole audience in an armory?" But while that single-sentence defense was from a partisan source, the criticism of the event came from the "voice of authority," the reporter, and was far more extensive, while making no acknowledgement that the president goes above and beyond this level of insularity ALL THE TIME. In fact, Johns actually tried to construe the opposite: that Republican events are shining paragons of the democratic ideal. In reality, Bush will be holding hermetically-sealed confabs every day for the next two months, and the only reason Santorum may have been surprised by the critical questions at his event is because he was at a presidential event before, where the hardest question was, "I believe in you completely. How can I help enact your wonderful Social Security plan?"
If you want to read Bash's piece for comparison, it's in the same Inside Politics transcript. Also, notice which piece begins with a repeated bumper-sticker message from the other side, a description of the other side's protests with an explanation of the protesters' message, and a quote from protest organizers. Perhaps because Democratic protests are just so gosh darn common, they're not quite so noteworthy.
Why not contact Inside Politics and request that, if they're going to ignore the fact that Bush's "town hall forums" are all staged events, that they, you know, carefully omit the truth equally for both sides? Or, even better: make a big deal about it WHENEVER ANYBODY DOES IT. Then, not only will Democrats not be looking to copy the president's strategy, but the president may actually stop doing it himself when it leads to uniformly negative coverage.
Of course, they might not get turkee from the preznit then.