I am finding myself living for Saturday evening lately, when my favorite columnist comes out with his gems of wisdom.
Frank Rich is the most clear eyed and strongest voice in this election.
Again, this week he did not disappoint. Actually the only time he does disappoint is when he goes on vacation.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Rich begins with taking the press to task for their hypocritical complaining about why Obama is not 20 points ahead in the polls. And mentions that if he had a 17 point lead, like Dukakis did in 1988 at this time, they would be lambasting him for being like Dukakis.
He also points out that no one in recent history at this point in the election was any further ahead then Obama is right now but, the press insists on criticizing Obama.
He also points to the media's hyperventilation over everything that shows a point or two movement as proof that Obama has lost.
Obama has also been defeated by racism (again). He can’t connect and "close the deal" with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has damned as the "foreign, exotic place" of Hawaii. As The Economist sums up the received wisdom, "lunch-pail Ohio Democrats" find Obama’s ideas of change "airy-fairy" and are all asking, "Who on earth is this guy?"
My favorite part is when Frank lays out the image of McCain circa: 2000. And how the media is still blinded by that image and it's firmly in place:
What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the "agents of intolerance" of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.
Frank then lays out the real McCain that the media refuses to see, to talk about or investigate:
McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after "Mission Accomplished." By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.
The problem is that the media is living in the fantasy of 2000 and not letting the voters, or themselves, see the true face of John McCain. And as such, the media is playing a double standard and hiding behind the false contention that they need to make Obama jump through higher and higher loops and then say he is a failure because the people do not know who Obama really is.
Nevermind that the people told pew they have heard alot about Obama but, nothing about McCain. They hear about Obama all the time. They have been told who McCain really is.
I think it is coming time for our mighty voices to be heard. To organize with other blogs and remind the media of the power on the left side in these blogs and demand that the press start covering this election fairly and start to tell the truth about McCain.
But, that is for another diary.