On the way into work this morning I was listening to NPR - now I normally don't listen to NPR but my son decided it was the "best station ever" and programmed it on my radio - and heard the following (paraphrase):
Mitt Romney is calling on the Obama campaign to stop attacking his business record.
Romney: "Wouldn't it be great if Obama talked about his own record over the last 3 and half years?"
The Obama campaign refused to back down and continues to accuse Romney of outsourcing jobs. Mr. Obama will be campaigning in . . .
This was the entire story. I didn't hear where the
President would be campaigning today. My head had exploded and I was screaming at the radio, so the noise was too loud.
A couple of things stood out:
First, there was no mention of Bain. Second, they didn't explain the issue at all. Third, they gave Romney an anti-Obama soundbite. Fourth, they diminished Obama (now I know it's common to call the President "Mister", but in this context it was just one more thing . . .)
Now why is it that Democrats have such a hard time with this? The Bain story has a few moving parts but it's not that hard to understand. Beside that, Romney outsourced jobs when he was Governor. I understand the current consensus that the media needs a horse race, but they seem to be going out of their way to give Romney the advantage.
I wrote in another diary about the now infamous Dan Rather memos, and how the media got caught up in typeface and other meaningless crap and never bothered to look into the content of the memos.
I flashed on that as I listened to NPR make the story about Romney requesting Obama apologize, Romney saying crap about Obama, and Obama refusing to apologize, instead of about Romney's abysmal record in business and as Governor.
This, and all the other media outlets who are minimizing this and in fact amplifying Romney's "I'm the victim and he's a meany" whine to the detriment of the President and to the possibility of an informed electorate, makes me really queasy.
Are we really seeing this again? I mean, looking back we have to give at least half a pass to Al Gore for not managing to overcome this, well, bullshit (notwithstanding his own campaign's errors). Who would think some offhand comment on late night t.v. would be use as a cudgel throughout the campaign (and the rest of his life)? How do you respond to garbage that's beneath your response when the media relentlessly pounds on it? His campaign was caught flatfooted, and while Ann Richards' take on Karl Rove's tactics was certainly informative, no matter what the Gore camp did, the media simply decided to bash the hell out of one candidate and give the other a pass. Every single thing he said, even the clothes he wore, were all fodder for these jackals.
John Kerry promised us that he would not let this happen again, that he would respond forcefully to every barb. We all know what happened there - ambushed by a direct punch in the face. Never saw it coming, and he was knocked on his ass before he knew he'd been hit. Again, though, the media simply decided to swallow it whole, amplify it all day every day for weeks, another gleeful pile-on at the expense of one candidate after another. Whatever complaints we have about Kerry as a candidate, surely the faults of the bumbling "shock and awe" fool were worse. Bush should have had his ass handed to him, and he might have, without the assist of a media beholden to the bottom line of stockholders, and besotted by shock value, salacious rumors, and all manner of sensationalism.
Obama and his campaign staff aren't fools. They made the right choice to go after Romney hard and relentlessly.
I'm no expert, but it seems like they're making the right moves.
So how do we deal with these same media clowns, the ones who muddy the waters by refusing to do any research (or quote the research someone else does), by focusing on this "apology" nonsense instead of reporting the facts and steadfastly maintaining the "center" (which means basically telling us nothing of import)?
If I have any bone to pick it might be that, instead of just refusing to apologize and saying Romney's business record is fair game, maybe they could add to the soundbite the fact that Romney outsourced jobs while he was Governor, as well.
But even if the Obama campaign says everything perfectly, points out every lie with a truckload of straightforward evidence, if the media wants to give Romney a relative pass, they will.
The Romney campaign has tripped itself up several times. Etch-a-Sketch, retroactive retirement, cookiegate, corporations are people, I know Nascar owners, my wife drives two cadillacs, giant speedboat at his huge vacation home, ever-changing positions on every. single. important. issue - and the media just moves on, nothing to see here.
Mitt Romney lies constantly. I mean, I'm not naive. Politicians lie. But I've never seen anything like this. The guy lies about everything. He lies about his childhood, his business record, his record as governor, what he said 10 years ago, what he said yesterday, what he said yesterday about what he said 10 years ago. He lies about the very nature of who he is as a human being, at his core (presuming he has a core). Which is it today - the moderate or the staunch republican darling of "far-right dog farts" (to quote Mother Mags)?
(How I love that phrase, Mother Mags)
I mean, who is this guy? He has no substance, ideas and policies and beliefs just pass right through him, he stands for NOTHING except money, power, getting elected.
Why does the media constantly give him a pass? Why do they give each other a pass for giving him a pass? Why don't they talk about anything of import, you know, that will help us make an informed decision if we can ever get the 47 forms of i.d. together to be able to vote?
Anyway, apologies for ranting. Because freaking NPR -which I haven't listened to for years, partly because their quaint stories (with the recordings of birds tweeting or waves crashing) for some reason remind me of the chicks in the Shweddy Balls skit - totally set me off. I don't have any answers but I know Romney's campaign isn't that clever. They can't succeed without a shitload of money AND a complicit media (Meg Whitman had a shitload of money but she is odious and the media here in CA never gave her a pass). How do we take the media's supposedly "balanced" thumb off the scale? An impossible task, I know.
But we can't have Mitt Romney within 100 miles of D.C., let alone the White House.
He's a sack full of disaster.