So, I just caught today's insipid installment of Good Morning America, and was treated to a miserably sad example of Balance in the media.
Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer headed up a fabulous piece in which the show sent undercover staffers to Bush and Kerry rallies wearing T-Shirts for the opposite candidate. Throughout the entire piece, they mentioned how "Both campaigns" have been accused of silencing opposition voices, and Sawyer even made this icky comment toward the end of the piece about how both campaigns should "just lighten up". [more below the fold]
Here are the two events that GMA made every effort to deem equivalent.
- At the Kerry rally, the GMA staffers arrived in their Bush/Cheney t-shirts. Many attendees of the rally taunted them -- they showed video of one woman saying "Fuck Bush and Fuck You." to them. Then, they reported, a number of Kerry volunteers basically surrounded the Bush/Cheney t-shirt wearers, making them less visible.
- At the Bush rally, the GMA staffers wore Kerry/Edwards t-shirts. They endured similar hollers and taunts. Then, a number of Bush campaign staffers told them they had to leave. And called in local police to remove them from the area and escort them some distance away.
Somehow, according to Good Morning America, it's the same thing when, on Kerry's side, volunteers try to make more noise than the other guys by showing their support in far greater numbers than the opposition... as when, on Bush's side, they campaign staffers forcibly eject all such opposition folks by bringing in the cops.
Same thing happened with the voter fraud issues -- when Bush's supporters do something that would score a 9 on the 1-10 Nasty And Awful Rating Scale, and then Kerry's supporters do something worthy of maybe a 3, the report goes "Both campaigns engaged in some nasty and awful tactics today. Can't they all just lighten up?!"
Gawd, I hate the liberal media....