Aaaaaand here we go again. The entire "news" industry has been barking up the wrong tree ... for days, now. Obama has been mocking a McCain ad from June, which showed Obama's face replacing faces on the $ 100 bill, the Statue of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore, since it first came out. But the "news" industry is still pretending that Obama was talking about the "Celeb" ad ... from last week.
How do these idiots keep their jobs? Or maybe this is their job?
The "news" industry, and the rightwing blogsphere, can pretend that Obama's "dollar bill" comments are coming out of left field by ignoring the actual "dollar bill" ad that Senator Obama is talking about. They can furthermore pretend that Obama is "playing the race card," all while talking about the wrong ad!
Last week, the McCain campaign accused Obama of playing the race card in comments that the McCain people claimed were referring to their "Celeb" ad. Since that time, most of the "news" industry has been sticking to the McCain campaign's talking-points, even though the "dollar bill" ad is available on youtube.com. Furthermore, Obama has been mocking that ad since it came out in June. How are Obama's comments from June supposed to be "in response" to a McCain ad from last week?
They've had five days to correct the story, but they're not interested.
Obama was talking about an ad that shows his face on the $100 bill, the Statue of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore. Why might Obama have thought that this ad was making an issue of his appearance and ethnicity? Because the ad begins with Obama's ill-fated seal. Then, using that as a jumping off point, the ad switches to Obama's face, using it to replace the familiar faces of Benjamin Franklin, Charlotte Bartholdi, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Soon, there is nothing left but Obama's face, staring where all these icons once stood. Where did all the white people go?
This is how Obama described the purpose of the ad:
"It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?"
"Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face. So what they are going to try to do is make you scared of me: He’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. He doesn’t look all those other presidents on those dollar bills."
Lumped in with references to the McCain campaign's use of Obama's appearance, we can see references to other attacks: Obama has done nothing; Obama wants to lose the war to win the election. The Obama campaign was even willing to tell a reporter where and why Obama uses those comments:
A spokeswoman said Obama makes "dollar-bill" type comments mostly in campaign stops to conservative areas and almost always in response to a question.
Michael C. Bender of the Palm Beach Post: the last reporter in America ... on his blog.
Higher up the journalism foodchain, Michael C. Bender's colleagues were busy blowing it, and blowing it hard, talking about Obama's dollar bill comments but not McCain's dollar bill ad:
The Wall Street Journal got it wrong. Then, The Wall Street Journal got it wrong again. Before Rupert Murdoch bought them out, they could only have managed half that output. Progress!
Jake Tapper got it wrong. He doesn't seem to realize that the comparison between Obama and the presidents on our bills has already happened, sayin "he said McCain and the Republicans would make an issue of the fact that he doesn't look like presidents who have been on the dollar bills."
"Would make an issue"? That would be six weeks before Jake Tapper wrote that sentence. This is especially sad, because Jake actually quotes Obama explaining the relationship between the "dollar bill" ad, which Obama called "cynical," and the rest of the McCain campaign.
"And so what I think has been an approach [of] the McCain campaign is to say, 'He’s risky,'" Obama continued. "To try to divert focus from the fact that they don’t have any new ideas when it comes to fixing the economy or dealing with health care or dealing with education. ... Let me be clear: In no way do I think that John McCain’s campaign was being racist; I think they’re cynical. And I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues. And so it’s of a piece with the Britney/Paris ad or the most recent Web site, or the allegation that somehow I wouldn’t go visit the troops unless I had reporters with me, which every reporter who was on the trip knows is absolutely not true."
You'd think Jake Tapper would notice that Obama compared one thing to another, saying that they're similar, because ... he just did.
Fred Hiatt gets it wrong, but getting it wrong is a great springboard for Fred Hiatt to tell you how the "Southern Strategy" never existed. It seems Fred Hiatt left Fred Hiatt on "automatic" this weekend.
On the News Hour, Jim Lehrer, Mark Shields, and David Brooks managed to talk about the wrong ad for several minutes.
Ben Smith at Politico eventually got it right, if only because his readers wrote into correct him. Maybe Ben Smith should be reading them instead?
Rasmussen even commissioned a poll on the wrong ad, finding (surprise, surprise!) that few voters saw any racism in the "Celeb" ad.
But this is the same bait-and-switch that CBS "News" pulled, in reverse, with John McCain two weeks back, then they edited McCain's response to one question onto Katie Couric asking a different question, all to protect the Republican. Rasmussen is doing this backwards to attack a Democrat.
Rasmussen's goofy poll provided an excuse for the usual rightwing idiots to say the same thing. Or rather, Newsbusters tried to say the same thing, but they can't spell, coming out instead with "MSNBC, CNN say Britney ad racis [sic], but American people do not". Uh-huh. That's OK, Newsbusters, you tried your best. Here's a cookie.
The American Thinker showed, once again, why oxymorons are best left to comedians.
The Moderate Voice fell for it, too. Looks like being "moderate," whatever that can mean in this day and age, isn't a secret shortcut to the truth. Who knew?
Another source of confusion surrounded the use of the expression "to play the race card." The expression can mean one of two things:
- false accusations of racism, used to intimidate
- racist allegations, used to manipulate
That's what it means in actual use by literate people, which leaves out journalists. ABC "News" breathlessly reported that the Obama campaign had "admitted to playing the race card," when the story showed only that Obama saw the "dollar bill" ad as referring to his appearance. That's all. So, for ABC "News," any reference to race is "playing the race card"?
Some idiot at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette made the opposite mistake, coining a whole new phrase "to play the racist card." The really sad thing about making up new words and phrases in order to say what existing words and phrases can already convey is that, although you've just made a fool of yourself, those who know better probably won't say anything. They'll just quietly write your dumb ass off and you'll never know why they don't take you seriously any more.
Daily KOS got it right.
Huffington Post got it right.
Used to be, it was Sean Hannity's trick to shake his head and hold up his hands, pretending to not understand the black and white of why he was an idiot. Now, it's the whole goddamned "news" industry, going "racism? what racism?" while talking about the wrong ad.
Once again, I had to go to the blogsphere to get the facts. Just one more reason we're better than them. Million-dollar operations are barking up the wrong tree, so I had to stumble across a chance comment in the comment section of eschatonblog.com (by Hesiod) in order to get the truth.
What is the information that we get from our "news" media supposed to be good for? It doesn't seem to be intended to help anyone deal with the real world, because it has so little to do with reality.
What the hell is this stuff for? Why is it "news" when it's been wrong for days?
.