Brent Bozell
Throughout the very long presidential election cycle, two trends
remained consistent. The media lauded Obama no matter how horrendous his
record, and they savaged Obama’s Republican contenders as ridiculous
pretenders.
From the start of the Republican race in 2011, every candidate who took
the lead then took an unfair beating. They even slimed Sarah Palin in
case she decided to run. Martin Bashir announced she was “vacuous,
crass, and according to almost every biographer, vindictive too.”
Newsweek mocked Michele Bachmann on its cover, making her look pale,
confused and nutty, with the headline “The Queen of Rage.” Politico and
other media outlets tried to pin sexual harassment claims on Herman Cain
without naming, or even knowing the accusers.
The Washington Post killed trees to report in earth-shaking depth how
the Rick Perry family had leased a hunting property where once, the
N-word was painted on a rock, and never mind it was the Rick Perry
family that covered it with white paint. Chris Matthews smeared Newt
Gingrich, saying "He looks like a car bomber...He looks like he loves
torturing." Matthews thought Newt was also polluting the civil
discourse. “Ever since he appeared on the national scene, politics has
been nastier, more feral, too often uglier.”
Then late in the cycle came the dark horse, Rick Santorum. He emerged
and was slaughtered. Former New York Times editor Bill Keller sneered he
“sounds like he’s creeping up on a Christian version of Sharia law.”
The only one who seemed to miss his own special episode of When
Journalists Attack was Mitt Romney. But when he emerged as the nominee,
all bets were off. The Washington Post published a 5,400-word "expose"
documenting the shocking revelation that teenaged Romney just may have
pinned a boy down and cut his hair. In 1965.
To be sure, The Washington Post did publish a historical piece on
Obama’s high school career, as well. Exactly a month after its
Romney-Running-With-Scissors article, it devoted 5,500 words in the
Sports section to an excerpt of David Maraniss's new biography with the
headline “President Obama’s Love for Basketball Can be Traced Back to
His High School Team.”
Despite the news media’s infatuation with him, Obama rarely
reciprocated. He reduced to a trickle the media’s access by minimizing
the number of White House press conferences. He hasn’t called one since
June. Instead, he hop-scotched from one flippantly unserious interview
to another, from Leno to Letterman, from “The View” to “Access
Hollywood.” When Obama did consent to interviews with “news” shows, it
was more of the same, with embarrassing fawn-a-thons from Charlie Rose
at CBS and Brian Williams at NBC.
Even the September 11 attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya –
which resulted in the deaths of our ambassador and three others, and the
subsequent, and ongoing serial dishonesty of this administration in its
refusal to take a lick of blame for the scandalous lack of security,
and the refusal to help the men in need -- has been brushed under the
rug to help Obama. The only man hammered on that issue was Mitt Romney.
Anyone who hoped any of the liberal debate moderators would bring
accountability to Obama saw his hopes eviscerated. Anyone who hoped
Steve Kroft would press Obama in his September 12 “60 Minutes” interview
only saw Obama insisting “Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to
shoot first and aim later.”
This passage from Peter Baker of The New York Times says it all about
Obama’s press avoidance all the way to Election Day: “Nor has Mr. Obama
faced many tough questions lately, like those about the response to the
attack in Benghazi, Libya, since he generally does not take questions
from the reporters who trail him everywhere. Instead, he sticks to
generally friendlier broadcast interviews, sometimes giving seven
minutes to a local television station or calling in to drive-time radio
disc jockeys with nicknames like Roadkill.”
How can you read that and not think journalism is roadkill?
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