Well, the latest movie to bash Richard Nixon is just coming out. Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon" about the famous interviews with the former president and British journalist David Frost was previewed by a select group in Washington followed by a panel discussion. Naturally, Howard and his writing staff tried to draw parallels between Nixon's crimes and President George W. Bush. This drew the ire of one of the last honest journalist, Chris Wallace of Fox News:
But then "FOX News Sunday" host Chris Wallace, braving the liberal wind, asked a question, which was actually more of an accusation. "To compare George W. Bush to Richard Nixon is to trivialize Nixon's crimes and is a disservice to Bush," Wallace said. Recalling that 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, and noting that there hadn't been any attacks on U.S. soil since, Wallace suggested that something had been done right. That’s why, he said, "we are all sitting here tonight so comfortably"-and not afraid of another terrorist attack. Moreover, Wallace said, "Richard Nixon's crimes were committed solely for his own political gain, whereas George W. Bush was trying to protect the American people." To suggest otherwise, Wallace insisted, "was a grave misrepresentation of history, then and now." And, amazingly, Wallace received a smattering of applause.
Seemingly not wanting to get into a fight with the TV newsman, Dallek answered that we knew full well of Nixon's criminality because of the Watergate tapes, but that no similar documentary record existed yet for Bush. Only when such information comes out, Dallek suggested, would the full horror of Bush's presidency become visible. Which, of course, proved Wallace's point: It was not fair to equate proven facts about Nixon with mere allegations about Bush.
"You make suppositions on no facts whatsoever," Wallace concluded.
"Do you read The New York Times?" Dallek countered. That might not have been the strongest comeback ever, but it worked just fine with this audience. And with that, the Q & A session resumed its liberal course for the rest of the evening.
Today's journalists and so-called historians never let facts or the lack thereof get in the way of what they want to believe. The dirty secret is the Robert Dallek's of the world want us to have another Nixon presidency. Corruption allows journalists and historians a chance to be seen, to be in the arena. The Vietnam/Watergate era is for journalists what the Babe Ruth era was for baseball. They want to relive it any way they can, even if it means blurring the line between allegations and facts. Journalism died in 2008 and it won't rise from the ashes, if at all, until the Watergate era journalists are dead and gone.
This is the kind of sharp, intelligent thinking coming from our news media. Alex Witt, anchor at MSNBC: (Hat tip: Hot Air)
ALEX WITT: You know, John, and it's interesting because there are many who had such an optimistic and hopeful opinion of things, and you certainly can't expect things to change [snaps fingers] on a dime overnight, but there are many who suggested that with the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration there would be something of a lull in terrorism attacks. There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought - at least hoped - would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.
This woman actually thought that Barack Obama's election and celebrity status around the world would be enough to stop terrorism. It boggles the mind that there are so many members of the Fourth Estate that think this way.
If Barack Obama wants to be taken seriously as a man of hope and change that will steady the economy, he needs to get Charles Rangel to resign his Chairmanship of the House Ways & Means Committee. Even the Washington Post knows Rangel is a political landmine and wants him out of the way so as not to hurt their savior. However, let's say Obama does try this. He's gonna have to use all the pressure he can muster from all his allies to make it happen. Rangel is a stubborn egomaniac who wouldn't go without a lot of shrieking. When you think about it, there might be less blood if he stayed on as Chairman and the MSM just ran interference like they usual do for The One. Either way, we should keep an eye on this story.
Victor Davis Hanson gives a brilliant eulogy for objective journalism over at The Corner:
There will come a time in the year ahead when either Obama's unexamined past will come back to haunt him, or his inexperience and tentativeness in foreign affairs will be embarrassingly apparent, or his European-socialist agenda for domestic programs simply won't work. And as public opinion falls, what will MSNBC, the New York Times, the editors of Newsweek, a Chris Matthews or the anchors at the major networks say?
In short, we live now in the Age of Post-Journalism. All that was before is now over, as this generation of journalists voluntarily destroyed the hallowed notion of objectivity and they will have no idea quite how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
Now that Obama has been elected, his friends can roam around a little more freely. First up is domestic terrorist Bill Ayers who, with the help of The New Yorker is picking up where he left off on September 11, 2001. Ron Radosh has the scoop.
Well, it's the morning after the big election and the sun still came up. Time to pick up the pieces and move forward. Obama wins, the Dems win Congress but don't get the huge majorities they wanted. Now we have to wait and see just how radical Washington is going to be and whether the Republicans can reinvent themselves with some fresh blood.
Thankfully, this means we can put John McCain out of our lives. Hopefully, he'll retire at terms end and the Republicans will learn that they have to run as Republicans if they want to win office. The MSM and the Peggy Noonan elitists will try and blame this on Palin even though she was the only thing that kept the race reasonably close.
Turns out Karl Rove was right. Dan McLaughlin at RedState points out that his philosophy that you shore up your base, shore up your Red Staters in order to win works. It worked for Bush twice. McCain tried to appeal to moderates and Democrats and look what it got him. He pandered on Amnesty and yet he got a small percentage of the Hispanic vote. Will these lessons be learned?
In the meantime, closer to home, those of us in the alternative media will have to gird our loins and ready for battle on the Fairness Doctrine and other attempts to silence dissenting voices (yes, we're the dissenters now). Should be fun.
We're one day away from an election in which the MSM worldwide is telling us that it's already over and Obama will be elected. Meanwhile, Syria is amassing troops on the Lebanese border.
Coincidence?
UPDATE:Jerrold Nadler gives us a preview of the new foreign policy of the United States.
Ah, another bipartisan journalistic experiment bites the dust and embraces it's inner elitism. Really, wouldn't we be more surprised if it had actually worked?
Okay folks, we're eight days away from this election and the time to get scared is now. No longer is the charge that Obama is a marxist or at least has marxist leanings just the ravings of a lunatic right-winger on a chat board. Obama wants to turn the United States of America on its head. The recent unearthed audio of Obama discussing the Warren Court and wealth redistribution should be enough to give anyone pause.
Barack Obama complains that the Constitution is a "charter of negative liberties". That's because the Constitution was intended as a limiting document, to curtail the power of the federal government vis-a-vis the states and the individual. The founders intended at the time to limit the reach of the federal government, and built the Constitution accordingly.
Barack Obama wants to reverse that entirely. And that's radical change you'd better believe in, or else.
Meanwhile, a reporter in Florida brings up the old Marxist quote "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" in an interview with Joe Biden and now, she is banned from talking to the Obama campaign.
With Barbara West being a rare exception, we have a national news media that is not having it's First Amendment rights curtailed by the government, no, it's doing that to itself. Instead of the media being taken over by a political party or government, it's developed Stockholm Syndrome and is selling out journalistic ethics at an alarming rate.
There's a small kerfuffle going on at National Review as Christopher Buckley, the son of the magazine's founder William F. Buckley recently announced in a column that he is voting for Obama this November. Christopher Buckley is the writer of many satirical books, though I've never read any I hear they're pretty good. But let's face it, he was never going to be known as anything more than the son of WFB. Now the Washington establishment (and many others) are convinced that Obama is going to win the presidency. What is a political wonk to do? Why, make sure he has a place at the table. Rush hit on this point recently. You see the likes of David Brooks and David Gergan doing what they can to slam the Republican Party and conservatives. They want to keep their TV appearances going for the next eight years, so they have to lay the groundwork. Buckley has now resigned from his column at NRO and claimed it was due to a "tsunami" of displeasure from readers. Rich Lowry writes in The Corner that that's not the case and Buckley is trying to generate a controversy when there isn't really one there. Again, laying the groundwork. There's nothing more popular with the MSM than being a Republican that hates Republicans. Having the name Buckley, but talking liberal is enough to earn about 300+ appearances with Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann.
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE? So we've had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers' bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it's a sign that anger is out of control in American politics? It's nice of McCain to try to tamp that down, and James Taranto sounds a proper cautionary note -- but, please, can we also note the staggering level of hypocrisy here? (And that's before we get to the Obama campaign's thuggish tactics aimed at silencing critics.)
The Angry Left has gotten away with all sorts of beyond-the-pale behavior throughout the Bush Administration. The double standards involved -- particularly on the part of the press -- are what are feeding this anger. (Indeed, as Ann Althouse and John Leo have noted, the reporting on this very issue is dubious). So while asking for McCain supporters to chill a bit, can we also ask the press to start doing its job rather than openly shilling for a Democratic victory? Self-control is for everybody, if it's for anybody. . . .
The MSM is an arm of the Democrat Party and could turn into an American Pravda come January 20.
Glenn Reynolds got an email from an anonymous worker in a major newsroom stating that the fix is in to get Obama elected. No big surprise, but telling nonetheless.
I think the past few days are a prime example of why the Founding Fathers wanted a free press and why they thought it so important to democracy. They knew that if the press was government run, it meant the government would have near unlimited power over information. That being said, I ask you, aren't we there today? Don't we have a situation where a faction of our government has unlimited power over the flow of information. Sure we have blogs and talk radio, but they reach a very small percentage of the population. The MSM is still the main source of information for the people, and so very much of what they report is simply wrong, simply that of a particular faction of the government and the culture. I hate to sound like a chicken-little, sky is falling ideologue, but I'm very concerned that we've reached a point where our so-called watchdogs, our so-called protectors of the First Amendment are going to elect a man to the presidency that knows nothing that isn't explained to him first, that can't speak eloquently without a teleprompter and is tied to people that hate everything this country stands for. Top it off we the fact that we are making moves this very day to socialize a portion of our economy which will lead to more and more socialism in the future. The people that caused this financial crisis are the people charged to fix it, but with a few exceptions, there is no mention of this fact in the press. Is it time to panic?
While we have a presidential candidate trying to horn in on negotiations over troop withdrawals from Iraq, the media is more interested in Sarah Palin's tanning bed and who paid for it. Journalism is dead.
To be honest, I've never read the Atlantic Monthly once, don't know much about it, but when conservatives start listing out their media enemies, the Atlantic Monthly is rarely mentioned. Now, it has gained membership in the elite club that is the Driveby Media by sending a McCain-hating photographer to take a picture of McCain for the magazine. The photographer in question has admitted to trying to make McCain look as bad as possible.
Then you have Charlie Gibson and ABC. When looking at the MSM, ABC has in the past few years developed a reputation as the least worst of the liberally-biased media (a lot of that is due to Jake Tapper). Charlie Gibson was thought by many as a nice, even-handed guy. Then he gets the Sarah Palin review and decides to act like John Houseman in The Paper Chase. Nice going, Charlie. Whatever inroads ABC was making with the conservatives (who do watch television and vote with their dollars like everyone else) are now gone.
And again, it needs to be said. No one is saying Sarah Palin shouldn't have to face tough questioning, she should, but so should Barack Obama and they both should be treated with respect.
Amazingly, CNN did a segment that debunked all the ridiculous rumors about Sarah Palin. This video is an excellent primer on how these rumors get started and is made all the more amazing by the fact that so-called serious journalists fall for them. These serious journalists also refuse to retract.
Let's hope so. From Jeff Jarvis (Hat tip: Instapundit):
New Jersey's Star-Ledger today put out an entire edition without anything from the Associated Press within. The sharp-eyed reader will notice lots of local news by staff plus articles from other papers-Washington Post, LA Times, McClatchy, the Glouceseter County Times-and content from online services such as Sportsticker.
It's been a bad couple of weeks for Barack Obama. Since Sarah Palin entered the stage he's been flailing. Yesterday, he made a remark that lipstick on a pig is still a pig which the press took as a swipe at Palin. Obama has called this a trumped up media story and he has a point. He may very well have not meant it the way it sounded, but that in and of itself is telling. Let's assume he didn't mean it the way it sounded, a smart politician would know better than to risk giving people the opportunity to make that assumption. This is why Obama is referred to as a gaffe-machine. It's also why Dan Quayle got a lot of criticism from his own party. When he hit the stage in 1988, he made a lot of gaffes that while innocent showed a lack of political maturity. Since he was a Republican, they were magnified. Obama's now in a tight race and if he wants to play with the big boys, he has to know better.
Meanwhile, someone who by now should know better, Joe Biden, asked a man in a wheelchair to stand up. Innocent mistake, but in the political arena it's damaging. Captain Ed points out the urban legend that President Bush waved to a blind Stevie Wonder (when in fact he was waving at Kelsey Grammar). You gotta be careful.
She's a beautiful woman and a strong woman. She seemed just a touch overwhelmed at the beginning, but I think that was emotion. She started the speech going through the family stuff as every candidate has to do...
...then she took off.
My favorite line was how she would explain to Obama/Biden exactly what being a Mayor/Governor entails. It was at that moment that we got the Sarah Palin Look (trademark pending). It's a look that says, "I'm gonna kick your ass!"
After this she started to loosen up. When talking about energy she really seemed to be in her element. McCain needs to use her for that in a big way.
Then it was standup comedy as she slammed Obama's bravado from his Greek temple to his self-proclaimed Moses-like qualities, not to mention a shot at Harry Reid's manhood. Can you say "barracuda?"
Bottom line: I like her, I feel better, and I think she may just have what it takes. Stay tuned.
Lorie Byrd gives an excellent primer on what I've been talking about for years: the media has a template for taking a smear and making it part of pop culture.
The next volley from the MSM is to push the meme that Sarah Palin is the next Thomas Eagleton. They are really going for broke to destroy this woman, but let me tell you, I can understand why. If McCain were to actually chicken out and dump her from the ticket, that's it...game over. I'll start blogging about ancient pottery techniques and call myself Sally, because there would be no point in talking about the election. It would be over. Obama would be president.
Just the fact that I'm talking about this shows the power of the MSM. They do whatever they can to make us think in a certain way, and unfortunately, we fall for it all too often. I don't see Sarah Palin dropping out, there's no reason for it and she's got millions on her side.
The GOP and the MSM are now in an all out war. Who is going to win?
Just watching the coverage on Fox News and Geraldo Rivera is talking to all the National Guardsmen from Louisiana who weren't able to help out during Hurricane Katrina because George W. Bush sent them to Iraq. So very right-winged Fox News.
It isn't going to be long before members of the Drive-Bys or the Democrats or their spokesman start talking about how irresponsible she was to get pregnant at 44.
So far, Alan Colmes has come closest to taking the bait by wondering aloud if Palin took the proper prenatal measures during her pregnancy. That would be enough right there, but Colmes, apparently sensing he stepped in it, has deleted the post from his webpage. Nice.
Well, it's been about 8 hours since John McCain introduced his Vice Presidential running-mate Sarah Palin. Here's a short list of what's been thrown at the Alaska Governor is this small time-frame:
1) Daily Kos speculates that Palin's baby with Down's Syndrome is actual the child of her eldest daughter and Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover it up.
2) Wired Magazine reports that Palin wants creationism taught in schools.
3) Florida Democrat Robert Wexler accuses Palin of being a Nazi sympathizer.
4) House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says Palin is a worse VP pick than Dan Quayle. (If he truly believed that, you'd think he'd be happier)
That's just a short list and all I have the patience for. It's very frustrating to see all this but such is life in America. Gotta walk away from it for awhile, for sanity's sake.
I've been skimming through the various takes on Michelle Obama's speech last night and discovered quite the interesting contrast. Most of the conservative pundits are quick to say that she did really well and look at the speech with some sense of admiration. A lot of the liberal pundits (as expected) wanted more of a fire and brimstone speech like we saw her give in the primaries. James Carville even said the whole night was wasted as the Dems tried to show a kinder, gentler party with less "Bush is the devil" rhetoric. So far, the most interesting take has been Byron York's comparing the two Michelle Obama speeches from last night and the one in Charlotte, North Carolina last May. Which is genuine? Obviously the Charlotte speech, but like good little slaves to the idiot box we believe what we're told. Michelle Obama is a loving mother and a patriot who speaks fondly of the America Dream. Sure, I'll buy that...and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Rendell Calls Out MSM On Obama Bias, MSM Takes Umbrage
He may be your typical Philadelphia crook politician, but I've always had a soft-spot for Ed Rendell. With him, you know where you stand, and he couldn't be more right about the media.
"MSNBC was the official network of the Obama campaign," Rendell said, who called their coverage "absolutely embarrassing."
Chris Matthews, Rendell said, "loses his impartiality when he talks about the Clintons.”
At that point, PBS's Judy Woodruff, who was moderating the moderators event, said: "Why don’t we let Governor Rendell sit down."
That was met with applause from the crowd of big-time media figures, which included Arianna Huffington, Gwen Ifill, Al Hunt, and Chuck Todd.
Woodruff allowed Brokaw to respond, and in defending the network, he said that Matthews and Keith Olbermann are "not the only voices" on MSNBC.
Yes Tom, there was another voice, Tim Russert, but he's dead. Now MSNBC is just the "Daily Show" with a bigger budget.
The MSM blackout of the story is over, at least at ABC where they got the exclusive confession interview on Nightline tonight. Now the interesting part...how does the rest of the MSM respond?
Can we now finally say conclusively and without argument that there's a liberal bias in the media?
MORE:Two things really stand out in the confession:
Edwards made a point of telling Woodruff that his wife's cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter.
Yeah, instead of being just a scumbag for cheating on his wife, he doesn't want to be labelled an über-scumbag for cheating on his wife while she has cancer.
And the pièce de résistance:
Edwards denied paying any money to Hunter to keep her from going public but said it was possible some of his friends or supporters may have made payments without telling him.
Classic! The best hush money denial ever! This guy was almost our Vice President folks!
Democrats always lose their cool when the MSM doesn't tow the party line 100%. In Harry Reid's case, he becomes as rude as a two-year old.
In the exchange, Reid told one reporter she should "watch the [Senate] floor more often. … You might learn something."
Another reporter explained she had watched the Senate proceedings and said it was not clear he was … offering separate amendments, to which Reid asked the reporter if she "spoke English."
Probably the most under-the-radar end of a political career in history, but that seems to be the case for John Edwards. For over a year there have been rumors about an affair and a love-child...now the National Enquirer pretty much has an air-tight case. John Hawkins has more.
Credit where credit is due. Hats off to Katie Couric and CBS for actually asking Barack Obama real questions and follow-up questions about the Surge. I thought I'd seen it all with Bill Clinton, but never before have I seen a man so committed to having it both ways.
It's the latest video from the McCain Campaign that's sweeping the Internet. We all know that the MSM is in love with Obama...now here's a condensed version of that love:
It's a nice little video, but its fatal flaw is who it comes from: John McCain. He was once the apple of the MSM's collective eye, but now he's been pushed aside for a younger, more liberal piece of eye-candy. While the video's message is true, coming from McCain one can easily make the "sour-grapes" argument. We need to hope and pray that McCain has learned something from all this...but I'm not optimistic.
The McCain campaign is floating a trial balloon with Robert Novak that the Republican nominee will pick a Vice Presidential running-mate sometime this week. This is either a small attempt to divert attention away from Obama by raising VP speculation or a large attempt to divert attention by actually picking the VP. It could be the latter as there were a lot of Mitt Romney stories last week no doubt put out there to test the waters. We'll see.
President Bush is on a roll as of late. He's really showing why I voted for him twice. Today, he was prodded by the Washington Press Corp to encourage Americans to conserve energy. He didn't take the bait:
"They're smart enough to figure out whether they're going to drive less or not. I mean, you know, it's interesting what the price of gasoline has done," Bush said at a news conference in the White House press room, "is it caused people to drive less. That's why they want smaller cars: They want to conserve. But the consumer's plenty bright. The marketplace works."
"You noticed my statement yesterday, I talked about good conservation and - you know, people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less," he said. "They can balance their own checkbooks."
"It's a little presumptuous on my part to dictate how consumers live their own lives," the president added. "I've got faith in the American people."
Take that last paragraph to heart. There aren't many folks left in Washington that feel that way. Say what you want about President Bush, we're gonna miss him when he's gone and all that's left are Chuck Schumer Stalinists.
SOURCES: BUSH ANGER AT COMING NEW YORK TIMES STORY DETAILING HUNT FOR BIN LADEN... The newspaper is planning to expose a 'highly classified Pentagon order' authorizing Special Operations forces to hunt al-Qaida leader in mountains of Pakistan... DEVELOPING....
And people still wonder why we haven't caught him yet.
If you have some free time today, take a few minutes and read Bruce Bawer's column on the New York Times and the paper's penchant for covering up the acts of tyrants, from Hitler to Stalin, Castro to Saddam. It's a great history lesson.
I used to think like Bernard Goldberg, author of the book Bias, which exposed the liberal slant in the MSM. Goldberg's thesis was that the bias wasn't an orchestrated campaign, but that it was just inherent in MSM reporters...the way they were educated, the pack mentality, etc.
However, these days I'm more inclined to go with the Rush Limbaugh theory that the MSM has a very organized way of covering stories to building up and/or destroy certain people and movements. Case in point, I'm seeing a new reporting line on John McCain's time as POW in Vietnam. About a week ago, we heard from writer Gore Vidal:
Asked what he thinks of McCain, Vidal calls him a "disaster," then tells Deborah Solomon, "Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?"
Solomon replies: "Everyone knows he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam." To which Vidal responds: "That's what he tells us."
I didn't think much of this at the time. The old queen loves to throw out some light anti-Americanism whenever he gets the chance. It also gives us a quick reminder that he was once relevant...a very long time ago. Anyway, today, out of nowhere, I see this story from Vietnam about a former guard at the Hanoi Hilton:
Four decades ago, during the Vietnam war, Mr Duyet was in charge of the notorious Hoa Lo prison - the place where Mr McCain says he was brutally beaten and tortured during five-and-a-half years as an American prisoner of war.
"McCain is my friend," said 75-year-old Mr Duyet as he feeds the caged birds he now keeps in his garden in this coastal city.
"If I was American, I would vote for him."
Awww, how sweet! Well, keep reading:
"But I can confirm to you that we never tortured him. We never tortured any prisoners."
Pardon?
So is Mr Duyet implying that that Senator McCain lied about his treatment at the Hanoi Hilton?
"He did not tell the truth," he says.
"But I can somehow sympathise with him. He lies to American voters in order to get their support for his presidential election."
But the BBC tries a little CYA:
But Mr Duyet's propaganda-perfect version of events is impossible to verify - and should be treated with caution in a country where the Communist authorities still keep a tight control over the media.
Oh yes, I'm sure the gang at Daily Kos and the Huffington Post will take that into consideration.
Welcome folks, to the beginning of the campaign to plant the seed of doubt in the electorate about John McCain's war hero status.
Granted he's in mourning, but Matthews still can't help but use Russert's death to cast aspersions on the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, portraying Russert as a dupe in the nicest possible way.
Matthews ended by saying, "we've lost our quarterback tonight." No, you've lost what was left of journalism at MS/NBC News. Now, it's nothing more than the Daily Show with a huge budget.
Shocking news from NBC as political journalists and "Meet The Press" host Tim Russert has died of a heart attack at the age of 58. Russert was in the tracking booth at NBC's Washington Bureau when he collapsed.
Russert was one of those political reporters that you could tell just loved what he did. You got the sense that he got up every morning anxious to get work and delve into the world of politics. He was probably one of the most fair journalists in the MSM and his loss is not only bad for the profession but especially bad for NBC. I shudder to think of the Peacock's political face being only Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann.
MORE:Rush Limbaugh sums it up beautifully: "He was the closest thing there was at any of the networks to an objective journalist."
The chickens have finally come home to roost for the Clintons. After 15 years of slavish devotion from the MSM, which endeavoured to make every crime committed by the couple seem like the right thing to do, they've found a new love in Barack Obama. To say Bill Clinton is non-plussed would be a massive understatement. He's never faced anything like this before, and the recent Vanity Fair article on his behavior in Hillary's campaign has set him off once again.
"It's part of the national media's attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It's the most biased press coverage in history. It's another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn't do anything about it. The first day he said 'Ah, ah, ah well.' Because that's what they do - he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain-maybe I better quit the church. It's all politics. It's all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don't think anything about it."
Richard Nixon and George W. Bush might have something to say about that, but c'est la vie.
Frankly, I don't know why anyone is surprised by this. It's a right of passage for a former official in a Republican administration. You work for the president, you resign, you write a book slamming your president and the MSM treats you like a hero, plus you sell a lot of books thanks to the media attention. However, when it's a Democrat administration in the cross-hairs, it's a media blackout. How many interviews did Louis Freeh get?
Right now it looks like Hillary wins Indiana while Obama will win North Carolina, though there still could be a bit of the ol' Bradley Effect in the North Carolina exit polls...we'll see.
Regardless, it means the contest will continue, though from everything I'm seeing the media is doing its damnedest to make people believe that this is the end of Hillary. I wish I could enjoy the Hillary bashing, but the alternative is just as scary.
A victim of the Weather Underground talks about the relationship of William Ayers and Barack Obama. Personally, I'd like to hear from Tom Wolfe on this story.
I didn't watch the Democrat Debate last night...I've been having stomach issues lately and thought it a little risky, but Captain Ed over at Hot Air has written his analysis and declares McCain the big winner:
The winner of this debate? John McCain. Both Democrats came out of this diminished, but Obama got destroyed in this exchange. If superdelegates had begun to reconsider their support of Obama after Crackerquiddick, they’re speed-dialing Hillary after watching Gibson dismember Obama on national TV tonight.
And kudos to ABC News for taking on both candidates fearlessly. John McCain has to feel grateful not to be included.
Crackerquiddick? I hadn't heard that either, but apparently it's a word invented by Captain Ed concerning Obama's recent insult to small town America which I'm starting to think may be his biggest mistake. Most people don't know who the Weather Underground were and Rezko is too complicated and common in the age of Jack Abramoff for people to take much notice.
It should also be noted that hard-left TV critic Tom Shales is raging mad at ABC for their "treatment" of the candidates. That tells you that they had a rough night and came off pretty bad.
Meanwhile, McCain can just sit back and watch the carnage. He may end up being the luckiest man that ever lived.
But should anyone care? It's a huge monument to the MSM in the nation's capital, which I guess is appropriate as they do run the government. Ralph Peters at the New York Post calls journalists "parasites." I used to love the profession, but the love affair has waned. Peters puts it best:
What happened? It's pretty straightforward. Journalism was always something of an outsiders' profession. The great war correspondents of the past - Ernie Pyle, Richard Tregaskis, Edward R. Murrow, Bill Mauldin and their like - either came up from the same tough streets or small towns as the soldiers they covered or at least knew the kind of folks who served in the ranks.
Not these days, pardner. Today, big-media journalism is a white-collar, insiders' profession that grows more elitist by the year.
The change began in Vietnam, when ambitious young men (and some women) looking for kicks after college went slumming amid the carnage. Some had big talents; all had big egos.
That's when journalists began casting themselves as the heroes of their stories, as the courageous fighters for truth, as the saviors of the nation and all humanity.
Then came Watergate, when two young reporters brought down a presidency and were rewarded by successive bestsellers and a film in which two real-life nebbishes were played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
Journalism faculties boomed. Journalism began to be written for other journalists, for prizes, not for the people.
Well, the latest movie to bash Richard Nixon is just coming out. Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon" about the famous interviews with the former president and British journalist David Frost was previewed by a select group in Washington followed by a panel discussion. Naturally, Howard and his writing staff tried to draw parallels between Nixon's crimes and President George W. Bush. This drew the ire of one of the last honest journalist, Chris Wallace of Fox News:
