Media Campaigns Hard for Obama

By Tony Blankley

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.

While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)

And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.

Thus, the public image of Obama is of a "man who never was."

I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real-life World War II British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece rather than Sicily in 1943. Operation Mincemeat involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as "Major William Martin, R.M.," which was put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a briefcase containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.

To make the operation credible, British intelligence concocted a fictional life for the corpse, creating a letter from a lover and tickets to a London theater -- all the details of a life, but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media have presented to the nation as Obama is not the real man.

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.

More appalling, a skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last weekend suggested that Gov. Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That show was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Talk about incest.

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.

Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great -- and unflattering -- details on Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.

The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."

That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain's image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.

The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Page Printed from: RealClearPolitics - Articles - Media Campaigns Hard for Obama at September 24, 2008 - 07:13:52 AM PDT

Helps to identify the source: ABOUT TONY BLANKLEY

Sorry, I couldn't find anything from the more respectable Michael Moore or Andrew Sullivan. I'll try harder next time.

Blankley seems to have gotten an advance copy of next week's talking points. The Swift Boat Veterans people are ramping up a whole campaign based around Ayers, since they can't say Obama has loaded his staff with lobbyists, lied about rejecting earmarks, can't remember how many cars or houses he owns, has ties to separatists and militia organizations, chose an economics adviser who was a key player in setting up the current financial meltdown, doesn't know or care who the PM of Spain is, supports teaching creationism in schools, made rape victims pay for their own investigation kits, etc.

They've forgotten the even more damning case about Senator Obama.... he has never hunted moose!

No, there's no mis balance in the mainstream media in favor of Obama. For overwhelming proof just turn on talk radio on the AM side, such as on KRMG 740. No where else are you gonna find so much anti Obama propaganda for hours and hours on end.

And on cable Fox News, O'Reilly has obviously shown he favors McCain for president and then later on Hannity and Colmes usually the discussion runs 2 conservatives favoring McCain against one liberal for Obama.

So let's get over this misconception that the main stream media is biased in favor of Obama. It all balances out if you let it by listening to AM talk radio and watch FOX News during the evening hours. But it's your responsibility as a citizen to make it balance out for you. I have done so and so know that Hannity currently still makes it a big deal over Obama's association with Ayers. He can't get over how few people share his concern over that.

You do know there is a difference between news and commentary, don't you?

(apparently not?)

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Thats funny.

Absolutely. Apparently, you don't grasp that the mainstream media includes commentary programming. And seriously that's what most of the media spends most of it's time pushing--the expressing of opinions or entertainment programming rather than hard news. And if you will notice the author of the above article went beyond hard news coverage of the presidential election.

It's an opinion piece. Of course it's not hard news.

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And a rather stupid one at that. "The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers." -- I started laughing so hard at this point I couldn't finish the article. Are you kidding me? A dramatic, whining commentary and the best he can come up with is THIS? More manufactured outrage from the right over a non-issue. So the "mainstream media" doesn't find any story in such non-sense? Boo-hoo.

It looks like the propagandist machine and the democrats would rather not remember this:

ANCIENT HISTORY, APPARENTLY
2003, that is, when the New York Times ran this article on proposed reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ...

The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session. ...

''The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,'' Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ''We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,'' the independent agency that now regulates the companies. ...

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Maybe it's too much to expect anyone to remember the distant past--2003--but still, it seems remarkable that Barney Frank can make the rounds of the television talk shows, pontificating on the current crisis, without being reminded of his own role.

Power Line
SEPTEMBER 24, 2008

No argument here.

Editorials like this really turn me off on the candidate they're coming from. On both sides, these things are often filled with half-truths and out-right lies. That doesn't (and can't) fairly be imputed to the candidates, but as to their shills, I think it speaks to the shill's confidence in his candidate's message when he has to resort to anything but God's honest truth.

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So what? The Republican Treasury Secretary Paulson was going around saying essentialy the same things as Barney Frank. Instead of trying to discredit, we better hope our congressmen and women can get something worked out.

Yeah, we keep hearing about that. It is a great intellectual argument.

I think Teddy Roosevelt hunted moose but since he was male, I guess that's okay.

Bully, bully!

I'm a moose hunter, but only to see one and take a photo.

I had one chase me, once. Scared the snot out of me. Oh, the shame of it. I'm moose prey. Guess that eliminates any chances of my being president.

Sorry to hear that. Is it on YouTube?

Not if you hire Cheney or Palin to be your running mate. They'd protect you.

Well, I' m fine with Cheney, unlike some. But all the same, I think I would just as soon not be around him when he's armed. He might not be able to tell the difference between me and a moose and, in all honestly, it might be understandable.

I quit quail hunting with anybody except my dad because I was afraid that
I'd get shot by someone not paying attention.

Oh, I'm fine with Cheney, too. I'd even go hunting with him because he's
learned to be more careful.

I wouldn't go for a ride with Ted Kennedy, though.