Enough Already
It’s bad enough when the media pulls this crap, but why are supposedly liberal and/or progressive bloggers picking up on it and repeating it. When you read of an attack by one Democrat on another, don’t just print it. You have to verify what was actually said because the media lies about Democrats, and has done for decades. Go read Bob Somerby’s archives at the Daily Howler on the media treatment of Al Gore in the 2000 campaign.
“Hillary cries” is the 2008 version of “Howard screams”. They spin words and pull them out of context and slap them inside of quotes, and people get sucked in. What does it take to convince people that if they weren’t standing there, or don’t have access to raw video footage, it is not just possible, but probable, that the media is distorting it to fit in its “narrative”. They present answers but cut off the question. They neglect to use ellipses to indicate editing. They lie, OK, they lie.
It is not just Fox, they all do it. If reporters don’t do it, their editors will.
I was at my Mother’s and saw some of the early coverage of the New Hampshire primary returns. On MSNBC you would have thought that Keith Olbermann hit Andrea Mitchell in the face with a week old cod when he asked who made Clinton the front-runner in Iowa before any votes were counted. Mitchell finally admitted that the media was mainly responsible.
Shifting over to CNN, you have Lou Dobbs telling people a half dozen times not to draw any conclusions because with 8% of the precincts reporting Clinton had the lead. At the same time this same network was saying that when Obama won in New Hampshire he would be the nominee after only 2% of the nation had had an opportunity to vote.
The media conglomerates who control the information stream decide what the narrative is and who gets to play which parts, as if they were producing a sit-com called the 2008 Presidential Primary. We all need to stop following their script, and stop hammering Democrats until it is certain they have done something wrong.
Now if we could just convince the staff of the various candidates to stop reacting to this crap, we might get a sane process for electing a President of the United States rather than the student council.
10 comments
So far: two states, two parties… four winners. If that is supposed to tell us who is destined to become president, you couldn’t prove it by me.
I for one am delighted, not with the specific winners, but with the fact that the rest of the nation may actually get a chance to influence the parties’ candidate choices. Well, I won’t, of course, because my primary isn’t until March 4. But at least SuperMegaExtraHyperTuesday (2/5) voters may have some influence.
In 2004, by the time of my Democratic primary, Howard Dean was already out of the running. By the time of my state Democratic convention, I had a choice of being a Kerry delegate (which is what I chose to do) or “making a statement” with another candidate already effectively eliminated. I’m sorry, but it’s not democracy if large numbers of qualified, registered voters have no influence on the outcome due to extrinsic matters such as different primary dates in various states.
I am convinced that if anything “defeated” Al Gore (other than raw election theft, of course), it was media scripts… stiffness, “ozone,” sighing, etc. In every case, the depictions required by the scripts were on some fundamental level untrue… but the way in which the so-called mainstream media imposed its scripts on Gore left far too many voters with completely undeserved negative impressions. The mainstream corporate media has a lot to answer for in the distortion of representative democracy in our country.
The whole “change” script didn’t last a week. People in Iowa voted for a Senator from a neighboring state who, literally, spoke their language [i.e. Midwestern regional dialect]. Now we have a Northeastern state voting for a Northeastern Senator. What a surprise?
Huckabee was a surprise, but nothing else has been.
If Richardson has really decided to drop out, I’ll miss him, because he was the last of the really experienced people to be in the race, and the one with the most foreign policy experience.
I’m really tired of this high school homeroom crap.
Good rant Brian. 🙂 And I couldn’t agree more! I’ve been tired of the lying media for a long time.
Sadly though, the truth i it’s mostly the public to blame. They allowed to media to get away with it, then most just wanted to hear how great everything was and forget the bad stuff, or wanted to hear that everyone else was having a real bad time so they didn’t feel too bad… And the rest only wanted to know who had the biggest tits and does she own a gun? LOL (Or whose baby Britney was having this week.)
People only care now about truth because they are dimly becoming aware that they are being screwed too and it’s not just *someone else’s problem*!
BTW, you are one of the few punters I’ve seen who called the two primaries pretty well. Well done. Amazing what a bit of common sense will do, eh? 😉 Too bad it seems to be in rather short supply.
Cheers! 🙂
I saw the entire video of Hillary “crying” shortly after the incident occurred. The question asked was “How do you keep going?” Mrs. Clinton did not break down in tears — she got choked up and found it a bit hard to speak. I dunno what the big deal was, unless it was because it caused a number of female voters (myself included) to be instantly struck by the urge to mother her and comfort her. I suspect some of that mothering instinct translated into votes.
I, however, still voted for Bill Richardson. HIllary’s a big girl now.
(OT, what happened to the early cat blogging post I just tried to comment on? It vanished before I posted.)
Most of the TV media faces you speak of are just plain dumb bunnies. Andrea Mitchell could be Exhibit No.1. They prosper not for their wisdom, intellect, judgment, admirable moral code, or diligence, but because they please the monied establishment.
…I almost stood up and cheered when Tom Brokaw slapped down Matthews on MSNBC after they projected Hillary as the winner in N.H. Not only did he obviously deeply annoy the lad, but he also – perhaps a bit too subtly – was about the only person I heard that night or since who actually said “We the media are to blame” instead of looking for lying poll participitants or some latter day “Bradly Effect” to answer the misguide question “where did we go wrong”….
One more thing… The new group news narrative is “Hillary is back.” It’s no more reliable than the old news narrative, “Hillary is toast.”
If you pay attention to the substance of what the candidates and their supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire were saying, it seems more likely than not that Barack Obama will pick up the lion’s share of support from Dodd, Richardson, and Edwards as those campaigns fold or falter. Here and there Hillary may still win a share of some states, but it seems to me Barack is likely to do at least as well and perhaps better — conceivably, even much better — with rank and file Democratic primary voters.
That might leave the “super delegates” as a deciding force at the convention itself. In that mix, however, although anything could happen many of them will be motivated by self-interest in backing the candidate most like to generate an excited, popular groundswell at the polls.
There again, so far as I can tell, Obama has higher positives and lower negatives. I do not see HC lowering her negatives if she goes nasty against Obama. And I don’t see her beating Obama in a lot of places unless she does.
Hence, short of some horrible mistake or event, I think this is one that Obama will win, but it might have to take is all the way down to the convention itself. Picking a nominee won’t take as long as it did in 1924, but it might be a great entertainment.
I see no reason for Edwards to leave, and a lot of reasons for him to stay. Every state has different concerns, and different people will make their decision based on their concerns. This is going to the convention and should remain competitive despite the best efforts from the beginning to make it a two person race by ignoring people they decided “couldn’t win.”
I’ve seen a lot of people automatically assuming that Obama with win with minority voters, but that is not realistic. Minority voters are moved by the same things as everyone else – who represents my views. Bill Clinton is well respected among minority voters, and John Edwards won them when he ran. You don’t see minority voters flocking to vote for Alan Keyes when he’s running against a white candidate. The media keeps making assumptions, and keeps getting it wrong.
The single uniting and overwhelming issue of this race is the Shrubbery. People are looking for the anti-Shrub candidate. Beyond that every normal issue is in play: the war, the economy, health care. Individuals will make their choice based on whoever is closest to their view on the most issues, and the mix is individual.
Iowa and New Hampshire were easy because they are relatively homogeneous states, but it gets really complicated from this point forward because of all of the changes taking place in the individual states. Many of the states coming up are closed primaries, so the independents are on the sidelines.
Not that the 2% noise is out of the way, the real primary begins, and the candidates need local support. Howard Dean had the system in place, the current people don’t.
OT: Steve, that was an error caused by a typo when I scheduled the post. It will appear on time tonight, so save your comment. I didn’t refresh last thing, last night or I would have caught it.