Just keep tanking for Obama

Jennifer Rubin:

John McCain believes he is in an existential war. America is engaged in a death struggle against Islamic terrorists.

But he is also fighting for his life: against a media establishment dedicated to his political destruction.

Any pretense of fairness by the mainstream media is gone. The MSNBC duo of anchor buffoons have been downgraded but not fired. The Washington Post runs dueling front page articles -- one a recycled tabloid-like piece (apologies to our tabloid friends who generally don't recycle old material) about Cindy McCain's past drug problems and one, made up out of whole cloth, that Sarah Palin's allegedly believes and told departing troops that Iraq was behind 9-11. Caught concocting the latter story, the Post tried a hasty edit on the piece (in the middle of the night, no less) -- a maneuver which bloggers quickly spotted. We saw the oozing condescension of normally mild-mannered Charlie Gibson in his Palin interview. Assuring Palin he was using a direct quote (he was not) to accuse her of believing her son was on "task form God" and laying a gotcha trap on the Bush Doctrine (which has no single meaning), Gibson seemed himself to have a "task" -- to trip up a figure held in contempt by most of his colleagues. And of course we are treated to lengthy "investigative" pieces on Palin -- which lack any factual support for their scandal-suggestive headlines. But still there is nary an investigative piece in any major newspaper on Barack Obama's ties to the Chicago machine of Bill Daley, the mismanaged Annenberg Challenge, his relationship with Bill Ayers or the problematic donations from the Woods Fund.

All of this follows the litany of personal attacks on Sarah Palin -- for everything from running for office while having kids to allegedly supporting Pat Buchanan (she didn't) to advocating creationism in the schools (she hasn't).

Why the two-week spree of fury?

Howard Kurtz declares that the media is "mad" -- mad at McCain for "manipulating them." Others bemoan that McCain has hijacked the storyline and "forced" them to talk about Obama's gaffes. Meanwhile, juicy stories that would be headlines if a Republican were involved -- the meager charitable donations by Joe Biden and a bizarrely inaccurate Obama ad asserting McCain doesn't use a computer (he does but can't type due to war injuries) -- are utterly ignored by the MSM. Rather the storyline continues unabated: those mean Republicans are lying again. But really, what's up? As a longtime prominent conservative editor says the media bias is "the worst I've ever seen." Well, the answer: it's what's down. Barack Obama's numbers -- both national polls and electoral vote tallies -- are taking a nose dive. The media is now, as is the rest of the Democratic establishment, in a frenzied meltdown. Their guy could well lose and they've staked their reputations, such as they are, on his victory. It is not hard to see why they have gone into overdrive to protect and bolster The One.

This is not merely a matter of personal political preference. These journalists have a real problem: what if all those pundits and reporters actually have to cover (for four or eight years) the team they have trashed for the last year? What if the McCain people won't talk to them, if they are frozen out of the in-the-know circle of media elites? This is a real problem.

...

These are the same guys who have been hostile to Bush for eight years and I am sure they will be able to maintain their hostility to McCain for the same time frame. They had moments when they were this hysterical about President Bush but they seem most angry that McCain is trying to win. They also should be required to read Bernie Goldberg's book Bias, just so they might notice what their audience is seeing.

technorati tags:
political news | news | world news
More at: News 2 Cromley