Media bias

I have not commented about the spate of insults, character-assassination, and calumny heaped by the liberal political and media elites on conservative and libertarian protesters against Obama/Reid/PelosiCare. I have not responded to sanctimonious expressions of shock at how “disrespectfully” Democrats were treated by protesters and to accompanying pleas for “civil discourse.” I have not—yet—addressed the inevitable liberal cries of racism and even, odd coming from liberals, charges of lack of patriotism directed at the protesters. I decided, instead, to collect images and commentary that refutes these charges and directs them right back at those same liberals who, once again are busy projecting their own psychological issues onto others.

Now, a disclaimer. I recognize that there are fringe elements in every movement. On both sides of the political spectrum. Unless they have been given pride of place by the organizers or are joined by the corwd, their unplanned antics do not amount to an endorsement of their views by either the organizers or the mass of the participants. Moreover, the presence of isolated agents provocateurs, especially where the other side has much to gain by provocations, is a common occurrance. Needless to say, the talking points of the Democrats do not make those basic distinctions, though they take great offense when someone says that the President’s policies and tactics remind one of various respected Leftists like, say, Karl Marx. Neither do their media allies have such discernment. They prefer just breathlessly to publish those talking points as soon as they come through the fax machine. Yes, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and the entire CNN staff, I’m talking about you.

I am going to pass along some of those images and articles in a series of posts, starting with this one.

Contrast the imagery of this series of pictures the photographer titled “March of the Moonbats,” in Hollywood, California, with the pictures taken by the same photographer of the Tea Party Express, in Los Angeles. In light of the, by turn, inflammatory and condescending remarks by our elites about conservatives, it is educational to see which group treats President Obama personally in a more disrespectful manner; which group resorts to Nazi symbols to characterize their opponents; which group uses racial/ethnic bigotry as a manner of describing others; and which group uses symbols of violence and mimicry of terrorists. Oh, and it is also interesting to see which group seems to be cheerful and having a good time.

One of the persistent memes of the media and other Obama defenders, before they resort to their ultimate refuge of calling opponents “racist,” is to declare that no one treated George W. Bush with the disrespect that their champion has endured. Even during the 2008 campaign there was a constant refrain that Obama was being labelled in ways never before heard, such as by comparisons to Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Mao, and Lenin. There were the outraged charges that conservatives were inciting violence against Obama and other Democrats, again something that supposedly was never done by the other side. The fact that there have been extremely few substantiated public instances of such incendiary comparisons or incitements to violence against Obama (at least by conservatives) does not deter people from making these charges and, abetted by Obama’s handlers, plaintively calling for more civil discourse.

By contrast, judging from the Left’s discourse from 2001 to 2009, Adolf Hitler was George W. Bush’s twin. Or Dick Cheney’s. Or Donald Rumsfeld’s. Bush Derangement Syndrome often morphed into Bush Assassination Chic, with free rein given to many and varied proposals to kill Bush. To liberals, including the media, history began on January 20, 2009. Before, there was a void. But to bring those folks back to reality, here are some reminders.

From Evan Coyne Maloney, a “Trip Down Memory Lane”:

Lots of pictures urging the killing of President Bush, usually presented by the peace-loving anti-war crowd. But there are also the folks at the Obama campaign rally who would like to see George W. Bush beheaded.

In light of the media and Democratic Party theme of tarring conservatives as racist whenever an opportunity to libel presents itself, and in light of the alleged, but likely fanciful, shouting of the “N-word” at members of Congress during an anti-health care bill rally, it is enlightening to recall a different event, from last year’s anti-health care law townhall protests. Evan Coyne Maloney reports on the beating of Kenneth Gladney by Democratic Party-affiliated union thugs:
“During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama didn’t shy away from confrontation. In fact, he encouraged it by telling supporters to ‘argue with’ opponents and to ‘get in their face[s].’ The Obama Administration’s confrontational tone included some violent imagery last August, when one White House official encouraged Obama supporters to punch back twice as hard’ against opponents. Later that day, at an anti-ObamaCare rally in St. Louis, a black man named Kenneth Gladney was handing out ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags when he was approached by pro-ObamaCare SEIU union members. One of the men asked Gladney, ‘What kind of nigger are you to be giving out this kind of stuff?’ The union thugs then beat him so bad he required overnight hospitalization. Obama’s supporters got the message. They were getting in people’s faces, and they were punching. And kicking. Repeatedly. Yet despite the fact that the Kenneth Gladney beating occurred the same day that the Obama Administration recommended supporters ‘punch back twice as hard,’ there was no hyperventilating in the media about political violence or the veiled threats that encouraged it.”

Notice also the use of the “N-word” that goes by without media (or Congressional Black Caucus) condemnation when used by Democrats.

The L.A. Times, through the indefatigable investigative efforts of Kathleen Hennessey, has discovered the problem with working wives. When she is the wife of a conservative Supreme Court justice. Something about a concern that Justice Thomas’s wife’s participation with a conservative activist group might cast public doubt on his impartiality. Hmmm. Virginia Thomas quite correctly asks the (obviously merely rhetorical) question whether the media asked the same question of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, whose wife is a federal appellate court judge.

Andy McCarthy at National Review Online spots the double standard, as well: There is Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Prior to her appointment, Justice Sotomayor herself — not her spouse, herself — was a Leftist activist (board member and top policy maker at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education fund) who infamously opined that a ‘wise Latina’ is more apt to make good decisions that a mere ‘white male who hasn’t lived that life.’ Doesn’t seem to have troubled Ms. Hennessey, though.” Then there is Justice Ginsburg: “Justice Ginsburg also had an extensive pre-Supreme Court career in Leftist causes (e.g., co-director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in the 1970s) — and on while on the Court she has been a reliable Leftist vote who, for example, champions resort to international law to interpret the U.S. Constitution and, in a bizarre extrajudicial comment, favorably linked abortion with eugenics (’Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion’ (emphasis added)).” McCarthy gets in a couple of other zingers against various liberals with agendas.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir joins the fun.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s famous aphorism, “The last refuge of any liberal is racism.” When they have lost the argument or have no argument on the merits, they invoke the “r”-word that is truly demeaning. Once used with talismanic effect, its mojo has weakened through overuse to the point that, when hurled by the likes of Keith Olbermann, it becomes a badge of debating victory.

It seems that Keith Olbermann has once again beclowned himself, this time by, among other ramblings, projecting his own sublimated racial insecurities and self-loathing onto White men in general, and then proceeding to wonder where the non-Whites were at the Tea Party rallies. That happened after he accused the Tea Parties of being White people’s parties and opposing Obama’s policies because of their own racism.

Given Keith’s increasing derangement that rises as his ratings fall, NBC tried to promote him by having him appear on the sinking Letterman Show. There, he continued his pseudo-analysis of the Tea Parties. Via Instapundit comes this response, showing up Keith for his continuing manufacturing of “facts.”

A CBS/New York Times poll shows that at least 5% of Tea Party activists are non-White. Given the media’s incendiary and hate-mongering assault on the Tea Party participants’ personal character as racist, extremist, and un-American, it is not surprising that the percentage of non-White participants is not higher. One can expect that percentage to rise as such folks are reassured by the participation of other non-Whites.

Oh, here is one of those only White faces in the Tea Party running for Congress in Illinois.

As Instapundit and some of his readers point out, at least the Tea Parties are not as lily-white as Keith’s network, MSNBC, or as Letterman’s show.

When the elite punditry and the talking heads of the “mainstream” media commentabout Sarah Palin, their contempt for her is palpable. They subject her to the most grotesque speculations about herself and her family, down to questioning her motherhood of her youngest son (see, e.g., Andrew Sullivan) and his very right to live. She and her family are the targets of crude “jokes” that range from her participation in beauty contests decades ago to false assertions about slutty behavior by her young daughters (see, e.g., David Letterman). Her private and public past is put under a microscope of critical review. Every new public comment and appearance is scrutinized for the slightest misstep, and when one finally appears, is ridiculed massively and mercilessly and then given great significance as evidence of her unfitness for, well, pretty much everything.

And yet, those same media “guardians” protecting the public against the political temptations from the siren Palin time and again announce her political demise. They laugh her off as someone who cannot possibly, without a doubt, ever be a viable national political candidate. They dismiss her alternately as a simpleton and as an evil force of hate-mongering. Her supporters are ridiculed as a narrow and intolerant fringe.

These media elites, mainly left-wing, but with a sizable cohort of conservative toffs added to the mix, do not see the paradox of their condescending certitude about the ex-governor’s lack of a political future set off against their slavish addiction to reporting everything Palin. Or, perhaps, they just cannot help themselves. Drawn to her like moths to a flame, yet trapped by their ideological and cultural boundaries, they respond in a way that comes across to the observer as, alternately, professional schizophrenia and hapless ignorance.

With those habits, it comes as no surprise that the release of Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue, has triggered a new spasm of media attention. After all, when her mere Facebook postings drive the health care discussion for weeks on end and trigger White House responses (see, e.g., “death panels”), a Palin book is a figurative ICBM exploding in the midst of the political and chattering classes. No wonder, then, that the Associated Press assigned eleven “fact-checkers” to scour Palin’s book. That is the same AP that is firing a lot of their reporters due to lack of funds. This phalanx of truth-seekers managed to uncover what? Six “errors,” the prime example of which is this shocker:

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking “only” for reasonably priced rooms and not “often” going for the “high-end, robe-and-slippers” hotels.

THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) for a five-hour women’s leadership conference in New York in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000.

So, as Mark Steyn points out, Palin said that she “not often” stayed at luxury hotels, while the AP says she usually did not stay at luxury hotels and uncovered one instance where she did. The AP report, if anything, makes Palin sound as if she overstated her stay at luxury hotels. The rest of the six ”errors” found by the AP’s journalistic Clousseaus add up to a collection of their own mischaracterizations, tendentious assertions, and self-contradictions. I do agree with one of the AP’s conclusions, namely, that Palin’s book is a step towards a future presidential candidacy. In view of the current political landscape, I would hope and expect that future to be in 2016, not in 2012.

That same media knee-jerk anti-Palinism is also why MSNBC, stuck with perpetual low ratings despite (or, perhaps, because of) their decision to become the Obama network, assigns one of their starsto check whether Palin supporters at a book signing know about Palin’s political positions. Never mind that the reporterette, Norah O’Donnell, mischaracterizes Palin’s position. Palin in fact was opposed to the TARP and other bailouts, as even the AP concedes, until John McCain in October, 2008, swung behind them. At that point, Palin, as the V-P candidate, supported McCain’s position. The Palin supporter actually has Palin’s position pegged more accurately than does O’Donnell. Moreover, O’Donnell is then caught in some fibs about her own role.

One would expect that these assiduous efforts to fact-check the book by a supposed political has-been, at most a zombie that appears periodically to raise havoc among the populace and terrorize the elites, would be replicated regarding the writings and statements of actual politicians. The President, let’s say. Or, the leaders of the Democratic Party that run Congress, such as Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and John Kerry. Or, in the past, actual Democratic candidates for President, such as John Edwards. Or, prominent Democrats who are also point men on other hot-button political issues. Al Gore, say. But one would expect wrongly. The only fact checking done by “mainstream” media of the President’s effusions was by CNN. Of course, they “fact-checked” a Saturday Night Live comedic skit that lampooned the President. The goal there was to defend Mr. Obama and demonstrate to the world the error of SNL’s ways. It was one more piece in a pattern of indirect intimidation of those who utter anything even slightly critical of The One that has become all too familiar with this administration and its courtesans.

In contrast with the thoroughness and frenzy with which the media and its associates in the Democratic Party vetted Sarah Palin—and continues to do so—no such investigations occurred by them regarding Mr. Obama’s writings. Indeed, while Palin’s academic records, like Bush’s, were dissected and laughed at, there has been a curious lack of interest in Mr. Obama’s performance. No release of the academic transcripts, no records of any “thesis/seminar papers,” no swift and public investigation into the Harvard Law Review’s selection process. Yet this about a man who has been praised as the greatest intellect in the White House, ever.

Nor will there be similar fact-checking about Al Gore’s new photo-shopped book. Or any of the President’s speeches, like the whoppers he told about the health care bill that caused Representative Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst.

In the end, that’s fine. Even while they minimize her importance as a force in American politics, the media will say that they react to her because her book is a best seller. Or because the administration is reacting to her statements. Or because so many Americans pay attention to her. On Facebook. The administration pronounces its determination to ignore her, even as they respond to her to the point of having the Congressional leadership change what is, by their own claim, the most important piece of social legislation in decades. They have let it become obvious that she is inside their OODA loop.

The media, along with the administration, are just admitting by their actions what they seek to deny by their words. Sarah Palin, using Facebook and a book tour, is dominating the American political scene to a degree exceeded only by the President himself aided by his corps of minders, press liaisons, and most of the media functionaries. How it must gall MSNBC and CNN not only to be dwarfed by FOX news, but by a Facebook account.

Palin may or may not run in 2012. I have said many times that, barring an even greater collapse of the Democratic Party Left, I hope that she waits until 2016. Either way, she may not win the election, or even the nomination. She may be the latest incarnation of Barry Goldwater. Or she may not even get that far and be nothing more than the head of an insurgency that exhausts itself after two or three campaigns. That would have been Ronald Reagan, had he not succeeded in 1980.

She is not Ronald Reagan. Not the fallible human, and certainly not the myth. But she is following the Reagan (and Nixon) playbook perfectly after a failed national campaign. She is also saying the words. I would hope that she would end up also learning to sing the tune in a better Reaganesque pitch. But that is another topic. 

I want to be careful and measured in my comments about the Fort Hood murders by Major Hasan. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that this was not some spontaneous eruption by some stressed-out coward who feared getting killed in Iraq. Rather, Hasan meticulously and calmly planned and executed his attack, fully expecting and hoping to be killed. A suicide shooter, as it were.

The President, who was so quick to jump to the wrong conclusions about Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley (who is White) in the incident involving Harvard Professor Louis Gates (who is Black), has urged everyone not to jump to conclusions about Hasan and his motives. Mr. Obama not long ago felt free, based on racial prejudices ingrained by his years of immersion in the multiculti vortex of American left-liberalism, publicly and eagerly to blame Crowley, even while casually admitting he did not have all the facts. Yet, suddenly, he is concerned that there not be rash judgment based on hypothesized anti-Muslim prejudice.

The American media have been similarly disengaged from reality. The alleged murder of a census worker not long ago (which now seems not to have been a murder, but a suicide) immediately caused mass speculation by the media about the involvement of hypothetical anti-federal government rightwingers. The murder of notorious abortion doctor George Tiller by a lone shooter was immediately attributed to the broader conservative anti-abortion movement. No similar attribution to liberal pro-abortion groups is made when a pro-abortion shooter kills an elderly anti-abortion activist in Michigan. When a deranged white supremacist shoots a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the media seamlessly connects this to conservatives in general, despite the fact that the shooter had published anti-George W. Bush screeds. But one best not cast the net too broadly when, more than once, Muslims attack Jews and Jewish institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

This reticence to call things as they are as to one particular religious group is cultural. It is part of a civilizational self-debasement that allows the Western media, art, and entertainment complex cheerfully to publish depictions that are blasphemous and insulting to the eyes of Christians, but to shy away from publishing anything even critical of Islam or Muhammad. A crucifix in urine is art, but unfounded rumors of a urinated-upon Quran at Guantanamo raises a world-wide hue and cry. Indeed, Qurans at Guantanamo must be handled with gloves so that the dirty hands of the infidels do not touch them before they are handed to the terrorist detainees. Meanwhile, burning of churches and murder of Christian families in Pakistan is a ho-hum matter unworthy of the attention of the world’s secular human rights elite.

We are seeing the same thing regarding Major Hasan. Despite the large amount of evidence that has quickly become available, we are relentlessly commanded by the President, the media, and even the Army staff not to rush to any conclusions about the killer’s motives. As that noted practitioner of calm and reasoned reflection, Chris Matthews, declared, “We may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hood.” Those same media, assorted politicians, and Muslim advocacy groups (especially CAIR with its checkered personnel history) very quickly warn, however, about the imagined looming danger of anti-Muslim reprisals that put Muslims in fear of their non-Muslim American neighbors. Never mind that, after each attack by Muslims on their neighbors and fellow-citizens, such reprisals don’t materialize, though new attacks by Muslims do. It’s not acceptable to jump to conclusions about non-hypothetical violence by Muslims, but quite fine to jump to conclusions about the hypothetical violence by non-Muslims.

In like manner, there has been an almost instantaneous attempt by the media, Muslim groups, and Hasan’s family to sanitize the story, with an emerging line of how he was insulted for being a Muslim. Assuming for th sake of argument that these insults occurred, very rarely is any possible context for such alleged insults provided, such as his heated denunciations of the war in Iraq as, among other things, a war against Islam. This is an effort at moral equivalence and to shift the blame from Hasan and Islamist influence on him, to Hasan’s victims or, at least, to the United States more broadly. This is such a tried-and-true tactic by now that Mark Steyn has declared it to be parodic: “Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s columnar wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline: ‘British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing.’”

Nor, as the preceding sentence shows, is this blame-shifting and excusing or explaining-away of radical Islamist terror new. Mark Steyn has an article about last year’s terrorist attack by radical Muslims on Bombay. As part of that attack, the terrorists made a detour to the only Jewish center in Bombay, Chabad House, and then tortured and murdered the rabbi and his pregnant wife. And we’re not talking carefully-controlled waterboarding here. Then, too, the media somehow managed to trace the problem back to American policy here or there and speculated that is was just a fluke that the terrorists happened to come upon Chabad House. As Mark Steyn points out,  ”Two ‘inflamed moderates’ entered the Chabad House, shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!,’ tortured the Jews and murdered them, including the young Rabbi’s pregnant wife. Their two-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny who hid in a closet and then, risking being mown down by machine-gun fire, ran with him to safety.” Ah yes, it was the New York Times. But, still. Shouldn’t there be some use of common sense, even by the Times, and credence be given to the surviving terrorist, who said that the Jewish Center had been targeted for a year?

Among the facts about Hasan are that he attended a mosque in the D.C. area where a radical (and now banned) imam preached. That imam was the spiritual leader of three of the 9/11 hijackers. Hasan attended services there about the time that two of those hijackers did, as well. Comments about Hasan’s reaction to those preachings and his actions at Fort Hood show that Hasan took the imam’s inflammatory and bigoted hate-mongering to heart. A number of survivors have reported that he yelled “Allahu Akhbar” as he began his murderous assault, the traditional cry of the Muslim as he goes into battle. He ranted about the rightness of violence against “unbelievers.” Among other things, he said that infidels should have their heads cut off and have boiling oil poured down their throats. Someone with his name had blog postings with similar rantings and praise for suicide bombers, equating them with a soldier who throws himself on a live grenade to save his buddies. Come to think of it, that sounds like something one might overhear at a faculty meeting. I wonder if that moral equivalency also applies to suicide bombers who kill children at an Israeli pizzeria.

That famous caution not to jump to conclusions did not, by the way, prevent the authorities from declaring almost immediately that this was not a terror plot. Yet the evidence is clear that Major Hasan planned this for several weeks, at the very least. His acquisition of this kind of civilian weaponry and his careful settlement of accounts with his landlord and others show that this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. Had he used a bomb, rather than this kind of lethally effective armament, to kill and maim this many people, would we still hesitate to call this a terror attack? After all, his lack of rationality and emotional control does not mean he had no terrorist motives. Suicide bombers show similar traits. Why not a suicide shooter?

Left wing blogs recently went into overdrive deriding Rush Limbaugh having temporarily been taken in by a false claim that Obama’s Columbia thesis finally had been released and contained various statements that could be read as contemptuous of the U.S. and the founders of the country. BTW, it is claimed that Obama wrote no college thesis, unlike other Columbia seniors, only an honors seminar paper or thesis that no one can find. The press can, of course, quickly find the college thesis of the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia and records of the debates over the book purchases by the Wasilla public library during Sarah Palin’s tenure as mayor. Likewise, the Obama college transcripts have not been released, whereas the press demanded the much earlier transcripts of George W. Bush. Likewise, George W. Bush’s complete military records were released (and, in the case of Dan Rather, reporting, forged), while John F. Kerry’s were not. Ditto for Bob Dole’s medical records versus not for Bill Clinton’s. One detects a pattern.

Considering the numerous times that they have been fooled by information that was available much longer than the fake Obama thesis (such as the racially-loaded statements falsely attributed to Limbaugh), one would have thought the Left would keep a low profile. One would have thought so in vain. Well, no sooner has the dust settled over the Left’s Limbaugh defamation, than they defame Justice Antonin Scalia, again with false attributions of racial remarks.

What is it with the Left and their false charges of racially-loaded remarks? I am not even convinced that they do this on purpose. It is as if their constant invocation of race and their inability to see social issues through other than a racial prism have so distorted their faculties for critical thinking that they see the racial result they want to see even when it isn’t there. Just so long as it confirms their prejudices about others.

As an aside, I particularly enjoyed the author’s list of repeated liberal offenses against truth and fairness in reporting and his take-down of the legal commentator for C-BS, the network that at least practices truth-in-advertising in its name. This commentator, Andrew Cohen, predictably matches the ideological tone of his bosses in presenting biased accounts of Justice Scalia, as NRO’s Ed Whelan lays out in his post, “Andrew Cohen’s Evidence-Free Anti-Scalia Jeremiad.”

Of course, there is no apology and no clear correction, even when the falsity is exposed. The problem is that, with the function of the Internet, these false statements will be thoughtlessly reproduced and find their way into history.

I posted recently about the Saturday Night Live parody of President Obama’s list of non-achievements. The response of CNN, part of the Obama wing of the Democratic Party media? Run a fact-checking exercise! What did these journalistic sleuths find? They found exaggerations, distortions and dubious assertions. As if parody is entirely truthful. Michael Moore, when challenged about the long list of distortions and false innuendos in Fahrenheit 911, at one point responded that his movie was entertainment and that there is no requirement that documentaries have to be true. And no one would perceive SNL to be presenting an Obama documentary.

Has CNN presented any other fact checking of a skit on SNL directed against a Republican President or other politician? Did they fact check SNL impersonations of George W. Bush? John McCain? Sarah Palin? In fact, the imbecility and bias of the CNN reporterette are gloriously laid bare when she lauds the Tina Fey impression of Sarah Palin to be “dead on.” (She can’t be talking about the stylistic accuracy of Tina Fey versus the Obama impression, since she is discussing subject matter.) Did they fact-check the statements of Ms. Fey, some of which were blatantly wrong? To ask the question is to answer it.

But, no, CNN isn’t in the tank.

I remember how, during the election of 1996, the media the happy state of the economy, with the likely success that would bring to Bill Clinton in his bid for re-election. The unemployment rate that prosperous November, 1996, was 5.4%. During the 2004 election, as during much of the rest of George W. Bush’s term, that same media delivered story after story about the dismal state of the economy. The unemployment rate that dismal November, 2004, was 5.4%. Indeed, over two terms each years, the employment figures for the Clinton and Bush administrations were quite similar, with average unemployment at 5.2% for Clinton and 5.3% for Bush. Range was 3.8% to 7.1% for Clinton and 4.4% to 7.6% for Bush. Lest anyone mention the real estate bubble during the Bush years, we had the dot-com bubble and the effects of the end-of-the-cold-war dividend during the Clinton years.

The point is not the slight differences and general similarities of the statistics. I don’t even think that, in general, Presidential policies much affect the general cycles of the economy. However, administration policies can distort things in the short run and, typically, exacerbate economic swings. What is more significant for me is the usual media double standard that applies. This year during the Age of Obama, The New York Times (and other publications) has been extolling the virtues of “staycations” and “funemployment.” It does so once more here. It may be true that unemployment gives people a chance to refocus and even to rediscover a more balanced lifestyle. At least for some who are not starving, and up to a point. With a 9.7% national unemployment rate, that point is fast arriving. In California, the unemployment rate is 12.2% (though one wouldn’t know it from the post-Labor Day traffic on the freeways), and it’s only the fourth-worst in the nation. That’s got to make even funemployment more stressful.

But, as Ed Morrissey at Hot Air points out, there were no similar articles during the Bush years. Instead, it was doom and gloom, at 5.4% unemployment. Articles derided the “jobless recovery” and bemoaned the emptiness of “McJobs” and the diminishing prospects for a fulfilled life for every demographic but “The Rich.”

These analyses bear as much relation to reality as the old Vietnam War-era enemy body counts or as the Obama administration’s fantasy world numbers about jobs “saved” or “created” by the “Porkulus” spending programs.

We shall see how things go if Obama succeeds with the nationalization of American banking and industry. A lot of people may be longing for that 5.3% average unemployment of the Bush years, once the “fun” of funemployment wears out along with the welcome that the funsters had when they moved into their parents’ homes. Those McJobs may begin to look good.

I have written so many times about ”diversity” in the academy that I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. But as long as things aren’t changing, the beat must go on. Diversity in a university setting means anything but intellectual diversity. In the latter, it often means a suffocating uniformity of liberal cant that drowns out dissenting voices, unintentionally usually, but intentionally if dissent becomes too prominent.

In the real world, on the other hand, liberals are at a disadvantage. People by inclination are conservative, due significantly to the fact that, as Margaret Thatcher famously pronounced, “The facts of life are conservative.” Sure, liberals have the media outlets deemed “elite,” such as the New York Times and most of the rest of the dwindling-circulation legacy media, the “news gathering” groups such as the AP, and the television networks except FOX News. However, conservatives “own” talk radio with its mass listening base.

In the free market, then, liberal talk radio has been crowded out. Al Franken and Rachel Maddow simply could not compete with Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham. However, the liberal message easily has a voice through the other media channels. So, all would seem well. Fair and balanced. But, no. Liberals cannot handle the idea that there is a forum that they do not dominate. So they periodically threaten to resurrect the “Fairness Doctrine,” which, as the name discloses is the antithesis of the “freedom doctrine.” Just as “fair trade” is the opposite of “free trade,” the Fairness Doctrine is government management of broadcasting to produce a predetermined result that distorts the verdict of the market. It does so by, in effect, forcing broadcasters, as a condition of their license, to present programming that reflects a broad spectrum of views. Although one doubts that includes the duty to allow the KKK to get its message on the air, the doctrine seems harmless enough, even though, like other government programs, it foists on consumers things they do not want.

But, by some happy “coincidence” the doctrine doesn’t apply to newspapers, dominated by liberals. While it does apply to over-the-air TV broadcasters on the basis of bandwidth scarcity (an increasingly ludicrous concept, given the availability of cable and computers), it doesn’t apply to the editorials on, say, CBS, that masquerade as news reports. Those reports, studies have shown, lean in a decidedly leftward direction. As to such networks’ editorial programs, the format is unlike talk radio. They are usually panels, with three leftists of various stripes who advocate the liberal position and a “respectable” house conservative, such as the New York Times’s David Brooks, who splits his time between advocating and criticizing conservative views. So the forum for information that is most likely to be affected is the one controlled by more vocal and effective conservatives.

While some, such as Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have openly called for a return of the Fairness Doctrine, other Democrats have been cool to the idea. The Obama administration has been inscrutable on the matter, sending signals from both sides. But the whole idea may become a non-issue, if the FCC’s Obama-appointed “diversity czar” gets to implement the ideas that he has advanced in his policy scribblings. As so many of the Obama non-union appointees, this is another cancer product from the non-reality based community, this time from the academy and its leftist fellow-traveler, the Center for American Progress.

A rebirth of the Fairness Doctrine likely would require Congressional approval and, thereby, some degree of political accountability. But an administrative policy imposed by this unelected bureaucrat would avoid such annoyances of a democratic system. The plan would impose licensing fees equal to a station’s entire operating budget, a huge cost increase that would make radio broadcasting hugely expensive. Those fees would then be funneled to “public broadcasting outlets,” to give them funds equal to what the private market has. In other words, this would be like Medicare today, where the many private providers end up subsidizing the uneconomic and fraud-ridden government program. Since there are few public outlets and many private ones (well, at least until such a program raises their costs), this will be manna from heaven for the former. Experience tells us that such programs, other than broadcasting the scintillating government meetings that 47 people watch, will be dominated by liberal programming and revisionist politics. Expect the usual White males/conservatives/Christians/businesspeople “bad,” others “good” form of historical and political commentary that is currently inflicted on inmates in the K-Graduate level government schools.

Forcing private companies to broadcast the liberal worldview won’t make such ideas more palatable to the public or better reflections of reality. But it can make conservative programs less accessible. Lest one think that, well, there are still conservative websites and blogs, liberals are already setting their sights on ways to control content on those sites to assure they are presenting a breadth of political coverage.

A New York Times/CBS poll trumpets broad public support for Obamacare. Since this goes against other polls on the topic, I thought that to be an interesting development. Hot Air analyzes the poll and finds in the fine print that the Times skewed the sample in a, predictably, liberal direction. They grossly oversampled Obama voters and liberals, as well as those who are unemployed or not looking for jobs. A true example of Disraeli’s jibe that, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Less biased polls by people not in the tank for Obama (i.e., not done by the “independent” media) tell quite a different story. Note the importance of party affiliation and how it is reflected in support or opposition to Obama’s programs. That, of course, explains the anomaly of the Times’s poll as caused by the paper’s pollsters’ partisan skewing of the sample.

Before reversing himself in the face of an outpouring of public criticism, President Obama wanted to release pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib uncovered by Army investigators. The always dependable ACLU had sought these pictures to….well, it’s not clear why, unless it is to smear one of the liberal elite’s favorite targets, the U.S. military.

At the same time, ACLU lawyers are in the forefront of calling everything connected to the interrogation of high-value terrorists “torture,” legal definitions and common sense be damned. While doing some research, I came across this article from 2004, which discusses the kinds of actions done by Saddam’s people at Abu Ghraib. I have not been able to find the original Saddam torture video itself. It seems not to be accessible on the AEI website. But the text conveys enough of the brutality.

In any event, while our media have always been quite pleased to publicize all images that make the U.S. military look bad (at least during the Bush administration), the media were quite uninterested in covering the AEI event. Quite predictably, then, the media were uninterested in showing the video, just as they refused to show videos of the execution of Americans by Muslim terrorists. Too graphic and incendiary for public consumption, they said. Just as those media types who like to congratulate themselves for their bravery in “speaking truth to power” refused to publish the controversial Danish “Muhammad cartoons” that resulted in world-wide riots and death threats by Muslims a few years ago. But they’re happy to publish offensive and contemptuous anti-Christian “art.” There’s a limit to journalistic bravery, after all. 

This is a video of the AEI presentation where victims of Saddam’s torture speak about their experiences.

From Gay Patriot and Michelle Malkin comes the question why there are no panting reporters and sensationalism-mongering networks in Kentucky to cover the vast damage from the recent massive ice storm. After all, there are power outages that will extend for weeks and destruction of utility services far worse than that caused by Hurricane Katrina. Could it be, they ask, that the media are less interested in posturing when the President is not named Bush and the population affected is mainly rural poor white “hicks”? By the way, where is the President? He hasn’t yet visited the area. Oh, wait, he’s busy reading books to school children. Now, where have I seen that before? And didn’t liberals have a grand time laughing at the last President who took time away from dealing with emergencies to read books to children?

For those who think that George Bush had no success in the war against terrorists: Al Qaeda’s leadership continues to head to rendezvous with the grim reaper.

So far, at least, Obama is continuing these policies. Al Qaeda is ticked off at Obama and is treating Obama with the same bombastic contempt they heaped on George Bush. But the Washington Post thinks that al Qaeda is just mad at Obama because he has charmed the Muslim world to the point that al Qaeda cannot any longer get recruits. With a complete descent into irrationality, the paper interprets these attacks on Obama as al Qaeda leaders getting frustrated because the “divisive” George Bush, who was a perfect foil for them to get recruits to their terrorist cause, is gone.

Apropos the preceding post about giving Obama the respect of honest criticism comes more evidence of the media’s double standards. This time it involves the coverage of the inauguration.

Ann Coulter writes about the different sentiments expressed by The New York Times about the Reagan inauguration versus its fawning approval of the Obama version.

Then, of course, there is the Associated Press. While they groused in 2005 that spending $40M on the Bush inauguration was a waste of money that might better be spent to pay down the deficit or help the Asian tsunami victims, in 2009 (with the economy said to be in worse shape) they cheer the $45M+ (some estimates go as high as $150M) being spent on the Obama nomination. Now why would that happen?

Speaking of the inauguration, the media ignored the delicious irony of George Bush declaring D.C. a “disaster area” before leaving office. Now, this was intended to allow D.C. to get federal emergency (FEMA) funds to provide services and security for the throngs expected for the inauguration. This seems to me a highly dubious concept of “emergency” that threatens to convert FEMA into simply another cash spigot. Disregarding that, I have to think that W, with his wry sense of humor, must have got a kick out of that declaration.

I posted on a similar topic before, when it happened in Gaza. This time it is protesters in Iran burning flags with Obama’s picture on them. Not that this is a surprise to conservatives. It happened to Bush, too. And it happened to Clinton before him, much to the liberals’ dismay then. Conservatives were not deceived by the liberal talking points that the whole world just hated Bush. The truth always has been that some elements, particularly in certain countries, hate the United States. The rest of the world may have a vague anti-American attitude, but that transcends the particular occupant of the White House.

What I find more fascinating is that the sources I found that covered the story were both from the U.K., The London Times, and Reuters UK. While American blogs covered this (with links to those British sources), the traditional U.S. media did not, at least not at that time. One is led to wonder why American media might shy away from a story critical of Obama’s image abroad.

The humorous and satisfying aspect of this story is the comments. Liberal commenters, particularly at the Huffington Post, are insulted that this is happening. They blame it on the suddenly evil Iranian government; on the ideological craziness of the protesters; on the American media for photoshopping the image to make Iran look bad for insulting Obama (!); on Iranian diplomatic stupidity for insulting Obama; and so on. All of those things that liberals enjoyed when they were happening to Bush, where it was Bush’s fault, and the result of America’s missteps, but never the fault of the government-stooge protesters, suddenly were the fault of those same protesters and governments. This is the type of thing that will be fun during the next four to eight years, watching the Left get annoyed at the things that they enjoyed when they happened to Bush. Note that I am not saying that I am happy that this is happening to Obama, or that I am sympathetic to anti-American protesters.

Ann Coulter has a new book out, Guilty, which is a critique of the media’s unconscionable and obsessive worship at the feet of The One, done in the unique Coulter style. There are two predictable results whenever Coulter publishes a book. She will pull no punches. And the targets and the media (here one and the same) will squeal like stuck pigs about her “lack of civility”and “outrageousness” even as they ignore or even applaud vitriolic (and less well-researched or well-reasoned) attacks on conservatives by the likes of Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, and Bill Maher. The immediate reaction, since retracted, of NBC apparently was to “ban Ann Coulter for life.”

Brent Bozell of Newsbusters provides some background and opinion on the controversy. Here is Coulter’s take on the matter, which she uses as a grand opportunity to lay out the justification for her book. The whole controversy is sure to get Coulter additional thousands of sales. Ann Coulter is a well-informed, brilliant, and incisive polemicist, but a polemicist, nonetheless. For conservatives, even for those who believe that her rhetorical bomb-throwing sometimes results in unnecessary collateral damage, she is a guilty pleasure. And she is not only smarter, but a heck of a lot more pleasing to the eyes than Moore, Olbermann, and Maher.

Though they may mock him, many conservatives are cautiously optimistic and relieved about Obama’s selections so far, except his selection of leftist Susan Rice to be Ambassador to the U.N. Those sentiments extend also to Obama’s selection of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State; after all, Susan Rice could have been selected to that position. I am still withholding judgment about what these appointments say about the ideological direction of the Obama administration. We will need to wait and see what happens after a couple of years in office or even until the second term. Then we will know who his fall-back players are. I suspect that Obama’s own ideological leanings will come through forcefully at that point.

In the meantime, the New York Times takes these selections to a predictable level of Obama worship. Powerline takes on the Times article’s historical tone-deafness in contrasting the likely ”spirited debate” and “grand personalities” of the Obama administration with the collection of lickspittles and yes-men (and women) that allegedly constituted the Bush administration. Not content with its mischaracterization of the Bush administration, the Times predictably reaches back to the Kennedy administration for parallels to Obama’s picks. This is part of the liberal media’s campaign to morph the liberal Obama into the (foreign and defense policy-wise) conservative Kennedy who ran to the right of Nixon on those issues, and to create a new Camelot. Powerline takes apart the Times’ mischaracterization on that point, as well.