"I get by with a little help from my friends…"
Up against Mitt Romney and all his media buys, you have John McCain getting the kind of coverage no amount of money can buy. A bunch of busybody meddlers known as the "Project for Excellence in Journalism" (don’t organizations with cheesy names like that make you suspicious? they do me) announces today that it has determined the following:
With Florida winner John McCain getting about 75% more coverage than Mitt Romney, and with Mike Huckabee almost invisible, the press appeared conspicuously close to turning McCain into the presumptive nominee last week. In that Jan. 28-Feb. 3 period, which ran from the day before the Florida primary to two days before Super Tuesday, McCain generated more coverage than any candidate. And that coverage suggested a media “tiering” of the race, with McCain a heavy favorite over several also-rans. McCain had not necessarily put Mitt Romney away, but the press nearly had.
You can also see here that some rats in the MSM are actually treating this little bit of non-profit grandstanding as news. Ha!
But you know, when you’re caught red-handed, you just gotta own up and say we done wrong. I mean, what were we thinking, making a big deal over the one candidate in either party who may be on the verge of cinching his nomination? Under what stretch of the imagination would that be news? Some people; I tell ya.
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Oh, and if you want more from the Fourth Estate’s self-flagellation department, check out this extra-pious little homily on how out of line political reporters are for liking McCain and Obama.
Mind you, we do expect a certain level of detachment from reporters that we don’t expect from sin-stained opinionmongers such as myself. But personally — being a guy who can’t even make a passing reference to a mediocre TV show without expressing multiple judgments about it — I’m not terribly shocked to find even reporters are human.
There is such a thing as a reporter who doesn’t care how an election comes out. But they’re not very appealing people. I was such myself once, and as I look back on myself then (25-30 years ago), and contemplate the utter coldness of my apathy — the candidates were like monkeys in the zoo to me when I was at my worst — I don’t really like the "me" that I see.
Let’s look at the bright side: If reporters actually do want Obama and McCain to win, at least they’re showing good judgment for once.
And yes, I’m being deliberately iconoclastic here. I’m not overdoing it, am I?
Oh, one more thing: Look closely at that picture (which I was happy to find, since it so perfectly fit what I was trying to illustrate). There’s a detail in it that makes me like it even more than I did at first glance. What, pray tell, might that be?
> What, pray tell, might that be?
Another guy you endorsed who lost badly?
Actually, he won. He beat that guy in Connecticut.
Actually, Brad, the “extra pious little homily” you linked above hit you and your newspaper right between the eyes.
You’ve lost so much of your objectivity you don’t see McCain morphing into the lying kind of partisan you profess to despise.
You’re so glib about the whole process that you say “we” (presumably members of the Fourth Estate, for whom you should not deign to speak) expect more detachment from reporters than “sin-stained opinionmongers” such as you.
Whatever gave you the idea that an editorial-page editor could let himself devolve into a fan? What journalism school teaches editors to ignore the events and just write what they believe, or, worse yet, what they hope against hope to be true?
Sorry, but the fellow who wrote the column to which you linked makes a lot more sense than you have lately. His “extra-pious little homily” punked you and your feelings-driven campaign propaganda. He called you out, and you stepped right into the trap, dissing his column for no apparent reason other than he caught you and your holier-than-thou ilk with your journalistic pants down.
It’s one thing to lionize someone post-mortem. It’s quite another to bubble with hero worship when someone’s running for office. That kind of subjective BS belies the role of the Fourth Estate in democracy and weakens it.
The problem with hero worship when it comes to politicians is that the reality never matches the hype. The tunnel vision eventually will no longer work.
Take Brad’s McCain worship. For several months, Brad has written about how important (crucial) it would be to replace our current healthcare system with a single payer system. Does Senator McCain’s view on that subject even come close to Brad’s? No. So does Brad think his single payer dream will come true under a McCain presidency? Highly unlikely. What other basic beliefs is Brad willing to suspend in order to support McCain?
What worries me is that Brad calls McCain and Obama finally having a good choice when they’re light years apart on Iraq and Obama’s positions on most issues, if he actually has positions, are hidden behind his unceasing change mantra.
Weldon, I couldn’t agree more with your last 2 posts. It seems as though I recall and instance a while back where one of the Democrats failed to show up for an important vote and Brad made a big deal out of it. Well, yesterday in a very important and extremely close vote McCain was a no show. And the silence from Mr. UnParty is deafening.