Beating the press

I'm kind of surprised to read a journalist actually saying out loud that McCain needs the press to win. This is the sort of attitude that spawned all of that citizen journalism on the Internet. Suppose the press does actually get tougher on McCain and gives his coverage lesser play? Doesn't that actually prove his point that we're all Obama liberals? There are a lot of Joe and Jane voters in this country who actually believe there's a left-wing conspiracy in the press. I know, I sat through a book club discussion of "Bias" in a Pittsburgh living room with a dozen conservative women. If the press toughens up on John McCain, he will earn martyr status with these people -- and they may outnumber the press at the voting booth.  

The press cannot henceforth treat war hero John McCain as a sacred calf simply because he was a torture victim. This was the central narrative of romance of the RNC, a kind of Rake's Progress. If the Republicans can milk that, McCain is not a calf, he's a cow, and if he can't take the heat of the press he's a coward.

I mean this as the truth (although it was inspired by Rodney Dangerfield's joke): Obama will go on the dollar bill someday. If he's lucky, it will be a hundred years from now. If he's not, it will be tomorrow.

I should explain why I say "he" instead of "we." Like Dr King before him, he planted the seeds of revolution. If we lose Obama, the seeds will still grow. The job will get done. "Stronger on your poison" in the words of (Henry) Rollins.

In the final analysis, I do not think McCain is the enemy. The Bush administration is wowing him with endorsement, giving him positive strokes. But by the eleventh hour, I think he will not want to be another patsy.

If McCain can run an honest campaign, and cease the sham version of his maverick platform he has been perpetrating since the convention (though, I suspect it was the Bush administration that was behind that sham version)--that is, if he can go back to his own, true-blue version of bucking trends, and with immense courage buck the entire Bush administration, I believe he will have been the six-million dollar man that he dreams himself now. He will have duplicated the great heroism he displayed during the Vietnam War. He will have been a great man after all.

We all know that the press abdicated their responsibilty to search for the truth when the run up to the war in Iraq was laced with lies by the Bush administration. To some degree, based upon the mood of the country at the time, one could make the argument that it would really have taken guts to stand up and seek the truth - an attribute not so readily displayed when being on the wrong side of the drim beat could possibly mean the end of your career.   However, the event that precluded that, the 2000 election recount, will probably be viewed through the prism of history as the time when the press, the 4th estate, checked out of their responsibility to the people when they abdicated their responsibilty to insure fairness in our democracy.  I was shocked to see the story recounted on the HBO special a few months ago.  Where was the press on this?  Why did I have to wait 8 years to hear the truth? The problem is that most media people today are more concerned about being the news themselves than being responsibile journalists.  When the 4th estate does not do its job, the democracy is in trouble.

There's a problem when, in the current campaign, there is little to be said in the Republican candidate's favor, and much, or everything to be said for his rival. The truth in reporting is bound to appear skewed precisely when it is most accurate. It is then not even a question of whether journalism should be political or simply lay bare the facts: the facts themselves lay down the political agenda.

I know you're not hateful, AP, and I know you know what you're talking about. But Obama fits that description too. He will only be a disaster if we let him be, i.e. if we don't work with him to (forgive me) DECONSTRUCT the lies and damage of the Bush administration.

Two questions for Ms. Fiorina:   Do you really believe that Obama defeated Clinton because Sen. Clinton is a woman or could it be because of Sen. Clinton's disdainful treatment of Obama during the primaries, not to mention her frequent "misspeaking?"   And do you really believe that women who had supported Clinton would now vote for a ticket that denigrated the rights of women, including a Vice-Presidential candidate who believes (like President Bush) that some god led us into invading Iraq and starting a seemingly endless war?  I think that Sen. Clinton's supporters are a lot smarter than that!   Philip Spitzer