The Media appear to be working overtime to earn the hated “liberal” or “recklessly biased” epithets. In the latter case, Fox News Hannity and Colmes program is lately acting as a RNC-Republican National Committee cable channel conduit for strictly RNC viewpoints despite trumpeting that “the fair and balanced debate is only on ‘Hannity and Colmes’ “. Rigggghhhhtttttttttt.
But even media outlets that one would expect to be non-partisan and unbaised are letting out partisan attack dogs in their Opinions sections. The Wall Street Journal has just done a disservice to its own paper’s credibility by allowing a hopelessly short sighted view on what went wrong with recent Iraq War to be publsihed as an Opinion piece. And yesterday, the New York Times let Op-Ed columnist Bill Kristol publish a Palin piece that clearly was a Republican cover and “apologia” for the McCain-Palin campaign’s turn towards PitBull personal attacks on Barack Obama.
Kristol’s column’s only redeeming quality was as an example of political manipulation spelled out in written formulas:
1) Breathless account of how I get to talk to Sarah Palin.
2) She even confides in me, William Kristol, about how her son dispatched to Iraq has neglected to call her … and then when the call finally comes …
3) Here are the setup lines for a new Palin mission assignment:
‘As for the campaign, Palin made clear €” without being willing to flat out say so €” that she regretted allowing herself to be overly handled and constrained after the Republican convention. She described the debate on Thursday night as €œliberating,€ and she emphasized how much she now looked forward to being out there, €œgetting to speak directly to the folks.€’
4) Well your new assignment, if you choose to accept it:
‘Palin also made clear that she was eager for the McCain-Palin campaign to be more aggressive in helping the American people understand €œwho the real Barack Obama is.€ Part of who Obama is, she said, has to do with his past associations, such as with the former bomber Bill Ayers. Palin had raised the topic of Ayers Saturday on the campaign trail, and she maintained to me that Obama, who€™s minimized his relationship with Ayers, €œhasn€™t been wholly truthful€ about this.
I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers €” and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?
She didn€™t hesitate: €œTo tell you the truth, Bill, I don€™t know why that association isn€™t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that €” with, I don€™t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn€™t get up and leave €” to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.€ ‘
5) The mission asignment then concludes with Palin saying, all of her own accord as made Kristol-clear to readers, that John McCain should decide to take the gloves off and let her be Super-smear Mom too.
6)And presumably now the Republican operatives “There was a pause, and I thought I heard some staff murmuring in the background (we were on speaker phones).” could be sure that orders … ushh suggestions were getting properly executed by the Vice President.
Wow – we got to see Repulican presidential campaign policy making “Live”. Again that is the only redeeming virtue of an op-ed column that is Deep Six Republican. Please NYTimes, give us an OpEd voice closer to David Brooks who at least endeavours to be unbiased, looking for the insights that are independent and not repackaged political party lines.
In sum, our press has become key agents of the change to shrill and biased political “debates”. So the ability to even do good analysis let alone arrive at good policy decisions is being progressively cutoff and squandered in the current hyper-toxic partisan politics. The Press held out as the institution that helps to preserve the public’s political consciousnes, will and trust is now undermining by allowing such biased players a loud, squaking and no-partisan-holds barred national outlet.