…it is quite astounding that the mainstream liberal media ”” NY Times, Washington Post, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, etc. ”” has simply offered no substantive criticism of Obama’s flips on renditions, military tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Iraq, or ”” given their past fury over the Bush deficits ”” the Obama plan to run up more red ink in a year than Bush did in eight.
Bush was constantly criticized by mainstream conservatives for his comprehensive immigration proposals, for deficit spending, for failure to veto any bills in the first term, for No Child Left Behind, for the prescription drug benefit, for the Harriet Miers nomination, for the first pullback from Fallujah, for appointments like Scott McClellan and “Brownie,” etc.
The result, I think, will prove fatal for the media. For the last eight years, rendition (hey, they even made a hit-piece movie about the supposedly awful practice), intercepts, military tribunals, and Iraq were sort of the refrains of the liberal-media choruses. Looking back, in light of the Obama media, was such hysteria simply politics, pure and simple? Bush did it: bad; Obama did it: fine?
[blockquote]Looking back, in light of the Obama media, was such hysteria simply politics, pure and simple? Bush did it: bad; Obama did it: fine? [/blockquote]
Yes. Bush=bad;Clinton and Obama=good. And the fact that NPR gets public money to be a liberal mouthpiece is a scandel.
Nailed it. How did this piece ever see the photon of distribution or the ink on paper? Accountability to ………….. ?
[b]Main Stream Media = Pravda[/b]
This article was good but short. Main stream media is more like the Soviets Pravda than a free press reporting the news. It seems that all they do has a strong political bias to the Liberal Left. I always have my “filter” activated when I evaluate main stream media reports.
Also in the Department of Homeland Security’s definitions, main stream media is given a positive while the DHS definitions attempt to associate other news sources with terrorism. How sad that the main stream media in this country has become the mouthpiece of only one political view and other sources are under threat of suppression because they disagree. Look how the Fox News Network gets shouted down as radical right even though they include liberal viewpoints.
i think this article is a little premature…after all bush got his honeymoon in the beginning and especially after 9/11; i remember because i despised him from the start. i am sure people were hoping he would fulfill his promise to govern from the middle but he didn’t in any measure, like i expected. and no conservatives were EVER criticising bush and that includes fox news until the last year when the majority population finally figured out what was up. so that argument is pointless; when fox news has liberals on, they just get shouted down; that doesn’t seem ‘fair and balanced’ to me. but the same goes for blatantly liberal channels too.
obama hasn’t been in 6 months yet. and yes the elitist media is liberal and they are probably giving him more of a break than they should. but comparing him to bush is apples and oranges. obama seems sincere in helping the general population and is forward thinking; bush only seemed to care about corporate america and the rich. will obama make mistakes? undoubtedly. but i see him more likely to admit it and try to correct things. there are a lot of things i disagree with but i see him trying to make an effort to reach out; it would be good to have a conservative like that but they are few right now.
Magnolia, maybe you move in the wrong cirlces but Bush got a LOT of flak from the Right early on. Convervatives closed ranks during all the recount nonsense but I remember a fair bit of critiscism from about March 2001 or so on. There was another period of closing ranks after 9/11, but it was eroding fast over the course of 2003. You may not have noticed it because it tended to be critical of his domestic policies.
Obama’s “efforts to reach out” have been transparent ploys to defang opposition (Gregg, Huntsman), to co-opt (Specter), or to recruit (Notre Dame). He has been more dismissive of the opposition than any president I can recall, has consistently attacked the previous administration at home and abroad, and has organized a hate campaign against specific media figures that is unparalleled.
An smooth and eirenic public manner does not necessarily imply a desire for reconciliation or centrism.
Look rather at what the administration has done — some of the most profoundly revolutionary changes in American history hurried through under the guise of crisis management.
Frankly, a “manifestly unprepared” governor from a certain northern state is looking far more compelling than she did.
#5, #6, I agree on domestic politics. I must say with the exception of the embarrassing and humiliating apology speeches abroad, Obama has not been nearly as radical as I feared on foreign affairs. Perhaps even a radical, when he gets the full security briefings, has to stop and think whether he wants the country attacked again. We’ll see what his tack is with the speech in Cairo June 4.