This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • John Edwards and Kharma

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     By now everyone has read that the National Enquirer busted John Edwards leaving the hotel where his paramour Rielle Hunter was staying with their love child in a Beverly Hills hotel earlier this week. Micky Kaus at Slate reported the LA Times has enacted a blackout on the news “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations.”

    Extra writes that Hunter denies the affair;

    “Completely unfounded and ridiculous” is how Hunter describes a National Enquirer story claiming she has a love child with Edwards — and that she was recently visited by the married Edwards at a Los Angeles hotel.

    Edwards denies it, too;

     When asked about the allegations today in Houston, Edwards called the stories “tabloid trash,” adding, “They’re full of lies.”

    Well, now Fox News has verified it independently;

    The Beverly Hilton Hotel guard said he encountered a shaken and ashen-faced Edwards — whom he did not immediately recognize — in a hotel men’s room early Tuesday morning in a literal tug-of-war with reporters on the other side of the door.

    “What are they saying about me?” the guard said Edwards asked.

    So, why aren’t the media holding Edwards’ feet to the fire like the did Larry Craig and Mark Foley? Well Jack Shafer at Slate says it’s because Edwards isn’t provably gay;

     So why hasn’t the press commented on the story yet? Is it because it broke too late yesterday afternoon, and news organizations want to investigate it for themselves before writing about it? Or are they observing a double standard that says homo-hypocrisy is indefensible but that hetero-hypocrisy deserves an automatic bye?

    That’s my sense.

    Well, NPR chose this week to run their exclusive interview with John Edwards and his war against poverty. He’s still running for President, he’s still talking about two Americas, and oddly enough, how America needs to find a solution to the problem of single-parenthood. More of that hetero-hypocrisy, I guess. Couldn’t be because he’s a Democrat, could it?

  • Oh, goody, the Germans like us again

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    No, I didn’t bother watching Obama’s speech yesterday, just like I haven’t watched any of his speeches. Too much hyperbole for my tastes, and as I suspected, the Germans, who are historically easily swayed by empty, populist oratory seemed to gobble up the staged show (Washington Times Christine Bellantoni);

    Just like crowds at his American rallies, these fans erupted in chants of “Obama, Obama,” and “Yes, we can.” One person led the crowd in a chorus of the “Obamagirl” song, getting dozens to sing along that “I’ve got a crush on Obama.”

    Of course, the Left in the US all peed themselves a little when the Germans accepted Obama. That’s what the Left needs, someone from Europe, especially one of the more socialistic countries like Germany, to validate their candidate. The rest of the United States, not so much.

    John Kornblum wrote in the Washington Post;

    I was standing on a raised platform about 25 yards from Obama yesterday. Most of the audience — a sea of young people shouting “Obamaaa!” and “Yes, we can!” — were not native speakers of English, and some perhaps didn’t understand English at all, but they didn’t seem to care. The young people seemed to feel that he was speaking to them.

    I get the same feeling sometimes, only different – I am a native speaker of English and I’ve never felt as if he was speaking to me.

    Half of my antecedents left Germany around the end of the 19th century, I don’t know why exactly, but I’m sure they had their reasons. They certainly didn’t care what the “left behinds” thought of them, so I guess I shouldn’t either. Most of us come from European ancestry, people who left the chains of serfdom and constant war to build a new nation on this side of the Atlantic. The United States has rescued Europe from itself on more than one occasion. Why would we seek approval from the world that we call “the developed countries” (but they’re really not developed like we are at all – most are racist, sniffing backwards snobs)?

    Ask any American GI who spent any time in Germany if the Germans are really as smart as the Left likes to portray them – or anyone who spent time in any part of Europe. Any GI who longed to return to the “Land of the Round Doorknobs”.

    So why would Europe embrace the likes of Obama? Because they long for the days of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter when we were a laughing stock. When our presidents showed up with bags of money and on their knees to pay tribute to the sons of kings of Europe. The same reasons that Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, al Qaeda, FARC and all the rest of the world’s thugs support Obama – for what they anticipate they can hornswaggle out of the US taxpayers.

    Who cares what Europe thinks? Only the people who’ve forgot why this country was founded in the first place care…that’s who.

    Personally, I’m most trusting of the Europeans when they fear us and respect us.

  • So who’s making this campaign dirty?

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    Not to be outdone by the New Yorker, Vanity Fair decided they’d take a jab at Cindy and John McCain with their cover. It seems to me that all of the “dirty politics” being played this year is by the media and not politicians. I guess this race isn’t exciting enough for them, they have to poke the bear.

  • A fish doesn’t know he’s wet

    By now, you’ve probably all seen this video from the John McCain campaign that claims the media is all a-twitter about Obama;

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    So James Taranto on WSJ’s Best of the Web provides a transcript of the discussion about this video and the media’s over the top treatment of Obama on CNN with Wolf Blitzer moderating…the discussion gets interupted for breaking news.

    CNN interrupts a discussion of whether the media are in the tank for Obama for a news bulletin that Obama’s plane has landed safely–a dog-bites-man story if ever there was one.

    Come to think of it, it’s even less noteworthy than a dog-bites-man story. Obama’s plane landing safely is literally an everyday occurrence. If a dog bit him, that would newsworthy–especially if it were the toothless watchdog that answers to the name of MSM.

  • Campaigning in a time vacuum

    The press is all a-twitter because the Iraqi government seems to agree with foreign policy dunce Barack Obama that a 16-month timetable withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq seems to be the best solution. From the Washington Post;

    But as political theater, the events of the past few days have played unfailingly in the Democrat’s favor. On Friday, a day after Obama left for Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush administration officials announced that the United States and Iraq had agreed on a time horizon for removing troops. Then, twice in three days, Maliki embraced a withdrawal timeline similar to Obama’s.

    And you know what? I might even agree at this point…the difference between me and Barack and the Washington Post is that I’ve taken events over the last year and a half into account to arrive at my conclusion, while the Post and Obama act like they were right to call for the withdrawal for more than two years, absent the success of the surge. So the Post and Obama are actually saying that Obama has special powers that let him see into the future and make determinations based on his special transcendental knowledge.

    For the Post and Obama, the surge never happened, it’s still 2006 and we’re still taking scads of casualties daily in Iraq. They discount the fact that Obama has taken every opportunity to vote against funding the troops, to vote against giving them the equipment they’ve needed and he opposed the surge. Obama, for his own political benefit, did his best to make sure that troops were still suffering massive casualties in Iraq when he assumed the Presidency, just so he could surrender and then Democrats could point at George Bush as a failure.

    Last week, I wrote that William Arkin was still trying to convince Post readers that all was lost in Iraq and that the troops were coming home so they could save their honor. I also wrote about the members of Congress who wrote a letter to the President calling on him to withdraw the troops from Iraq. Robin, my supposed alter-ego at Chickenhawk Express, wrote this weekend that Dahr Jamail, the terrorists’ best friend in Iraq, is still calling Fallujah a quagmire. It’s as if the Left stored it’s collective consciousness in a jar over the door jamb for two years and just uncorked it last week.

    Although Obama may be right on his timetable withdrawal today, he was wrong when he first mentioned it, he’s been wrong on it for two years. Just because events that he had nothing to do with have made him right (what’s the old saw about a broken clock being right twice everyday? Or a blind squirrel finding a nut?), it doesn’t change the fact that he was wrong…dangerously wrong…in the beginning.

  • Andrea Mitchell questions ethics of the media

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    Newsbusters Mark Finkelstein relates an interview with Andrea Mitchel on Chris Matthew’s Hardball in which Mitchell says, in effect, the media on the Obama “whirlwind tour” (as I’ve heard it described about every half-hour since Friday) are Obama’s bobbleheads;

    MITCHELL: Let me just say something about the message management.  He didn’t have reporters with him, he didn’t have a press pool, he didn’t do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in.  You’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military, and what some would call fake interviews, because they’re not interviews from a journalist.  So, there’s a real press issue here.  Politically it’s smart as can be.  But we’ve not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before.

    When Matthews inquired about the atmospherics of the trip, Mitchell made clear her frustration as a reporter.

    MATTHEWS: Let me ask you to access to the troops, Andrea.  A lot of African-American faces over there, very happy, delighted faces.  Is that a representation of the percentage of servicepeople who are African-American, or did they all choose to join someone they like, apparently?  What’s the story?

    MITCHELL: I can’t really say that.  Being a reporter who was not present in any of those situations, I just cannot report on what was edited out, what was, you know, on the sidelines.  That’s my issue. We don’t know what we are seeing.

    Yeah, the first thing I noticed was the astounding number of Black troops in the photos and videos – and a serious lack of white faces. The military is scared that someone is going to accuse them of not being impartial and they comply with what the campaign tells them just to avoid the whining-ass clowns in the Obama campaign. The military invented dog-and-pony shows, they’re the best at it.

    I read complaints from reporters earlier that Obama isn’t giving them the interviews they want, heck, they need. He gives short non-commital phrases like this one single phrase after his meeting with Maliki (I saved this from an AP story earlier that has since been scrubbed of complaints about Obama’s retiscence about giving substancial answers to questions – I know, I should have screen capped it);

    As he departed from talks with Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad’s heavily protected Green Zone, Mr. Obama said, “We had a very constructive discussion.”

    That’s it. So in order to keep Obama from screwing up, they shut him up and restrict media access. So America gets an idiot for President and someone is pulling his strings.

  • NY Times red pencils McCain’s opinion

    I read it first at Little Green Footballs and then clicked over to Drudge to read the whole thing, and it’s pretty startling. It seems that the New York Times is now rejecting people’s opinions based on style issues. Obama’s opinion piece a few weeks ago in the Times is apparently the style guide.

    ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

    Let me ask this question of the NYT’s editors…how do you think you can get away with presenting one politician’s opinion and then dictating to another what his rebuttal will be?

    NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’

    I’d be damned if I ever gave the New York Times anything that’d be beneficial to their traffic or their circulation, if I were John McCain – but he probably will.

    The Times says they want “new information” to publish. Well, how about this line from McCain’s piece;

    Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

    Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

    It must all be new information because Obama doesn’t know it – or the American public doesn’t know it and Obama is lying to them.

    Of course the Times doesn’t want to have to publish this, it makes them look bad…but not as bad as they look because of this rejection notice. I guess they figured that McCain wouldn’t tell the rest of the planet about the New York Times trying to deceive the American public.

  • Arkin: Bush’s Nixonian withdrawal plan

    Remember little Billie Arkin who told us all that the troops in Iraq were living La Vida Loca and that we didn’t need to support them, they needed to support us instead? Well, the Washington Post let him out of his cage (now that mud season has ended in Vermont) and let him moderate a discussion on their “Planet War” forum. Rather than say that the President is planning for pulling the troops out of Iraq because they’re not needed any longer, Arkin blames the defeat of the US military in Iraq for the President’s decision;

    Cynics might dismiss the maneuvering as “just politics,” but in fact [Obama and Bush] are struggling with the same objective and reality: how to end the Iraq war favorably and without admitting defeat, and how to preserve the honor of the American military.

    For the Bush administration, the task is to balance success on the ground and a new yearning and confidence on the part of the local government with long-term security. And of course, there is a heavy dose of pressure from the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, who both deeply want to be relieved of the exhausting duty. Accelerating withdrawals before the elections aren’t intended to help McCain, as some have speculated. They are motivated by a desire to leave the White House redeemed, and to give the American people what they want.

    Obama, on the other hand, is not flip-flopping or changing course or doing anything in his “refinement” other than being presidential. Everyone wants to “end the war,” the question now is how to get there. I would argue that the issue is not “defeat” of the terrorists or even the kind of stability in Iraq that would satisfy a tough auditor. The universal imperative has become to preserve American military honor.

    Now, keep in mind, that Billie Arkin made this brilliant assessment from the wilds of Vermont. He makes no indication that any of it is quoted from any source or any amount of research – it’s simply his unsupported opinion…from Vermont. From Vermont, Arkin has made the decision that we’re losing in Iraq (despite the mounds of evidence to the contrary that is publicly available) and that the President just wants to pull the troops out to save their honor – like Nixon in 1972. Arkin, as in his previously famous writings, blames the military’s ineptness for this imagined failure in Iraq and blames the Administration for keeping them there to spare their feelings.

    What Arkin won’t admit is that the only reason our troops have been involved over there so long is because him and his peace-freak buddies can’t shut up while the troops do their jobs. Even after the job is nearly done, he continues to berate them.

    And, of course the commenters in the forum suffer mightily from BDS;

    Bush has always said he wants to leave Iraq, and its easier when the country you occupy doesnt want you there. Bush has had 8 years of deception and misinformation that has led us deeper then we were ever promised we would be in Iraq. So to now say that his policies are similar to Obama’s is a stretch. Obama has a record of being opposed to the war from the beginning. Any refinement is seen as flip-flopping because the press is so used to a President that doesnt change anything he doesnt want to. The universal imperative of American Military honor has not chance under Bush. His entire history of ignorance and NOT listening to the generals on the ground (contrary to popular belief) had led us to hurt our military honor. This honor can be regained by winning the war on terror in its main battlegrouns- Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is something that Obama sees as a priority and Bush has seen as a secondary to his fiasco is Iraq. So I dont see the similarities.

    (Spelling and punctuation errors are from the original author, probably the result of pounding on his keyboard in frustration at being wrong once again)

    I should probably point out that Arkin did a brief tour in the Army as an intelligence officer in Berlin (during the late 70s) and that he went to work for Greenpeace after that. Besides blathering on for Washington Post, he seems attached somehow (his email address) to the Institute of Global Communications, a “progressive community” consisting of PeaceNet, EcoNet, WomensNet, and AntiRacismNet – so there’s probably no agenda there.

    Crossposted at Eagles Up! Talon

    Welcome Conservative Grapevine readers…and thanks to DPUD for linking us up again. Welcome C.H.U.D. Busters‘ readers.