The Media’s President

Posted on | June 20, 2014 | 44 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

Da Tech Guy makes the obvious point: The reason the media aren’t going after the IRS scandal is because Barack Obama is their president. Not since JFK’s fictitious “Camelot” have the media invested so heavily in maintaining the image of a president, an image of competence and success that can be maintained only by ignoring all contrary evidence and pretending that all criticism of Obama is racist — RAAAAACIST!

This is more than just “liberal bias,” it’s outright dishonesty, made easier by the blind partisan hatred of Republicans that has become prevalent among journalists since the Bush era. Reporters and editors were convinced (and remain convinced) that George W. Bush (a) “stole” the 2000 election, and (b) lied about the Iraq war, which all Democrats believe was fought for bad motives — and Democrats outnumber Republicans in the press corps by a factor of at least 5-to-1.

Even if you set aside the usual liberal prejudices about Republicans — that they are greedy, hateful, sexist, racist homophobes who destroy the environment for profit — the Iraq war confirmed in the minds of the press corps what they already believed, that Republicans are dishonest warmongers. Thus, the media believe, it is not only a professional obligation but also a matter of civic duty that journalists do all they can to ensure no Republican is ever elected president again.

Among the multitudinous ramifications of this belief system is the despicable prejudice of James Fallows, a Democrat Party hack of the most shameless sort: “James Fallows of The Atlantic and Media Matters are on a crusade to silence Republicans from ever appearing or have their voices heard in the Media.” Joe Fein was trying to call attention to this problem on Twitter a few days ago, but Joe was so angry about it he couldn’t make his point clearly. I understand: The mere thought of James Fallows should make any honest man angry.

When I was in Mississippi to cover the GOP primary a couple weeks ago, I sat next to Molly Ball of the Atlantic. The association between Fallows and the Atlantic came to mind and I went off on a rant about that despicable fraud. Molly responded by assuring me that James Fallows is a very nice person and, alas, I didn’t have the presence of mind to invoke The Banality of Evil. Of course, the press corps is nowadays so crammed full of despicable frauds that it is perhaps unfair to single out Fallows, except that he has been practicing this fraudulence for so many years and is in some sense typical of Our Moral Superiors™ — the elite-educated fools whose contempt for the common sense of ordinary Americans is so dangerous because it is entirely unconscious.

Whenever I think of James Fallows, I immediately think of The Vision of the Anointed, a book no liberal has ever read, because if they ever read it, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore. But I digress . . .

The decline of Obama’s approval ratings must disturb Fallows and his comrades among Our Moral Superiors™ — how can the American people be so ungrateful for the presidency that the media have so diligently sold them? Of course, Fallows could answer the question easily, by referencing his belief that the American people are profoundly stupid.

And if all other explanations fail: RAAAAACISM!

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Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Media Bias

Comments

44 Responses to “The Media’s President”

Evi L. Bloggerlady
June 20th, 2014 @ 9:30 am

Of course, just the same reason the media turned so quickly on Nixon (because the media hated Nixon). And JFK got a pass on his indiscretions his whole political career (until he was martyred).

And the President is banking on media cover to ride this scandal out.
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June 20th, 2014 @ 9:34 am

[…] TOM: Why do conservatives get slandered, yet liberals get a pass from the media? […]
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June 20th, 2014 @ 9:37 am

[…] Hard Drives Destroyed After Investigation Started? TOM: IRS Obstruction of Justice Update: TOM: Why do conservatives get slandered, yet liberals get a pass from the media? […]
M. Thompson
June 20th, 2014 @ 9:41 am

As I said at CDR Salamander last night, if the media wasn’t massively in the tank for this guy, he’d be long gone.
RS
June 20th, 2014 @ 10:01 am

The decline of the One’s approval rating correlates nicely with the decline in the public’s trust of the Legacy Media. This is where James Taranto would invoke Fox Butterfield.
Jon
June 20th, 2014 @ 10:12 am

Recordings of staff meetings at The Atlantic or the D.C. bureaus of the regular big media outlets would be fascinating right now. None of them are going to come right out behind closed doors and call Obama a miserable failure — because you never know where the ultimate True Believers are hiding and could report you to the Truth Police — but the not-very-well-hidden snark about Obama and his team has to be as thick as an evening fog in Frisco.

They may not admit their formerly beloved demigod was an affirmative action hire, but they are getting irritated at having to clean up so many of Obama’s recent messes. They’re just not going to put anything like that in print.
MichaelAdams
June 20th, 2014 @ 10:37 am

Any of these “journalists” who wanted to know could easily learn that in actual, visible-in-time-and-space fact, the Democrats tried very hard to steal the 2000 election, aided and abetted by many media hacks, (Yeah, I’m looking at you, NPR.) and failed. The only dimpled chads are those that were stacked up and punched by a stylus or some other convenient pointy object, not in the voting machine. “Recounting” ballots behind closed doors would be mighty suspicious, if Republicans tried such a thing. “Recounting” in only Democrap counties, would have, eventually, produced enough “votes” to put Gore over in Florida. I was a devout Democrap until then, and, as precinct chairman, had been an election judge. It was our first-hand knowledge of how those machines worked that turned me and my wife in the space of about a week. So, the press might have believed that Bush was not legitimately elected. However, they had to have been right willing to believe the impossible before those events even took place. The hate likely preceded the belief.
tjhawk
June 20th, 2014 @ 10:39 am

The fact that the major networks are ignoring the latest developments in the IRS scandal shows how laughable they’ve become. The Obama love has killed the new business.
Dana
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:12 am

You want to see the media abandon Barack Hussein Obama? All that someone has to do is to persuade former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that her path to glory is to undercut the Republicans by saying, “Look, I supported most of President Obama’s policies, and I’ll protect the gains women and people of color have made, and protect our increased access to health care — though with a much improved system — but I wasn’t a part of the IRS misuse and corruption, and I wasn’t part of the Chicago Way, and I’ll clean that up!”

That would give the Democrats and the media — if you’ll pardon the redundancy — the excuse that they need: they won’t have to ignore the obvious, and they won’t have to make excuses for corruption, and can still support the leftist agenda.

Heck, then they can even prove that they aren’t sycophants just because the current President is (half) black, while already having proved that they weren’t raaaaacists by having been in his corner until the evidence of corruption emerged.
Dana
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:13 am

But, but, but it was all for the good, you know, since Vice President Gore won the popular vote!
davesnothere
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:17 am

Also in the news: rain is wet, dogs bite men, and Queen Anne is dead.
Art Deco
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:27 am

What’s this with Fallows and The Atlantic? The Atlantic has gone into decline in recent years (presumably for reasons to do with finances and also the decaying intramural culture of the press corps), but it has long been the most palatable and least obnoxious of portside outlets. Fallows is an old man who appears to have aspired to display greater depth than the usual opinion journalist, penning a number of trade books over the years. I think he aspired a generation ago to offer some unconventional thoughts on the liberal plantation, though his deviations are circumscribed. (Very few portside pundits have a particularly distinctive voice and many of those who do are distinctive for malice). This man and this magazine are not particularly generous targets. Richard Blow (a.k.a. Richard Bradley), former editor of George, is a notably purer example of a liberal bigot. You want a skeezy hack, how about Alec MacGillis, who, unlike Blow and Fallows, actually had berths as a straight news reporter?
palintologist
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:33 am

The MSM has been cratering for years. I submit we will one day learn they’ve been totally propped up (financially) by either Obama cheerleaders like Soros, Zuckerberg and/or our tax dollars.
They don’t seem to care that they have any credibility.
Paul Ryan to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen : “No one believes you…” | Batshit Crazy News
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:49 am

[…] is the media not calling the Obama Administration and IRS out on this? Because the media is in the bag for Obama. Instapundit: IRS Scandal Day 407, Investigating the destruction of Lerner’s hard […]
Guest
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:50 am

Today’s liberalism is more of a primitive, foreign, destructive, totalitarian, counter-Christian religion than anything else. Same as its marxist, socialist, and communist ancestors.

The notion that the intellectual vanguard of liberalism will be reasoned with is patently absurd because this is a religious war, first and foremost.
TC_LeatherPenguin
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:53 am

“… I wasn’t part of the Chicago Way, and I’ll clean that up!”

Except she was born, raised and cut her political teeth in Chicagoland.
OldmanRick
June 20th, 2014 @ 12:06 pm

If one were to do some serious homework, one might find that these reporters are Marxists toeing the party line for their kind in congress and throughout government..
Quartermaster
June 20th, 2014 @ 12:11 pm

You misspelled DimoKKKrap.
Quartermaster
June 20th, 2014 @ 12:12 pm

Tipper finally realized, like the rest of the country, that l was a weasel.
Quartermaster
June 20th, 2014 @ 12:14 pm

But is Franco?
Pelosi Schmelosi
June 20th, 2014 @ 1:17 pm

“that Republicans are dishonest warmongers.”

Really?

Clinton 1998 SOTU Address

“Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade and much of his nation’s wealth not on providing for the Iraqi people but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The United Nations weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job, finding and destroying more of Iraq’s arsenal than was destroyed during the entire Gulf War. Now, Saddam Hussein wants to stop them from completing their mission.

I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein: You cannot defy the will of the world. And when I say to him: You have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.”
RKae
June 20th, 2014 @ 1:25 pm

Want to know who the media’s next pick for president is? Well, here they are FLAT-OUT TELLING YOU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkXkS70Co-o
MichaelAdams
June 20th, 2014 @ 1:54 pm

Dana, have a care for my blood pressure, please. The only reason that Gore “won” the popular vote was that they stopped counting absentee ballots when the Electoral College majority was established.
Ed Driscoll » Paul Ryan to IRS Commissioner: ‘Nobody Believes You’
June 20th, 2014 @ 2:53 pm

[…] Will the media finally start covering this story? Don’t count on it, writes Stacy McCain. It might upset “The Media’s President:” […]
K-Bob
June 20th, 2014 @ 3:01 pm

The Atlantic has been struggling with one, major problem for the last few years: Hitchens died.

He was all that kept the rag marginally above the toady line, and now they are accelerating toward “Time Magazine for Middle School” territory.
K-Bob
June 20th, 2014 @ 3:28 pm

This underscores a simple truth: the next Republican Administration needs to reshuffle the media deck chairs, and stop giving press passes to outfits that have zero journalistic integrity, regardless of how long they have been welcomed before.

It’s likely we’d get far better White House coverage if they credentialed Ladies Home Journal, GizModo, Playboy, and Plastics Quarterly staff writers in the White House pool, and got rid of AP, WaPo, NYT, LAT, and ChiTrib writers.

At some point, you have to declare the corpora to be delicti.
TiminAL
June 20th, 2014 @ 3:31 pm

Yes. “Francisco Franco is still dead”.
TiminAL
June 20th, 2014 @ 3:31 pm

Yes. “Francisco Franco is still dead”.
Art Deco
June 20th, 2014 @ 3:36 pm

The departures of Megan McArdle and Ross Douthat did not help.
Joseph Fein
June 20th, 2014 @ 3:59 pm

Here’s a couple of things….

1) Ask James Fallows directly why he wants to make unpersons of Republicans (i.e. False equivaence meme): [email protected]

2) The National and State Parties are not bringing friendly new media on board. I like to say I’m a Cyberpunk (Goth, Blogger) in a Steampunk (The thinking of some parties have not moved since 1988) world.

3) When the GOP does get back the White House, before the Press office or conferences occur, the Media office should interview every reporter that is going to the WH. If they don’t understand any person or the different branches of the GOP, tell their paper they cannot work there.

4) Two other “Journalists,” we bloggers need to look at and take down: Joan Walsh of Salon and Charles Pierce of Esquire. Large platforms and they don’t like us.

Thanks for link RS!
Pick an Orientation… No, Not That One | Regular Right Guy
June 20th, 2014 @ 4:20 pm

[…] The Media’s President […]
Joseph Dooley
June 20th, 2014 @ 4:23 pm

The mark of the world on Obama’s forehead is a nice touch.
Joseph Dooley
June 20th, 2014 @ 4:25 pm

Chris better get the sharp knives out for Hillary if he wants his brother to have any kind of shot at 2016.
Wombat_socho
June 20th, 2014 @ 4:26 pm

Unfortunately. He knew how to deal with Communists.
S. Arepo
June 20th, 2014 @ 4:27 pm

Or Cox & Rathvon!
Kirby McCain
June 20th, 2014 @ 8:17 pm

It’s not so much that they’re in the tank for him but the media sold it’s soul to progressivism. They aren’t free to tell the truth anymore. Should someone fail to toe the line they will be lynched by their brethren. It’s no longer a free press, it’s a propaganda industry.
The Myth Of Obama | The Lonely Conservative
June 20th, 2014 @ 11:40 pm

[…] In the case of Barack Obama, the left wing media didn’t need anything so dramatic to perpetuate a myth. They fell in love the day he hit the national scene. Sure, they have their moments of disappointment and random acts of journalism, but they quickly recover because, well, they’re in love. And they need to keep the myth alive, even as the living and breathing president continues to stutter, flail and play a lot of golf. So it’s no surprise that they’re reporting as little as possible on the many scandals plaguing his administration. […]
Adjoran
June 21st, 2014 @ 2:16 am

But they got Conor Friedersdorf!

heh – I denounce myself, carry on
K-Bob
June 21st, 2014 @ 5:58 am

They save ink on printing ‘n’s!
Da St
June 21st, 2014 @ 9:54 am

Lemme fix something for you: “… only by ignoring all contrary evidence…” should read, “…only by ignoring evidence, all of which is contrary,…”
Da St
June 21st, 2014 @ 9:55 am

“James Fallows is a very nice person.” I’m sure he speaks “with a soft voice.”
The Myth Of Obama | Our Tyrannical Government
June 21st, 2014 @ 2:05 pm

[…] In the case of Barack Obama, the left wing media didn’t need anything so dramatic to perpetuate a myth. They fell in love the day he hit the national scene. Sure, they have their moments of disappointment and random acts of journalism, but they quickly recover because, well, they’re in love. And they need to keep the myth alive, even as the living and breathing president continues to stutter, flail and play a lot of golf. So it’s no surprise that they’re reporting as little as possible on the many scandals plaguing his administration. […]
holygoat
June 21st, 2014 @ 3:55 pm

See: Attikisson, Sharyl
FMJRA 2.0: A Day Late And a Moron Short : The Other McCain
June 22nd, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

[…] The Media’s President […]