Mental Midgets of the Media: Why Are You Surprised?
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on August 29, 2008 at 7:30 PM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Big Oil, Bill Clinton, Current Affairs, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Nomination, Hillary Clinton, John McCain
Well, you got what you wanted: after 19 months of the most grueling campaign in history, we are left with a celebrity candidate of no qualifications whatsoever and the public at large doesn’t know any more about him now than the day he began. And we have the mainstream media to thank. Vetting, anyone?
Pat Buchanan of all people makes this observation about last night’s “historic” convention speech:
After the phony roll call vote was taken here to formally nominate Barack Obama — a roll call that did not remotely reflect the true delegate strength of Hillary — the media exploded in an orgy of celebration about the historic character of the moment to which they had just been privileged to be witness.
“The first black presidential nominee ever of a major party in history!” was proclaimed. Coming on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Barack’s nomination is being hailed as the last great step forward in the long march to equality and justice in America.
The moral pressure to join the march of history is enormous.
Nor is it unfair to say that some journalists here are obsessed with the issue of race in this campaign. There may be wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rising tensions with Russia, a falling regime in Pakistan, and reports of U.S. and NATO warships headed for the Persian Gulf, but here it is all about the first black ever nominated for president.
…
Here at the convention, the media watched Hillary and Bill’s speeches with a commissar’s care — to ensure they not only embraced Barack but “validated” his credentials to be president. Should they not go all out for Obama, we are told, the Clintons are dead in the party.
So Obama needs to be validated? Still? With his tremendous financial advantage, press drooling over him, and the DNC elite praising him to the hilt daily – he still needs to be validated by the Clintons? Who did they nominate again?
This ridiculous pre-programmed media narrative about his “historic” candidacy (never mind Hillary’s historic candidacy) entirely ignores the fact that we are in a mess, both at home and abroad, and it would be nice to have a leader who knew what the hell they were doing regardless of race, sex or age. What say you?
I could give a crap about “history” or symbols. Symbols don’t govern. Women do. Men do. I do give a crap about leadership and policies that make sense. Not lofty pie in the sky rhetoric that doesn’t even have a passing acquaintance with reality, offered by someone who has spent barely any time in the Senate.
From George Will, The Devil in His Details,
Obama’s rhetorical extravagances are inversely proportional to his details, as when he promises “nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy” in order to “end the age of oil.”
So why did Obama vote for Bush/Cheney’s Energy Bill? Hmmm. More…
The diminished enthusiasm of some voters hitherto receptive to his appeals might have something to do with the seepage of reality from his rhetoric.
Yes, I’m quoting a conservative. Why? Because Obama is maxed out on the lefties, he is maxed out on the black vote and the youth vote. The voters he needs are actually concerned with bread and butter issues that his faux noble, nose in the air attitude have not yet begun to address.
Even MSNBC’s Campbell Brown, an Obama cheerleader and pillow-fluffer from way back, thought that Barack Obama’s spectacle …
“went a little long, it started to feel like a half-time at the superbowl.”
And when you have Charles Gibson of ABC News asking for the substance behind the fluff of Obama and none other than George Stephanopoulos (no friend to Hillary) asking why she was not chosen as VP to strengthen the ticket — you know you’re in trouble.
Charles Krauthammer in today’s WaPo piece, The Perfect Stranger, points out that:
…The deeper anxiety was that the party was nominating a man of many gifts but precious few accomplishments — bearing even fewer witnesses.
When John Kerry was introduced at his convention four years ago, an honor guard of a dozen mates from his Vietnam days surrounded him on the podium attesting to his character and readiness to lead…
Eerily missing at the Democratic convention this year were people of stature who were seriously involved at some point in Obama’s life standing up to say: I know Barack Obama. I’ve been with Barack Obama. We’ve toiled/endured together. You can trust him. I do.
Hillary Clinton could have said something like that. She and Obama had, after all, engaged in a historic, utterly compelling contest for the nomination. During her convention speech, you kept waiting for her to offer just one line of testimony: I have come to know this man, to admire this man, to see his character, his courage, his wisdom, his judgment. Whatever. Anything.
Instead, nothing. She of course endorsed him. But the endorsement was entirely programmatic: We’re all Democrats. He’s a Democrat. He believes what you believe. So we must elect him — I am currently unavailable — to get Democratic things done. God bless America.
Of course, Krauthammer has to trash Hillary. So again, it is her responsibility to legitimize Obama? If Krauthammer so trusts her opinion on this matter, then perhaps we should have nominated her.
Hey Chuck, did you want her to lie? Obama is NOT a man of substance. He has shown repeatedly that he will throw any one or any policy under the bus so fast it would give you whiplash. Hillary does not and cannot trust him. So she went as far as she could reasonably go without her nose growing on national television.
Furthermore, when it is clear that the ‘loser’ has more power than the ‘winner’ in this contest, we are in a sorry state in this party and in this country.
Pat Buchanan also points out that if Obama loses, we may all be labeled racists –at home and possibly by people abroad as well. Oh really?
John B. Judis, in his piece Avoiding A Long, Disappointing Fall in The New Republic, notes that according to the New York Times’ Matt Bai, “the race isn’t about race” and that what matters more is Obama’s “remarkably little governing experience.”
Daniel Henninger of the WSJ in his piece, Barack Obama: Leap of Faith, quotes New York Times articles stating that in dozens of interviews with friends of Obama during his years as editor of the Harvard Law Review “they could not remember his specific views from that era, beyond a general emphasis on diversity and social and economic justice,” and as a teacher at the University of Chicago, ‘he notably did not participate in its intellectual debates.’
Barack Obama raises the prospect of a candidate for the first time being elected into the presidency almost wholly on the basis of a compelling persona. It is no surprise this could happen in an age tugged by the siren song of celebrity.
Senator McCain nailed Senator Obama perfectly as the celebrity candidate. Like Tom Cruise with his great grin, easy laugh, affable demeanor and cocky swagger, charm is used as a tool to keep one at arm’s length – to seduce with a smile so as to keep the smoke and mirrors from ever letting you peer beneath a well orchestrated surface.
Much to the chagrin and dismay of people like Donna Brazile who envision the NEW Democratic Party being more urban and urbane, kicking the rest of us to the curb, Henninger goes on to correctly observe:
The 2008 election is almost certainly going to be decided by white, lower-middle-class voters — the people who voted for Hillary Clinton this year and before that for Ronald Reagan. If these voters don’t swing behind the Obama candidacy in Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Missouri, he will lose.
Yet amid a universally described lack of clarity about Sen. Obama’s experience and core political beliefs, it is now being said that if the people in blue-collar counties don’t vote for him, they, and their nation, remain racist.
This is false. If they don’t vote for Barack Obama, it won’t be over his personal roots, but because they’re confused about the roots of his politics.
I couldn’t have said it better. It ain’t about race. It never was.
After securing the nomination in June, Obama’s first priority had to be healing the rift between himself and Hillary Clinton. Candidates who can’t put nomination battles behind them well before the convention usually lose. Think of Goldwater in 1964, Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Walter Mondale in 1984. There are only two candidates I can remember who succeeded in overcoming intraparty rifts during the convention–John Kennedy in 1960 and Ronald Reagan in 1980–and they did it by nominating their primary opponents to be vice president.
Obama, who evidently did not see a nail-biting election looming, chose not to do that, and is reaping the consequences.
Obama and his throng chose to continue the massive disrespect heaped upon Hillary Clinton and her supporters. No real roll call vote was allowed. Surely she might have taken the nomination from this empty suit. Talk about putting yourself before either your party or your country, Senator Obama.
Now the media wants to complain that we know very little about this man and that his ‘same old same old’ hopey-changey rhetoric is getting tired. They are asking “where’s the beef?
Whatsamatter? Has the soufflé fallen already?
Well, the hell with all of them.
We have been asking, shouting, writing, calling, screaming, pleading for the substance for months and months and ridiculed for so doing. No matter what helpful prescription Mr. Judis is offering Mr. Obama in his article, to “Avoid A Long, Disappointing Fall,” I think that is exactly what the foolish and foolishly corrupt DNC and their new leader Senator Obama are going to have — a long, disappointing fall.
And nobody could deserve it more.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
by 
* (Included in the 
* 
.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
