An interesting real-life study in how Democrats and Republicans are treated differently by the media. You know, the so-called liberal media. It’s a study done in virtually a controlled environment in as the two men in question are both top-tier presidential candidates and used the same “offending” word. From The Horses Mouth.
Yesterday, during his Presidential announcement on David Letterman, McCain described American lives lost in Iraq as "wasted." He has just issued a statement saying he screwed up and instead should have used the word "sacrificed." This is exactly the same mistake, of course, that Obama committed back in mid-February.This demonstrates clearly to me the unprecedented power the rightwing noise machine has over the mainstream media. I don’t understand it, but it’s clearly there as this incident starkly illustrates.
A number of bloggers today have pointed out that the conservative outrage machine has been silent about this -- even as it went into overdrive in response to Obama.
But here's another thing to look at. How many stand-alone stories by the big news orgs will we see about McCain's screw-up? How many times do you suppose mainstream media commentators will refer to McCain's fumble as a "mistake," a "gaffe," or any similar such term?
Thus far crack TPM reporter-researcher Eric Kleefeld and I have been able to find exactly zero such descriptions. We've found a grand total of two -- yes, only two thus far -- stand-alone stories about McCain's foul-up, and neither used any such language. One was by ABC News, the other by the Associated Press. USA Today, meanwhile, used the AP story but actually described the incident positively in a subhed, saying that McCain moved "swiftly to calm the waters."
By contrast, when Obama committed this error, he was greeted with a fusillade of stand-alone stories, many of them hammering him for his political screw-up. "His first stumble," said the Chicago Sun Times. "Stumbling out of the gate," said political wise man Ron Fournier in a piece carried by MSNBC. Matt Lauer of NBC wondered: "How big a fallout will there be over this?" There was plenty of other babbling about it on cable, too.
And on McCain? Nutin'. As of yet, anyway.
As for the comments themselves, I find nothing wrong with them. Our leaders are “wasting” the lives, not only of military personnel but of US and Iraqi civilians as well.
Update: Eric Zorn is on this too.
2 comments:
Dave,
I saw this story on CNN every 15 minutes the other day. But, if I were you, I would not worry about McCain. He is old news, as is Hillary. I think Obama's threats would be Hillary in the primary and the only person who could give him a fight in the general would by Guiliani.
And if you think that the Obama attacks have soley been the work of the GOP you are living in fantasyland. Hillary and Co. are behind this.
Also, I would not be surprised if Hillary was behind this story in today's Chicago Tribune about Obama's family having slaves. If you read the story, it also says that McCain and Edwards families had slaves too, but the headlines only mention Obama.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/bal-obama0301,0,879580.story
We have a choice.
We can continue to put more money and resources into the fight - which we'll eventually lose.
Or
We can leave.
When we leave there won't be a sun shiny day in what was called Iraq.
And when we leave we may leave with some friends (Kurds), and maybe some people willing to sell us oil - the Shiites, and some poeple who will blame us for all the death and madness - the Sunnis.
What more can we expect?
We broke it, and now we own it.
Waste, sacraficed, whatever - it's too bad we went in there to begin with.
1.7 Billion a year to contain Iraq vs. what will probably be a Trillion dollars and thousands of lives of our Soldiers - and for what?
To get those who attacked us on 9-11?
No he's still free, in Northern Pakistan.
No, this was to avenge W's daddy.
And people want to play word games on how they describe those who have died?
It's sickening.
JP
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