FRANK RICH Rips MSM for McCain Coverage

[Phx_Dem]

Ouch. This is painful (in a really good way).

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain has even prompted alarms from the right’s own favorite hit man du jour: Jerome Corsi, who Swift-boated John Kerry as co-author of “Unfit to Command” in 2004 and who is trying to do the same to Obama in his newly minted best seller, “The Obama Nation.”

Corsi’s writings have been repeatedly promoted by Sean Hannity on Fox News; Corsi’s publisher, Mary Matalin, has praised her author’s “scholarship.” If Republican warriors like Hannity and Matalin think so highly of Corsi’s research into Obama, then perhaps we should take seriously Corsi’s scholarship about McCain. In recent articles at worldnetdaily.com, Corsi has claimed (among other charges) that the McCain campaign received “strong” financial support from a “group tied to Al Qaeda” and that “McCain’s personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona.”

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/opinion/17rich.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

[ErinBerin84]

1. heh, this part was funny.

"AS I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!"

and this was funny too:

"McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras."


Good that he focused on the double standard with Cindy McCain, but did not discuss her drug addiction (but rather, her business ties/lobbying against Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which is more relevent than Michelle's college thesis)

[roesch]

7. Quote Corsi

When my right wing friends quote Corsi, I quote right back that according to him Bush Co is behind 9/11 and McCain is accepting money form Bin Laden--that gives pause to the argument.

[Supersedeas]

2. the Corp Media doesn't want to confuse Corsi's message w/Matalin's GoP desperation

the networks will always stick with the GoP desperation and damn the inconsistencies.

[underpants]

3. Love a good Sunday Rich read-MTP had these talking points as well today

Chuck Todd says that "people thought" that Obama would be up by double digits by now and crushing McCain in fundraising but since these predictions have not come true (double digits??? Gee wonder who put that idea out there???) that means that McCain is doing well and the McCain team is "borderline cocky".

:eyes:

[Phx_Dem]

4. Anyone know if Rich is syndicated? n/t

[Spazito]

5. Good article!

The media uses a microscope while examining everything about Obama while using blinders when it comes to McBush.

[CitizenLeft]

6. excellent - thank you!

*kick*

[City Lights]

8. I just did a mass email of this column...thanks!

Recommended.

[me b zola]

9. K&R

:kick:

[Frank Booth]

10. Wow. The mass media finally calling the mass media out for its own massive failure.

Sure it's a columnist, but at least it's something. Glad to see this.

[americanstranger]

11. Maybe collective guilt is kicking in.

Between pieces like this one and the MSM's call-out of Jerome Corsi this week, you gotta wonder if the media elite are starting to feel a little guilty for acquiescing to RW bullies and turning the country to shit (John Stewart's Crossfire appearance all those years ago with his 'You're hurting America!' quote seems pretty prophetic now, doesn't it?).

Joe Klein at Newsweek has had a revelation as well - he used to be a McCain fanboy, but more and more lately he's been calling McCain on his relentlessly negative campaign. Even Mrs. Greenspan is being more fair than usual.

To be more cynical for a moment - it could be that the Cool Kids just want to be on the winning side. Either way, I'll take it.

- as

[depakid]

12. He also stated (correctly) that the Obama campaign itself bears responsibility \

For the current state of affairs:

A point that some have made repeatedly

"The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is.

[americanstranger]

13. I'd agree, but with a qualification.

It is incumbent on the O campaign to start peeling the bark off of McCain's hagiography, but I'd feel uncomfortable with Obama himself doing it.

I'm coming around to the idea of Biden as VP (his 'Senator MBNA' status notwithstanding), because it would be one of McCain's Senate peers tearing McCain down - and he could do it with the right mix of humor and ferocity.

Obama could stay above it all and avoid the charge that Clinton tried to level against him in the primaries - that of 'abandoning the New Politics,' etc.

- as