The troops and the out of touch media
...The picture was hard to ignore but much of the main stream media did, as the hits on it just kept piling up. Not all of them were so clueless. Imus gave Kerry good advice which he eventually took. But, too many in the media are invested in a Democrat win and did not want to talk about anything that would detract from that possibility. Most were hoping that the issue would fade quickly. Their bias was slipping into the open.That outrage built from Monday forward, and not just because of Kerry's arrogance and bluster.
Even as the men and women in uniform heard the sneer and felt the slur, they also watched as elite media dismissed their anger and participated in the diminishment of their right to be incensed.
On Tuesday Halperin told me that the military are "not necessarily the best arbiters of Senator Kerry’s sense of humor."
On Wednesday morning --oblivious to the feelings of the troops and their families-- the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz intoned that "[t]here isn't anybody, including in the Bush administration, who believes that Kerry meant to insult the soldiers in Iraq with his clumsy joke.
On Wednesday afternoon --even after Kerry had published a half-apology (and an unsatisfactory one to much of the military if my e-mail is good indication), MSNBC's Chris Matthew was demanding of former Kerry campaign manager Bob Shrum why Kerry had apologized to people whom he had not insulted.
Within the Manhattan-Beltway media machine there was utter cluelessness as to opinion about Kerry's statement, Kerry's refusal to apologize, and then Kerry's non-apology apology, a cluelessness so profound as to be easily mistaken for contempt.
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In MSM, there were almost no voices willing to recognize the slander and demand an apology.
New media moved to make sure the military's view was heard, but it was the military itself that ultimately settled the issue.
One picture --now a famous picture-- utterly routed the MSM. It did so because it came from the military that had heard and understood what Kerry had said, and what he had not apologized for. Whether or not the old media carries the picture on front pages today (which would have been an obvious decision in any newsroom not deeply biased against the military and in favor of Democrats) most Americans will have seen it and laughed and laughed at John Kerry. Ridicule is the best revenge, and the troops have it.
But the American electorate also has a very clear example of how the media has been covering the war, the 2006 campaign, and, yes, the military for the past few years. The big MSM names want another Vietnam, and they pursue that storyline with a relentlessness that isn't deterred even by plummeting circulation and declining viewership.
It is surpassingly strange to watch an industry will its own destruction. But stranger still if the culture within which it lives does not object to the design
Thomas Sowell also notices media circling of the wagons.
...He has much more in this column. It is worth the read.
How is this story played in the media? The front-page headline on the San Francisco Chronicle read: “Bush, GOP seize on Kerry’s Gibe to Turn Focus from War in Iraq.” The Chronicle has learned well the New York Times’s technique of imputing motives instead of reporting facts.
Has any Democrat ever been accused by the mainstream media of “seizing on” some statement by a Republican, much less have bad motives imputed?
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