Obama protected by dismissive media

David Greenburg:

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Finally, the protectiveness that Obama elicited from others also explains why McCain's fall campaigning was reviewed so harshly. Throughout the year, Obama was often spared the task of defending himself because others with prominent media platforms did it for him. As the campaign progressed, a whole slate of possible criticisms—including legitimate concerns about his record or his foreign-policy chops—were deemed, as if by cultural consensus, beyond the pale. Indeed, it's worth recalling that October's hyperbolic claims about McCain's negativity echo similar (and similarly unfounded) claims about Clinton's campaigning back in the spring. Does Obama somehow invite historically unprecedented negativity? Or are his enthusiasts just unusually quick to perceive it? In any event, Obama benefited more from labeling his rivals as uniquely sleazy than he suffered from whatever sleaziness they displayed.

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When looking at media bias in this campaign someone could write a book on the use of the dismissive paragraph. One of the things I noticed was the frantic effort of the Obama media to find something they could condense into one dismissive paragraph to deal with every person who raised issues about Obama. When they saw how popular and effective Sarah Palin was, they went to unprecedented efforts to find material for the dismissive paragraph. The same thing happened with Joe the Plumber whose question caused Obama to make a gaffe about taxes.

Typically the dismissive paragraph was highly personal and meant to belittle or disparage the messenger as a way of avoiding the power of their arguments. It became a passive aggressive message