Monday, September 08, 2008 |
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The Double Standard and The Great Divide |
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Posted by:
Hugh Hewitt at
9:01 AM |
Whether John McCain's lead over Barack Obama is 10 points, or 3 points, or somewhere in between doesn't matter. Those numbers will shift and shift again over the next eight weeks.
What matters is the great divide that has been revealed, and whether or not the MSM tries to repair it or simply deepens it in the weeks ahead.
Will the MSM actually start covering Obama with the same level of scrutiny as has been applied to Sarah Palin these past ten days? Chicago Thugs, northern division, are swarming Alaska to try and smear Palin, while Obama's MSM allies are pressing for a series of gotcha interviews to help in the process, so the full court effort by Obama's media allies to destroy the Alaska governor will continue.
But still missing is a serious attempt by anyone sitting across from Obama to ask about his real views of and deep connections to Bill Ayers and the details of his years in close association with Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko. Wholly unexamined are Obama's long ties to the deeply corrupt Cook County machine.
Still missing is any sustained questioning about the huge gaps in his understanding of how the world works and his planned meetings with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Kim. Has he yet been briefed about the Russian veto on the Security Council? If Sarah Palin responded to the Georgian crisis as Obama did, she'd have been flayed for her unpreparedness. Obama got a pass. Yet he's the one running for president, not vice-president.
Still missing is even cursory questioning about his vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, his deceptive answers about his bipartisan achievements --of which he truly has none-- and the details of his legislative record in Illinois or D.C., which are laughable. Team Obama bristled at the derision directed at his "community organizer" experience, which reflects unease at the prospect of anyone actually pressing Obama on his life experiences.
For more than a year Obama has been allowed to run for president without hardly anything of substance issuing from him. This is because he is the chosen one of the MSM which has done a collective lay-down at his feet. The rare occasions when Obama is pushed even a little he collapses in incoherence and obfuscation. (Such as with his mischaracterization of his relationship with Ayers when asked about it by George Stephanopoulos.)
Now we are being treated to a new addition to his two memoirs: "How I thought about joining the military." Why are we talking about this two months before an election? Why isn't the MSM asking respectful but hard questions about who Obama actually is and what he has actually done and the friends he has actually had rather than "what ifs" and hypotheticals?
The rolling collapse of the Obama campaign is at least in part owed to the wide-and-getting-wider recognition that the MSM's Emperor has no clothes and that the MSM has been covering for him. The giant MSM snarl unleashed at the wildly popular Sarah Palin not only rallied millions to her side, it also exposed the virulent antipathy towards middle America on the part of many in the MSM and the agenda journalism of the rest. Bill Kristol writes today that Sarah Palin is a "Wal-Mart Mom." (HT: RobinsonandLong.com) The huge anger displayed towards her from Manhattan-Beltway media elites has been a great lesson for all Americans on the contempt in which "Wal-Mart Moms" are held by MSM and Democratic Party elites. This contempt won't be forgotten.
At an event in Los Angeles last night in which I was joined by Dennis Prager and Michael Medved, I asked the audience to clap if they had a special needs child within their immediate family, if their families within had experienced an untimely pregnancy outside of marriage, if they had needed two paychecks at any time in their marriage, if they had had to attend more than one college to complete a degree, if they had been in the bleachers of a child's sporting event, if they owned a gun, and if they attended church on a near weekly basis. The crowd was well represented on all counts. The MSM elites might say that's just a talk-radio crowd, but think about that for a moment. None of my questions were ideological --they were fact based. If these experiences push people toward Sarah Palin in one way or another --connecting them to her-- she has a web of connections that Obama and Biden can never match.
The derision heaped on Palin, combined with and compared to the deference shown Obama, is galling to middle America, as obvious a display of an immense double standard as has been seen in many years. Palin's selection changed the race, but the elites' attempt to destroy her hardened the lines in the space of a few days. There is a long way to go in the race, but Obama's and the MSM's bully-boy tactics are digging their shared hole deeper and deeper.
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