Just how deep in the tank is the powerful media machine for Sen. Barack Obama?
Funny you should ask. Let me give you a couple of glaring examples. And these happened all in one 24 hour period.
On the evening of the ever-important Pennsylvania primary, all the cable news networks were showcasing their best and brightest anchors, snazzy sets, and high-tech histrionics to give us more analysis, graphs, exit polling and dramatic music than we could ever possibly handle in one night.
I know this may come as a shock to some, but I happen to prefer my TV news coverage from Fox News Channel. Perhaps it has something to do with my role as a Fox News on-air contributor, but I also appreciate their coverage.
But it’s fun to surf up and down the dial and check out what everyone else is doing, too.
Tuesday night at approximately 7:30pm EST, MSNBC featured Chris Mathews and Keith Olbermann sitting behind the big “election central” desk. The pair was surrounded by gigantic clocks reminding any viewer who happened to be watching that there were still thirty minutes left before the Pennsylvania polls closed. They had a ticking graphic on the screen; there were enormous clocks on the set. Anyone with the ability to tell time knew that it was 7:30 on the east coast and the polls would be closing in thirty minutes.
Anyone, it seems, except Chris Mathews.
When 7:30 rolled around, Chris Mathews welcomed the audience back to the MSNBC coverage. Olbermann was sitting next to him trying to look important, but as usual, really just looking constipated. Olbermann likes to pretend he’s Edward R. Murrow as he rips off Murrow with “Good night and good luck” at the end of his propaganda-filled tirades every night, so maybe Keith was channeling Murrow at the time.
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In any event, what came out of Mathews’ mouth was simply remarkable. “Right now, the polls are closed in Pennsylvania, it’s 8 o’clock” he said. Remember, there are huge graphics and clocks at the very moment Mathews is declaring the polls closed that show it’s 7:30pm.
You think I’m making this up? Watch it here.
Now there are a few things that are positively hysterical about Mathews’ major league mistake. First, watch how Olbermann, sitting there with his pursed lips and his granny glasses perched over his beady little eyes, nervously and quickly glances over at Mathews when he said the polls were closed.
One would think that Mr. Tough Guy, the creep who routinely trashes people with his “Worst Person in the World” awards, would have at least a little initiative and maybe enough of a dose of reality to say, “Um, Chris, not exactly true, it’s not 8 o’clock, it’s 7:30 and the polls will be open for another half hour.”
Maybe he could have kicked Mathews under the desk. Or thrown a glass of water at him.
Something.
Anything.
But no, not a peep out of Edward R. Murrow, Jr. Just a grimace and a deer-in-the-headlights stare into the camera.
And the other thing that makes me chuckle is to consider what would have happened if one of the Fox News anchors made such a blunder. Democrats would be running through the streets screaming, “Disenfranchisement! Disenfranchisement!” faster than Bill Clinton rushes into a gaggle of beauty queen contestants at a county fair.
Maybe it’s not easy for Chris Mathews to tell time while he’s in the middle of a broadcast that is, well, reporting on the time of day and covering when the polls in a pivotal primary will be closing. Remember, this is the same man who described getting a “thrill up (his) leg” whenever Barack Obama speaks. Perhaps he was thinking about when he’d get the chance to toss to Obama’s concession speech that night and he had thrills going up and down both legs at the same time.
The other example of an audacious deception this week from an Obamaniac came from portly propagandist Michael Moore.
Now that Moore isn’t making movies smearing our troops or Columbine shooting victims, he has plenty of time to write opinions on his website, www.michaelmoore.com.
On the eve of this week’s Pennsylvania primary, he wrote another piece extolling the virtues of his hero, Sen. Obama. Moore has all the subtlety and nuance of a sledgehammer.
Forget trying a sleazy little tactic like pretending the polls are closed a half hour before they are. Moore does a giant cannonball into the deep end of the bald-faced liar pool by writing one heck of a whopper.
“Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama” Moore writes in his dopey ‘Mike’s Letter’ section. “Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, "Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for 'spiritual counseling?' THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!”
Say what???
No one, I repeat, no one has ever suggested, reported, or heard that the Clintons called on this racist hatemonger for spiritual or marital counseling. Surely a guy like Michael Moore, even as big a doofus as he is, understands that simply seeing a photo in the New York Times of President Clinton and Rev. Wright hardly constitutes an intimate marriage counseling session. A president poses for hundreds of such photographs every week.
So we’re left with one of two possibilities. During the Lewinsky/impeachment scandal, it was widely reported that the Clintons reached out to Rev. Jesse Jackson for spiritual guidance. Could Michael Moore actually be confusing two black activist preachers? Is it possible that the pride of Flint, Michigan can’t tell two black pastors apart?
Not a very pretty picture, Michael, you rotund rabble-rouser. The NAACP would not be very happy to hear that.
So presuming that he has never claimed that he has a hard time telling black folks apart, we’re left with only one other option: he is so desperate for Barack that he just blatantly lied on the eve of the primary, pathetically hoping to sway last minute voters Obama’s way.
Again, imagine a conservative pundit or filmmaker making a claim like this one that is so patently untrue – and having that lie ignored by the mainstream press.
As expected, the media has pretty much ignored the shenanigans of a couple of Obama lap dogs like Chris Mathews and Michael Moore.
That’s because they’re in the tank for Sen. Obama.
Watch that tank explode if Hillary manages to wrestle away the nomination this summer.
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