The Fourth Estate has badly tipped its hand in the past few days. Were it not for this clumsy transparency of method journalistic bias would have to be considered a far greater threat to our nation than Al Qaeda.
I referred recently in this space to the absurd chargeblown up and down the corridors of misinformation by such flatulent outlets of half-truth as the Huffington Postthat Paul Ryan lied about Candidate Obamas promising not to shut down a truck factory in Janesville. One of the Posts reporters (and many have contributed to circulating this malodorous breeze) obligingly includes some factual detail as is indeed required of any good half-truth:
Vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) backpedaled Monday from a claim in his Republican National Convention speech that President Barack Obama was responsible for the closure of a General Motors plant that in fact closed during the presidency of George W. Bush.
What they are trying to suggest is that I said Barack Obama was responsible for the plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying read the speech" he told NBCs Today." What I was saying is the president ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After the plant was shut down he said he would lead efforts to restore the plant. Its still idle."
But Ryan appeared to be blaming Obama for the closure of the plant located in his hometown of Janesville Wis. in his speech:
My home state voted for President Obama" he said Wednesday. When he talked about change many people liked the sound of it especially in Janesville where we were about to lose a major factory."
A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant" Ryan said. Right there at that plant candidate Obama said: I believe that if our government is there to support you... this plant will be here for another hundred years. Thats what he said in 2008. Well as it turned out that plant didnt last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And thats how it is in so many towns today where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
Obama did not promise to keep the plant open. He said that with government help the plant could remain open. (1)
Come now Mr. Johnson. If a public figure were to observe to the citizens of Janesville that contact with alien spacecraft would make their town the wealthiest in the nation and that the right leadership could draw flying saucers down he would be understood as making a proposition. He would be promptly removed from office as well because his utterance would demonstrate gross flippancy at the very least. Obamas remark was not on the outlandish scale of a prophecy about extra-terrestrials. On the contrary coming from a man who was competing for the most powerful office in the world it was naturally received as an assurance. Vote for me and youll keep your jobs." Obama WAS the government help". Or if even as president he hadnt the power to turn clunkers into cash then he should never have created the rhetorical illusion that such power exists. Ryans point concerned not what Mr. Obama did or didnt do: it concerned what he said.
Suppose that I attempt to sell you a house with a crack running straight down a major load-bearing wall. You ask if the crack is dangerous and I answer No house that Ive sold has ever been structurally unsound." You buy the house the wall collapses and you charge me with having lied to you. Do you have a case? After all I never said that the crack wasnt dangerousand if you say otherwise then youre lying!
This is the kind of facile indifference to context and implication to which our meretricious media treat us every day in defense of a ruthlessly ideological crusader and which earlier knights of the same crusade have practiced for generations. President Clintons the meaning of is" defense springs to mind; but one might add such whopping and homicidal lies as FDRs denial of his having sold out Eastern Europe to Stalin at the Tehran Conference on the ground that no written document existed. True liars are really good at lying about lying. They also excel at smearing up and down with heated charges of falsehood those who indict their veracity. What else would you expect from someone who has no regard for the truthno sense of shame? As the old Italian saying goes figs dont grow on thistles.
A most fertile and flexible mendacity however does indeed seem to prosper in the vicinity of a journalism degree. This week it was the man billed at the Republican tickets topMitt Romney himselfwho took a drubbing from the Fourth Estate. Nagged at a press conference with strident demands that he confess his regret" for condemning the Obama Administrations handling of the 9/11 attack on our Cairo embassy Romney stoically took it on the chin. Though not point-blank accusations of lying these questions had in common an assumption that Romney had spoken without sufficient information:
Two reporters asked Romney during a hostile press conference if he did regret" his criticism. Another asked if he was politicizing the attack; Shouldnt politics stop for this?" the political reporter asked the political candidate during a political election.
Some people have said that you jumped the gun a little bit in putting that statement out last night and that you should have waited until more details were available" another reporter said during the mid-morning event. Do you regret having that statement come out so early before we learned about all of the things that were happening?" (2)
We know that this ambush was carefully laid thanks to a hot mike". Yet whether or not mobbing a politician in this fashion is fair playand it certainly isnt anything new under the sunthe premise that more waiting would have mollified Romneys harsh judgment is insulting to any adult of average intelligence. The Governors initial statement referred to a Twitter release from the beleaguered embassy. The announcement (for even twittering is now a source of official policy statements) essentially sided with the violent assailants in the street by deploring an elusive YouTube video contemptuous of the prophet Muhammed. (It is possible that I might be censured and sentenced to death for not capitalizing prophet" and following his glorious name with blessed be his memory"… but who cares?) I would like to ask the pack of slavering dogs with press passes on our side of the Atlantic just what third item of information they think should have been added to the two in Mr. Romneys possession: a) that an Islamist mob had stormed our embassy in Cairo and b) that embassy personnel had publiclyand globallyexpressed sympathy with the mobs outrage. I contend that the response is prima facie unsatisfactory unprofessional and pusillanimous. Mr. Romney obviously shares my feelings. What new tidbit of intel would change our minds?
Did our diplomatic personnel need to grovel in order to save their liveswere knives at their throats? The suggestion is ridiculous given the Egyptian governments plain and minute orchestrating of the incident… but say it were so. Then Romneys remark stands and can be supplemented with yet further indignation that the apology" was extorted by bloodthirsty thugs.
Was the YouTube video really really offensive as Secretary Clinton has persistently emphasized? I havent seen it or even sought after it; as a Christian I already know all about publicly broadcast material that attacks derides and defames the basic tenets of my faith… but say that this video was as repellent as a Bill Maher tirade against Christianity. Then the nasty boys of Cairo who apparently still have no jobs might try avoiding it just as I avoid Maher and return to their bookmarked pornor if they cant pay their wireless bill to the Koran.
Did the President himself not authorize the Twitter declaration? In hindsight with more information" we know he did not: he went off to get a good sleep despite incoming reports of the rioting determined to be clear-headed the next day for his Vegas fundraiser. So let us grant that he did not condone the twittered messages (and there were several of the same tenor). Then… then nothing. The ship ran aground on his watch whether he was at the helm or not.
Now Romney is being raked over the coals for suggesting in a televised interview (How shall I say it?") that the President of the United States does not always tell the truth. Liar! Traitor! Racist! Infidel dog! Reactionary! Nazi! Conservative!
As I attempted to manage my blood pressure this week and also focus on what I must do each day to make an honest living I was further challenged by media-strategized guerilla assaults leaking through my defenses in the unlikeliest of places. Whenever you load Yahoo to check your email an AP or Reuters news story pops up demurely in the middle of the various links necessary for navigation. I happened to notice that the headline-banners during the week were subliminally selling a single narrative: Romney shoots before he aims" charges Obama;
Ambassador Stevens was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States" eulogizes Obama; incendiary YouTube video traced to Christian organization sources say. (I can recall the language only partiallyit did not immediately occur to me that these trivia were assuming a noteworthy shape.) Like billboards that a motorist passes routinely on his way to work not so much seeing them as soaking them up such whispers labor with ant-like persistence to construct a worldview. In this case the narrative is naturally that intolerant Christians are at fault for the riots that Romney rashly exploited the situation for political gain and that the President rose above the swirling passions like… like God Almighty.
And then there were the polls. Oh yesRomneys annihilation in the latest polling was another subject of Yahoos wire-service headlines just before the 9/11 meltdown. Romneys toast. Romney might as well throw in the towel. Obamas Clinton bump" is insurmountable. Rush Limbaugh is of course correct that the intent of such news flashes" is to demoralize. Dick Morris (whom I have never considered a very savory character but whose insights into this subject are as good as gold) further cleared the air throughout the week by explaining how very tendentious are the techniques employed by pollsters. I had figured that much out on my own. The much-cited Washington Post poll questioned fewer than 1500 people over the course of four days; the FOX News poll was based on live telephone interviews on landlines and cell phones from September 9 to September 11 among 1056 randomly-chosen likely voters nationwide" as one discovers in the final paragraph of the online account. (3)
Really? A group smaller than the typical crowd at a typical shopping mall on a typical Saturday tells us our nations destiny? And over the phone? My household receives nuisance calls" constantly some of which may indeed be from poll-takers. If we dont recognize the caller we ignore the call. How many Americans I wonder give their cell numbers out to anyone but family and close friendsand how many must shut their phones off in any case during work? How many people are home during the day to answer landlines"? Isnt there a tremendous amount of what statisticians call self-selection in the process described? That is arent the people likely to respond to this particular means of contact most probably members of a specific age group and employment status (young or elderly and/or unemployed I would guess)? Morris explains that pollsters correct" for aberrations of the kind I describe by plugging in formulas of mysterious concoction. For instance if the days phoning harvests only 5 black respondents the pollster multiplies these responses to reflect the percentage of black turnout in whatever past election he chooses as his baseline.
What is the difference then between polling and writing up your own results off the top of your head? These methods are so patently open to abuse that they amount to nothing more than just another trick another con another finesse… another lie.
I have never felt such seething contempt for reporters pollsters and others of that motley mouthy tribe as I have this week. Of course they and their Gestapo of politically correct progressivist allies would like to silence people like meand Rachel Alexander and Rush Limbaugh and probably even Dick Morrisusing the gag order on free speech that they have christened (with the unconscious irony of which only incorrigible liars are capable) the Fairness Doctrine. They lobby these days as well for any criticism of Islam (whether tasteless or otherwiseoffense is in the eye of the beholder) to be punished with hard time in prison or perhaps with beheading (in deference to Sharia law). Their outrage rains and hails upon anyone who obstructs the pathological need to invert and subvert that drove them to a Journalism major in the first placewhere the craving for news" conceals a deeper craving for daily change" for universal disorder. (4)
There is no doubt something to be said for chastening public displays of crudity; but to accept reprimand from people whose soulmates march about in pink vaginas is as utterly indigestible as hearing fevered denunciations of Western debauchery and homosexuality from human swine who gang-sodomize a wretched captive before smothering him.
The good news about news" is that on our side we dont need a Fairness Doctrine. Sooner rather than later the mainstream journalistic community will hang itself high on all the rope it has been granted by our free society. The category nebulously styled likely voters" already knows for the most part that these straight-faced assassins of character and tormentors of truth are most trustworthy when taken as diametrical opposites of realitys voice. I expect polls in particular to suffer a permanent demotion to the cloaca maxima of propagandistic mass-manipulation once Barack Obama goes down in overwhelming defeat. Perhaps thereafter our class of ideological pimps will seek employ in societies that routinely use and better appreciate their talents. The new Egypt would be a great place to start.
NOTES
(1) Luke Johnson Paul Ryan: I Wasnt Blaming Obama For GM Plant Closure" The Huffington Post 4 Sept. 2012 < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/paul-ryan-today_n_1853759.html >.
(2) Neil Munro Team Romney Slams Administration Media on Embassy Attacks" The Daily Caller 12 Sept. 2012 < http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/12/team-romney-slams-administration-media-on-embassy-attacks/#ixzz26XlcED00 >.
(3) See < http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/12/fox-news-poll-obama-has-lead-over-romney-in-post-convention-poll/ >. Viz. The Fox News poll is Likely voters are registered voters who are considered most likely to vote in the November presidential election. The poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). For the total sample it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points."
(4) Conservative commentators are fundamentally mistaken in my opinion when they claim that such hives of progressivism as the newsroom and the classroom result from indoctrination. Most college professors are left-of-center because that position brings them comfort and acceptance within their peer groupand I imagine that the situation at major networks is much the same. Such people cannot produce a causal chain accounting for their beliefs" because they have never deduced any and never heard any explained to them. To the extent that this forward-marching herd is not simply chasing its own tail its leaders are animated by the sheer joy of moving… for heaven may always loom over the next horizon as long as one merely moves. (Where do I want to go?" posed the French poet Baudelaire mocking the absurdity of the romantic spirit. Anywhere out of this world!") In other words contradictorily progressive intellectuals like being with the non-conformist group" that constantly explores the edge". Only thus can they import a weak facsimile of risk and excitement to their forever adolescent lives their development terminally stalled in moral anemia and perennial spectation.