In The Tank For Obama

President Obama is going to have a lot of sh** on his plate as he assumes the Presidency... wars on two fronts, a huge political payback expected from his own party, and worst of all, of course, a crippled economy. But one big advantage Mr. Obama will have, at least at the start, is the comfort of knowing he will have the news media fawning over his every move.

You think this is easy for me to write? I spent 20 years taking calls from angry WMAL listeners accusing us of being biased - usually to the left. I always thought the notion was absurd - that the media was more more interested in throwing light on a story than caring which political party was exposed by that light. But times - at least from my current viewpoint - have changed.

Perhaps it's just the pretense of objectivity that has been dumped. Fox News has been accused of being a conservative think tank for years, but I think it took MSNBC's glaring and deliberate lack of objectivity during the 2008 presidential campaign to really show where the media has gone. Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann not only showed their political stripes - they essentially dared anyone to challenge their right to do so. MSNBC at one point stopped using the pair as "anchors", and relabeled them as "commentators", but that pretense was dropped by last night, when Olbermann was back in the anchor chair for the President's speech.





But cable TV news is one thing... Now the Washington Post has basically thrown in the towel. Yes - it's making an effort to feign neutrality in the "A" section... But just take a stroll back to the Style section, where they are giddy with both the arrival of Obama, and the departure of Bush. TV critic Tom Shales could barely contain his glee at the President's farewell speech:

A President's Parting Words: Convincing, at Least, to Himself
By Tom Shales
Friday, January 16, 2009; C01

Only his remaining ardent supporters would probably classify last night's TV appearance by President Bush as reality television. On the other hand, detractors -- a sizable group, judging by popularity polls -- would likely say George W. Bush's farewell to the nation, delivered from the East Room of the White House, had the aura of delusion and denial.

You can read Shales' entire column here. You'll see him give credence to Mssrs. Olbermann and Matthews, and make the argument that the speech may have been Mr. Bush's best, if only because it was his last.

Lest you think this was an isolated case - just take a look at what happened when President-elect Obama paid a visit to the Post yesterday for an interview with the paper's editorial staff - Here's the pool account by NY Times reporter Helene Cooper:

After three and a half hours at his transition office, PEOTUS obama took another 6 minute ride through washington, arriving at 157 pm at the nondescript soviet-style building at 15th and L street that houses the washington post.

Around 100 people--Post reporters perhaps?--awaited PEOTUS's arrival, cheering and bobbing their coffee cups.

Pool is holding in a van outside, while Mr obama does his washington post interview, and will exercise enormous restraint by ending report before saying what really thinks about this turn of events.

Staffers at the Post were defensive about that description of Mr. Obama's visit, but they didn't really try to deny their revelry, either.

Look - call me idealistic if you wish, but I earned my journalistic chops in an environment where it was pounded into me that a reporter does not take sides in a story.... They instead report the story, and leave it to the reader/listener/viewer to interpret the news. The line has been getting more blurred as the years have gone by, and I fear it has simply melted away at this point.

At one time - even within the span of my career - money was largely a non-issue within a newsroom. Reporters and editors had the freedom to hone their craft without the pressure of having to worry about where the revenue was coming from. There was a tall wall between the accounting and news departments. That wall has long since come tumbling down, and now I fear news organizations are feeling the pressure to give the audience what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear, lest they take their business elsewhere.

I have no reason to believe President Obama will be anything less than an excellent Commander-in-chief. But when and if the sh** hits the fan in the administration, how do we know we'll get the real story from a news media that can't objectively cover the President? Who's going to be the first reporter to break away from the pack? And what will he/she do when his/her membership card in the "Cool Kids Club" is revoked?

I used to swear that this kind of "Mainstream media" bias did not exist.

Now I worry that the fourth estate has gone to foreclosure.

Screw Obama/McCain - Let's Talk About Palin!

I skipped last night's debate between Obama and McCain, and opted instead to catch a recap on Nightline, which apparently proved to be a good decision because all the reviews seem to indicate the Presidential candidates were pretty darn boring...


So instead, this morning, I choose to discuss my fascination with Sarah Palin, who is decidedly less boring than the other three candidates! I call your attention to an article by Camille Paglia on Salon.com. Paglia is a self-professed liberal columnist and devoted Barack Obama supporter, who also happens to share my feelings about the Alaska Governor. Paglia shares my view that Palin has been criminally misjudged and that she is, in fact, an "uber" rather than "anti" feminist. Here are a few choice passages for those of you who opt not to read the entire column...


Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin's performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin's digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn't -- judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.


The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.


One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.


Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.


The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin's bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition -- without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She's no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she's pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite -- which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey's witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin's cadences and charm, she can't capture the energy, which is a force of nature.


I sometimes feel like I'm on a deserted island when it comes to my appreciation of Governor Palin, but then I look at the TV ratings for her debate with Joe Biden - 70 million people, the second largest televised debate of all time - and realize that a lot of you are, if not supportive, at least fascinated by her. And it makes me realize America's closets are jammed pretty tight with people!

Back To Earth

Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. Well, actually, a LOT of Republicans said the election was over after Sarah Palin was picked to be John McCain's running mate. But at some point or other, Palin had to get off the campaign trail and say something in public that strayed from her well-crafted acceptance speech, which she had been repeating for over a week. And that point came on September 11th in Fairbanks.

Palin's performance in her first interview with Charlie Gibson should not be compared with the 9-11 disaster, although I'm sure some NY Times or Slate.com columnist will not be able to resist that allusion. This was not, however, Palin's finest moment. Gibson, rightly so, launched right into questions about foreign policy - the area that most people in America suspect would be Palin's weakest link. And she did prove to be pretty weak. Her answers concerning Israel and the Russian invasion of Georgia were clearly crafted by someone else and grafted onto Palin's brain. And she clearly had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was when Charlie asked her about it.

Red meat Republicans will be tempted to attack Charlie Gibson for his questions, or for the borderline-condescending manner in which he asked them. But they should stop right there. Charlie Gibson was hand-picked by the McCain camp, and can you really name anyone else of stature who would have treated Palin any more fairly? I will say I was not very comfortable with Gibson's grilling about God. Religion is a very personal thing, and what makes sense to one person vis a vis God may make no sense at all to someone else.

Palin supporters will give her a pass on much of the interview. Let's face it... the vast majority of Americans don't know anything about foreign policy - that's what we elect other people to worry about. And I, for one, had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was, either! I have never had any delusion that Sarah Palin knows squat about foreign policy, and I could frankly care less about her bona fides in that area. Most Governors who have ever run for President have the same weakness entering the White House, and they simply learn on the job.

However, Palin's struggles with Gibson DO mark an important point in the election. It will give Democrats (and the media - especially MSNBC) some traction for the first time since Palin was introduced to the public before the GOP Convention. And it should erase a good portion of the bump that McCain enjoyed after St. Paul.

In other words, it's game on!

P.S. - Watch this clip - and remember - we only tease because we love.

Brian Williams Is THE MAN!

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams gave a commencement speech at the Ohio State University over the weekend, and told graduates that it's up the them to "fix this country". Conservative media critics, always on the lookout to attack "liberal media bias", were quick to pounce on this. Williams gave them plenty to rant about. He even encouraged the young people to get out and be active campaigners during this fall's election! If THAT's not liberal bias, then what is? After all - ALL 20-somethings will obviously support Barack Obama, won't they?

I have never met Brian Williams, but I did see him speak once at a Radio-TV News Directors Association function, and he was one of the most natural "regular guy" speakers I have ever seen. He's a college dropout from New Jersey - a plain speaker and one of the funniest people I've ever seen at a microphone. My good friend, Scott Wykoff, actually met Williams, and said he was very enthusiastic and eager to support local radio guys like us.

Brian Williams knows DC well, by the way... He attended both GW and Catholic Universities, and he replaced Maury Povich on "Panorama" on Channel 5 back in the day...

Anyway - back to the point of my blog entry... To me, there are a couple of reasons that members of the media get pinned with the "liberal bias" tag...

1. - Because Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity say it's so. If you listen to them, and other conservative talk hosts, blaming the media is about 80 percent of their shtick. They tell their audiences the media is not only biased, but that there is a liberal media conspiracy. These hosts conveniently fail to mention that they are also members of the media, that they do, in fact, conspire to attack liberals. It never failed to amaze me when I was at WMAL how often we would get complaints from our own listeners attacking our news coverage as liberal - especially since our news was pretty much tailored to a conservative audience. We were attacked because our own hosts were telling their listeners to do so.

2. - Because some people don't think news anchors can have opinions. When news people do share opinions, whether they betray a political bent in one direction or not, it sets off critics who automatically pounce... even if it's something as innocuous as a commencement speech. Brian Williams says the country is broken. Can you find one political candidate who would not agree with that sentiment? It sounds more that a little defensive to get upset about the country being broken - as though it specifically targets the White House. The last I checked, Congress was just as unpopular as the GOP President - and IT's controlled by the Democrats! - A pox for everyone's house!

3 - Because it's kinda true. Sorry folks - most of the news that's fit to print - and broadcast - in this country is produced in New York and Washington, DC - by journalists who were largely educated at northeast liberal arts universities. And aside from any inbred bias, keep in mind that journalists are trained from day one to not take sides. The general public finds this concept hard to grasp sometimes. For the most part, people watch and read the news to reaffirm their own particular points of view... And when the news does not do that, it prompts consumers to take a "if you're not with me, you're against me" stance. Hence the dreaded "liberal media" problem.

Anyway - decide for yourself... Here's the entire Brian Williams commencement speech at Ohio State - It runs more than 13 minutes, but I think you'll discover after just a couple of minutes that Brian Williams speaks the truth with humor and grace...

Or maybe I'm just biased.