Posted by
Robert Ditmar on Friday, February 05, 2010 7:34:57 PM
Remember
the 1992 Presidential campaign, when then-Vice President Dan Quayle was
visiting a Trenton elementary school and was holding spelling flash
cards as children were spelling the words on a blackboard in front of
him? During this exercise, a 12-year old student wrote his given word,
"potato" on the blackboard. As the Vice President checked the flash
card containing the word, he informed the student that "he was close,
but left a little something off; the "e" on the end." The student, who
knew that he had, in fact, spelled the word correctly on the board,
kept quiet and simply acquiesced the Vice President by placing the "e"
on the end of the word, which was now spelled incorrectly as "potatoe."
During this photo op, nothing further was mentioned.
At a news conference immediately following this visit, a reporter
asked Quayle, "How do YOU spell potato?" Caught off guard by the
reporter's question, Quayle displayed puzzlement in his face, at which
all the journalists present laughed. Until that moment, the Vice
President had not given a second thought to the incident at the
blackboard, since all he had done was read off a flash card prepared by
someone prior to his arrival. For the remainder of 1992, almost every
single day until the election, the media networks and liberal press
continually replayed this gaffe, omitting enough of the facts to make
sure that Dan Quayle would be seen as a "dummy who cannot spell" and an
"unintelligent, under-educated" man, not worthy of being only "one
heartbeat away from the Oval Office." They did everything they could do
to make sure that Quayle would become a "liability" to bring down the
incumbent President, George H.W. Bush.
Remember when George W. Bush used the term "Grecian" instead of the
proper noun, "Greek" as he was first running for President back in
2000? At that time, just about every far left elitist and practically
everyone in the liberal mainstream media went into overdrive, mocking
candidate Bush's gaffe by hurling invective statements about "W's"
total lack of intelligence. From Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann to
the "journalists" of the three major networks, the misnomer was "proof"
that "W" was a "stupid idiot" who would not be able to ascend to the
highest office in the land because he lacked the necessary,
elitist-vetted "intellectualism" that can only be approved by liberals.
Over the subsequent eight years, not to mention one year into Obama's
term, the vitriolic, left-wing, "progressive" media never ceased
putting every single verbal gaffe or mispronunciation made by Bush
under a high-powered microscope. They made sure everyone knew about any
misstatement President Bush made and then took most gaffes out of
context in order to portray him as an "air-headed bumbling idiot."
Fast forward to the Presidential campaign in 2008, when
then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was at an Oregon campaign
rally. During his teleprompter speech, he said, "It is wonderful to be
back in Oregon. Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner
of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I
think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to
even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify
it." The Los Angeles Times lead the way for the mainstream media to excuse their candidate's gaffe, by explaining;
But first the freshman senator had to go through all the....
...obligatory
delighted to see you, delighted to be here part of stump speeches that
also require that you actually know where you are.
Obama pulled that off O.K. But then he drifted away from the
text a tad, as rookies are wont to do sometimes, forgetting how
exhausting this primary process is and should be. And trusting in their
instincts, their very tired instincts.
Two months into his new Presidency, Obama appeared on The Tonight Show
and got into a discussion about how bowling is not really his greatest
sport. When asked about his score in a recent game, the President
mentioned that he had scored a 129.
"That's very good, Mr. President," Leno said sarcastically.
It's "like the Special Olympics or something," the president said.
The following morning, the pro-Obama mainstream media began to
immediately run cover for their man, Barack Obama, essentially doing
damage control for the President. On Good Morning America,
Tim Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics, was invited to share the
exchange that he had with President Obama, who had personally called to
apologize for his remark the previous night.
"He expressed his disappointment and he
apologized," Shriver said. "He expressed that he did not intend to
humiliate this population, certainly didn't want to embarrass or give
anybody any more reason for pain or just suffering I would say. He was
very sincere, expressed an interest and an openness in being more
engaged in the movement, and said he was a fan of the movement and I
think importantly he said he was ready to have some of our athletes
over to the White House to bowl or play basketball or help him improve
his score." Soon after, the mainstream media either buried the story or
dropped it altogether, confident that they had helped their guy in the
White House dodge a public-relations disaster. Within a matter of
weeks, no one at the three main networks nor their colleagues at MSNBC, CNN or The New York Times were referring to the incident at all. It was almost as though it had never happened.
One month later, when the comment to Leno had been "erased" from the
public memory by the press, Obama was doing a news conference in
Europe, and said, " It was also interesting to see that political
interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States
Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian
— wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their
interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own
particular politics." Do you remember that?
Probably not, because other than Fox News and the independent and
conservative blogosphere, not one other mainstream media network or
paper made any reference to this gaffe, despite the fact that is was
very comparable to Bush's "Grecian" misstatement. Of course, when Bush
made that gaffe, the same pro-Obama press circled the "W" like vultures
and milked the "Grecian" mistake for all it was worth. Had Sarah Plain,
or for that matter, even newly-elected Scott Brown made such an error,
the leftist mainstream media would make sure that their gaffes were the
leading story of the day, to be followed by a flurry of "round-table
discussions" about their ability to lead.
Which brings us to the latest gaffe by the big guy in the Oval Office.
On Thursday, President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast
2010. While addressing the audience, he made a reference to Navy
corpsmen twice. However, he did not say "corpsmen" when he spoke. While
there has been a brief mention of the gaffe on the mainsteam media
networks, the story was buried under several other topics. This gaffe,
which the left-wingers at the main press outlets such as NBC/MSNBC, CNN, Headline News, ABC, CBS, as well as the mainstream print press like the New York Times,
chose to give scant attention to, has clearly shown just how much of a
pro-liberal, pro-Obama, biased, nonobjective double-standard that
today's "journalists" practice. Had this gaffe been made by George W.
Bush, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin or even Sen. Scott Brown, all Republicans
and, for the most part, conservatives, there is no doubt that the
mainstream media would have treated the American people to a daily
barrage of the gaffe, whilst setting up the conservative in question to
look either ill-informed, uneducated or just plain dumb in their
attempt to humiliate the center-right.
The mainstream press finds itself in a crisis for its survival, as
their audiences dwindle to just a few hundred thousand viewers per
cable and news network, with the exception of Fox News. Only extreme,
hard core, far left socialist-liberals really watch the or believe the
vitriolic hate that spews from the talking heads at MSNBC anymore. While Fox News continues to grow their audience and increase their ratings at an exploding rate, the other three cable networks combined cannot pull together an audience to match that of Fox. That is because Fox News is
showing both sides of a story, with differing political viewpoints. And
they do that without using all the obscenities or personal insults
during their broadcasts.
Of course, the other networks and liberals will then try to label
Fox News as extreme right wing, but that is because the leftist media
has gone so far left and have crossed over the ethical line of not
being objective, have literally dropped all pretenses of not being
biased. This extreme shift to the political left means that anything
that tries to cover the news from a middle perspective are demonized by
liberals as "right wing extremists." Hence the reason that MSNBC absolutely hates Fox News and its huge ratings success.
Americans are not stupid, regardless of the contempt that the likes
of Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow hold for them. It
is middle America that sees the double-standard that the left-leaning
mainstream media play in order to favor liberals and Democrats while
portraying conservatives, independents and Republicans in the worst
light possible. Middle America, meaning the vast majority of everyday
Americans, understand that when Olbermann directs his hate-filled,
mean-spirited, angry vitriol by hurling obscenities or assigning
downgrading labels at all conservatives, Republicans or anyone not in
agreement with his agenda, it is they who he is attacking. That is why
the vast majority of Americans, who are more center or conservative in
their politics, are heading to Fox News, talk radio and the Internet
for their news, and why the newspapers and mainstream electronic media
are rapidly dying off. They totally understand that the self-proclaimed
intellectual elitists sitting in their MSNBC anchor seats to
pontificate their superiority do not actually respect normal America.
While it would be nice to see the mainstream media finally accept
that it is they who are so out of touch with middle America and then
come back to the center to deliver the news, it is highly unlikely to
happen. They will continue their self-immolation and destruction by
remaining radically to the left and out of touch with the majority of
us.
Which brings us to an interesting question; will the mainstream
media do its job and give Obama's gaffes the same type of scrutiny that
they put former President Bush under? If I were a gambling man, I would
fold because this is never going to happen. So I will not hold my
breath to wait for sanity to return to mainstream journalism.
I would advise all Navy "Corpse-men" everywhere to not wait around
for the mainstream media to come around. Because Hell will have frozen
over by the time they do.
Sources:
1. http://www.capitalcentury.com/1992.html
2. http://usconservatives.about.com/b/2009/07/20/top-10-obama-gaffes.htm
3. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/barack-obama-wa.html
4. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/president-ob-15.html
5. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/04/06/if-obama-believes-austrian-language-so-will-ap