SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (38113)9/10/2005 3:28:02 PM
From: SiouxPal  Respond to of 361022
 
The Election of a Buffoon: The Complicity of the Media
by Armando
Sat Sep 10th, 2005 at 06:43:12 PDT
The disaster that is the George W. Bush Presidency, the worst in the history of the Republic, has a co-conspirator, The  Media -- starting with the 2000 Election Campaign:
. . . The press also went into a tizzy over Gore's casual comment during that first debate that he had traveled with James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to Texas during a spate of wildfires. As vice president, Gore had traveled with Witt seventeen different times, but not on the date in question. Gore corrected the record the next morning, but the press treated his slip of the tongue as wildly important.
. . . During the debates, though, Bush made a handful of blunders regarding military operations in the Balkans and Haiti, about the facts surrounding Texas' most celebrated hate-crime trial and about his own tax plan. Bush was free to botch facts about central policy issues and the press wouldn't question his intelligence. But if Gore were to misstate nonessential details, such as how long a student had to stand in a crowded Sarasota classroom, he was tagged a liar who couldn't be trusted.
Few journalists saw anything wrong with this double standard. In fact, some found it amusing. "You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator, or you look at his record in Texas," Time magazine columnist Margaret Carlson told radio morning man Don Imus at the height of the campaign. "But it's really easy, and it's fun, to disprove Gore. As sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us."
Who decided that covering presidential politics was supposed to be "entertaining" and "fun" for journalists?
When we consider the failures that have occurred as a result of the disastrous Bush Presidency, don't forget the Original Failure -- the disastrous, hackish, incompetent, inexcusable Media.