I have urged John McCain in this space to be more aggressive about the Bill Ayers matter, and many of you have disagreed. At this point, it looks like you were right and I was wrong. But here's the rub....I don't think McCain executed this one right. This has really never been about Senator Obama's relationship with Ayers....it is what it is, probably much less than the right thinks it was, probably more that what the Obama Campaign will cop to. What has been interesting is the way the media handled (or did not handle) the story. McCain should have been CRUCIFYING the mainstream media for their lack of an evenhanded approach to this subject.
The plain ugly truth is that if John McCain had even a WHIFF of a relationship with a man who unrepentantly bombed abortion clinics, he would be vilified to no end by the media and by the Democratic Party. This issue IS NOT about Senator Obama and Bill Ayers...this issue is about THE MEDIA and Bill Ayers. The truth of this entire issue is that while virtually no one in the mainstream media would ever have done anything remotely like what Bill Ayers did, there is a certain respect for--and dare I say--admiration for the actions that he and the Weather Underground took in the 60's and 70's among many in the mainstream media, especially the older lefties. It is axiomatic among this crowd that the war in Viet Nam was the uber-evil, and there is a certain romantic respect (a la Che Guevera) for left-wing terrorists. For younger lefties, forty years is too long a time to hold anything against anyone, and gosh, hasn't he (Ayers) lived and exemplary life since then, what with his advocacy for the children and all....
Missed opportunity here...that's what this is.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
I don't think it's a matter of a universal admiration among journalists for beret-wearing lefties tossing bombs. I think that even the normally malleable "mainstream" media channels (from FoxNews to the NYT) believe that there's not really any deeper news there.
Also, the corollary that some are trying to develop (Obama serves on an educational council, Ayers serves on an educ. council, Ayers committed terrorist actions when Obama was 8, therefore Obama is a terrorist) doesn't work. Unless you think by rubbing those words together enough, you'll ignite some emotional connection between the two, the same way certain people did with 9/11 and the desire for war in Iraq.
Here's an example of the media's lack of attention to a similarly 'potentially damaging' relationship on the Right. When word of William Simmons, McCain's transition team leader, and his role as advocate and lobbyist on behalf of Saddam Hussein and his interests came out in September, and reappeared on the more liberal blogs last week, that too had no legs across the supposedly liberal MM, which by objective accounts remains center right as a whole.
If it's the liberal nature of the media you are lamenting, I think you are wrong in that assumption. If the issue is non-partisan laziness in journalism, however, yes, I agree wholeheartedly!
(miss you, come North and visit us once in a blue moon)
Ghost. Oh my, you had to bring that memory up, huh? Well, now that you have, it is important to let you know the experience was sublime.
That said...please read what I wrote again. "This has really never been about Senator Obama's relationship with Ayers....it is what it is, probably much less than the right thinks it was, probably more that what the Obama Campaign will cop to. What has been interesting is the way the media handled (or did not handle) the story." There was no "rubbing together" of anything here. In fact, I assiduously avoided "rubbing".
That said, your example doesn't stack up. there's a difference between an aide to a candidate having a relationship that the media ignored, and a candidate having a relationship the media ignored. I'm not interested in comparing William Simmons' story to Barack Obama's> I'm interested in asking whether any thoughtful commentator would actually believe that the MSM (and its party of record, The Democrats) would leave a "relationship" of McCain's with a former abortion clinic bomber alone. They wouldn't. They couldn't. One bomber stood int he way of what has come to be seen as a constitutional and human right (that of eliminating human life in utero). The other was protesting an unpopular war. Therefore one bomber bad, one bomber not so bad.
Don't know when I'll get to your neck of the woods...but when I do, I'll let you know. Great good luck with your beautiful child!
We are overlooking one of the positive unexpected consequences of an Obama presidency.
In this morning's paper was the news of an author scheduled to speak at a local university. Her book details the history of blacks in medical studies, one example being the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. As I read the synopsis of "Medical Apartheid" it slowly dawned on me... who cares.
It just doesn't matter what was done to those men back in the 30s, I wasn't even born. Heck, my father wasn't even 8 years old and that seems to be the line in the sand that Obama has drawn, so the subject is irrelevent.
The holocaust... not my problem. Slavery... I don't care.
Pearl Harbor, the "Maine", the Alamo... before my time.
Santayana told us, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Obama now tells us, "If you were 8 years oldat the time, it just doesn't matter."
udon't--great post, great thinking!
Post a Comment