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Joe The Bumbler

Back in 1964, Lyndon Johnson and his hatchet man Bill Moyers made the infamous "Daisy" ad charging Barry Goldwater would cause a nuclear war, and it became a massive media story. Reportedly the ad ran only once, and yet everyone came to know about it, thanks to the press. In 1976 and again in 1980, the Democrats worked overtime suggesting the election of Ronald Reagan would trigger a military calamity, so much so that in their 1980 debate, Reagan joked that Jimmy Carter was cartooning him as a "mad bomber." The media couldn't get enough of that narrative, either.

So what happens when a vice-presidential candidate makes the gaffe to end all gaffes and declares that his own running mate will trigger an international crisis? In the Year of The One, it's yet another controversy that is virtually ignored by a national press corps that has become an institutional embarrassment.

In the latest of a long string of verbal fiascoes neglected by the Obama infomercial narrators, aka the national "news" media, Sen. Joe Biden told a fundraiser in San Francisco on Saturday, "Mark my words. Within the next, first six months of this administration, if we win, they're going to — we're going to face a major international challenge. Because they're going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy. They're going to want to test him."

The next day he did it — again! This time in Seattle he declared, "Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking … Remember I said it standing here, if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

What do you suppose would be the reaction had this statement been made by Sarah Palin about John McCain? Never mind that within minutes that soundbite would appear in Obama campaign ads coast-to-coast. It would also, and quite correctly, be the top news story of the day. Look at the record.

Front-page story in the New York Times? Try page A-18. Above-the-fold in the Washington Post? Try a tiny paragraph on page A-4.

What about the "news" networks? The story broke at 7:35 a.m. Eastern on ABC's own Political Radar blog, yet ABC ran nothing on Monday, not on "Good Morning America," or "World News" or "Nightline." NBC made a mention of the controversy on its news Monday night — but edited out the controversial elements in the Biden quote.

It sounds ridiculous, but it's true: Joe the Plumber has drawn tougher scrutiny than Joe the Bumbler.

The networks were much more interested in casting Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama as a truly earth-shattering event, a real "game changer," even if they would never acknowledge the race is tight enough to require changing.

They all cited CBS's glue-sniffing poll showing a 14-point Obama lead. These obedient publicists would not cast Powell as a calculating Beltway power player viciously backstabbing his career-makers — Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. It was no betrayal, unlike the way they pounded "Zig Zag Zell" Miller for endorsing Bush four years ago. Tom Brokaw, the host of Powell's liberal coming-out party, boasted after the show he was a world-renowned figure with a "gold-plated military and national security resume."

Minutes after Powell's allegedly dramatic announcement of something he's discussed with Obama for months, NBC's Andrea Mitchell said it was "very powerful," and Newsweek editor Jon Meacham oozed that it was a "seal of approval from the most important military figure of the age." MSNBC created a special Sunday cheerleading edition of "Hardball," so that Chris Matthews could tingle in his Sunday best. "Obama gets the endorsement of the year!" ABC and NBC both led their Sunday night newscasts with it. ABC's Dan Harris called it a "major endorsement by a major Republican."

Baloney. Powell sounded like a former Republican angrily walking out the door: McCain was an unready mess on the economy, his Supreme Court nominations would be horrendous, and the Palin pick was just plain embarrassing.

The Monday morning network shows were absolutely aglow. On ABC's "Good Morning America," Diane Sawyer sounded like a Sixties teenager at a Beatles concert: "This morning, Sen. Obama's banner weekend: Record-breaking crowds, cash and the endorsement heard around the world." She called the endorsement a "booster rocket." The screen graphic screamed: "Obama's Best Weekend Ever? Powell and Donors Boost Obama."

No one in Network Land cared that Obama's enormous wad of September cash would have been scoured as "obscene" if Bush had raised it in 2000 or 2004. Their only principle is bullying the voters into putting Obama and his gaffe-prone running mate in power.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

1 Comments | Post Comment

Sir;... The mistake made by Mr. Biden was exactly the same mistake made by the democrats and republicans as whole, and almost everyone at one time or another, and that is to objectify ones opponent... The world will test Mr. Obama??? The world is the earth, spinning through space or floating in a teacup for you flatlanders... The earth may mourn in some fashion, but it tests no one... It is people who do... Individuals who do, or leaders who do, but they are not the world, or their country, and it is a great mistake to think if them in that fashion... Now; it was a stupid thing to say because it is false on its face... The greatest tests the president will face are in this land... It is because of such labels as left and right, and rich and poor, black and white, and democrat and republican, etc, that we have so many problems... The labels are false, and even the labels we paste on ourselves are false, and what we concede to each other as individuals, that is, the right to ones opinion, we deny of course to the groups we objectify and label... I have voted democrat, and I have voted republican, and yet each are dirty words to me because they divide the country between themselves and leave us to find our way back together... And we cannot, once we fall into the habit of seeing the other as objects, and not as so many people... We are Americans... We all have rights in this land, and by the same token, human beings in the rest of the world have rights in their lands... We can say Iraq... And we can say Georgia; but there is something fundamentally wrong in attacking some place and some people like the Iraqis because of the actions of a dictator who oppressed them more than he bothered us... We have to see the people beyond the name...We objectify to dehumanize, and the end result is to treat those dehumanized as objects who can be turned into true objects, as dead human bodies are... Death is at the end of denial... To kill a human being is a crime... To destroy an object is an inconvenience... Do you see my point here???. When we say left and right we are justifying injustice... And I say this in full knowledge that now, the gun of communism is being leveled at the Democrats... It is not for fun, but for threat; because that is one more label by which to objectify a human being, or so many human beings..... Each of us should be a person to our government... We should not have to join in large groups or parties to control our government and defend our rights... We have one union, one party, one association, and I trust, ultimately one religion that IS -America, and IS our government... In a democracy the people are the government... If the people have rights they should be able to rest certain that the government will not attack those rights only because some group organizes for that purpose... I don't like the way he did it, or the purpose for which he did it; but Napoleon was right to get rid of parties... Every group, what we now consider a corporation, ought to keep open books, and be able to show a public purpose to assist civil government and not to profit on the body politic... We need to be individuals to our govenment, and to be able to see our govenment as individuals and not as the enemy...The people have got to be able to talk directly to their government, and not through money, and not through parties or other organizations... The govenment should be our organization for accomplishing necessary tasks that are bigger than individual abilities...We all use labels... We have to remember there are people behind those labels...Thanks...Sweeney

Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Wed Oct 22, 2008 6:30 AM