Bored and Lazy Big Media Drooling to Catch Obama in Blagojevich Dragnet
Have you noticed? The Big Media have been desperately trying to shoehorn Barack Obama into the ethical problems of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, even though there’s not a particle of evidence that he was in any way involved. The Chris Matthews Crank-It-Up-Loud-and-Stupid Machine over at MSNBC presented a good example of the ugly process in action:
“MATTHEWS: Barack Obama, of course, rose to political power in a city, Chicago, in a state, Illinois, known for corruption. But Fitzgerald made clear that Obama was not implicated today. Here he is, quote, ‘The complaint makes no allegations about the president-elect whatsoever.’ Obama said this afternoon that he had no contact with Governor Blagojevich over who was gonna fill that Senate seat.
“Still, there are many unanswered questions, including that one. What conversation did occur between Blagojevich and Barack Obama about who would fill his Senate seat once he became president? Obama said this afternoon there were none at all.
“What conversations, if any, did Governor Blagojevich have with Rahm Emanuel about his replacement as a Democratic candidate in the special election in Chicago? Will this Illinois scandal in any way distract Obama from dealing with the financial crisis? What happens to Obama’s Senate seat now? Who gets to fill it? The disgraced indicted governor? The state legislature? Who? And what is it about Illinois that seems to make the state’s politics so relentlessly corrupt?”
– Chris Matthews, “Hardball,” Dec. 9, 2008, as quoted by Media Matters.
Jeepers, Tweety, that’s one Olympic leap of pure, empty, pull-it-out-your-keester speculation. Wasn’t Matthews once seen in a public men’s room in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the Republican National Convention? Wasn’t Sen. Larry Craig convicted of soliciting men for sex in a similar place? What does this say about Matthews? And what is it about Minneapolis that seems to attract so many gay men to their public facilities? There are some ‘unanswered questions’ concerning Mr. Matthews’ conduct in Minneapolis during the Republican National Convention and the American people demand answers. (See the way this works? Take even the most tenuous, ridiculous association and blow it out of proportion ending with the dire ‘unanswered questions’ malarkey. There are always ‘unanswered questions’ about everyone and everything – it’s just that most of them are time wasting and ludicrous. Eating in a restaurant where mobsters occasionally dine does not make you a Mafia kingpin, except in the RNC’s Bizarro World of infinite guilt-by-association and silly questions.)
As far as the ‘relentlessly corrupt’ Illinois, Tweety and his pals should check some other states such as Alaska, Alabama and Florida, all of which ranked ahead of Illinois in the number of political scandals between 1998 and 2007. Wait, as Jamison Foser at Media Matters recently noted, USA Today already did: “[O]n a per-capita basis … Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007…”
This is the line of ‘logic’ being used as the BM line up to slather over yet another invented ‘scandal’ for Obama — already they’re trying to make this his ‘Blagogate.’ Even the New York Times has the green-eyeshade on backwards as it attempts to conflate Obama’s passing acquaintance with Blago with involvement in some sort of shady business with the Rodster. As Eric Boehlert points out:
“The larger point is that in order for the Beltway press to gin up the Blago story this week, basic journalism guidelines had to be set aside and in some cases brazenly ignored. That’s the only way this story worked because simply reporting the facts as presented by the prosecutors would have made it painfully clear that, in terms of Obama’s involvement, there was none. In fact, Obama had thwarted Blago’s money-making scheme.”
But the worst of the bad lot was Liz Sidoti of the (Guilt By) Associated Press. In her December 10th article “Analysis: Scandal threatens to dog Obama,” she actually kicked off with these two vapid, meaningless paragraphs:
The Tattlesnake — Glenn Beck’s Greased Rail Edition
News Item: Glenn Beck Has Lost 1/3 of His TV Audience Since January
A Shame He’ll Miss Out on the Tar and Feathers
Unlike his semi-serious colleagues O’Reilly and Hannity, Beck was always just a babbling flash in the pan; a sideshow freak-out of raving, nearly incoherent right-wing outrage and contradictory conspiracy theories. He had to keep topping himself in craziness or risk boring his audience with deadly repetition. He’s now run out of ideas and gone with the latter, and his viewers are turning him off, so his only hope for a final ratings coup is to go out like a flaming comet with a total on-air screeching psychotic meltdown and then R&R at some luxurious mental rehab facility. But don’t fret for Beck – he’s made many more millions from his strange circus act than most legitimate clowns.
With his ratings dropping, nearly all of his A-line advertisers gone, and his goofy Prof. Irwin Corey and Howard Beal Meet Joe McCarthy routine growing stale, isn’t it high time for Uncle Rupert to show Glenn Beck the door?
Prediction: Beck will be off of Fox News before 2011.