Earlier today I heard Suzanne Malveaux (sitting in for Wolf Blitzer - all the media celebrities disappear around the 4th of July) say that Wes Clark had criticized John McCain's military service last Sunday on Face the Nation. This is not the first time Clark's comments have been characterized this way, nor is it the first time the media has accused Obama of saying something he didn't say, or of "flip-flopping" because McCain said he did, when he did no such thing.
Ohmigod - are all these anchors in the tank for McCain or are they just plain stupid? Are viewers incapable of understanding a little complexity, a statement longer than a sound bite, or are anchors the ones incapable of understanding? Are their media overlords telling them to distort things this way or are they just missing a few brain cells under their fancy hairdos? The rightward slant is so obvious, Malveaux should be falling off her chair.
Wes Clark did not criticize McCain's service. In fact, he went out of his way to praise it, to say how much he admired and looked up to him. What he said, when Bob Shieffer attacked Obama, noting that Obama had never "ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down," was "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down are qualifications to be president." Clearly he was defending Obama's experience in comparison to McCain's. I don't think there's any way this statement can be construed as criticizing McCain, yet that is just how Malveaux construed it.
I think it's time Obama had paid staff members to do nothing but watch the cable channels so that immediate responses can be made when the media automatically goes along with the McCain narrative. It reminds me of how the Republicans are always able to get the media to use their words (which always favor their narrative): war on terror, tax relief, flip-flop, tax and spend, slow down (rather than recession), death tax, surrender, unpatriotic, etc. Which means it's also time for the Democrats to create their own words and hammer them time and again into the empty heads of the media to create a counter-narrative. If they don't, they'll be continually defending themselves, and a campaign on the defensive is not a winning campaign.
And just for the record, I think it's time we buried the myth of the "liberal media."
