By Mr. Curmudgeon
The reviews are in and the Obama media is not happy with the divine one’s performance in his first Oval Office address concerning the BP oil leak. “Does it really matter if you lose the pundits anymore?” asks the New York Times. One would think so, considering President Obama is a creature of media mythmaking. After all, Obama’s radical leftist leanings were mostly swept under the rug or downplayed as unimportant during the 2008 presidential campaign. The fact that Obama’s short Senate career was launched in the home of 60s radical and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers did not get much attention until Hillary Clinton’s campaign leaked it to the media.
Even MSNBC’s resident loon, Keith Olbermann, was dumbstruck by Obama’s speech. “I don't think he aimed low. I don't think he aimed at all. It’s startling.” Olbermann’s fast-talking network compatriot Chris Mathews was more direct. “It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days…I don't sense executive command.” It wasn’t all that long ago that Mathews chimed, “I felt this thrill going up my leg,” on hearing an Obama campaign speech.
It’s bad enough when a politician believes his good press, it’s quite another when the media does as well. That’s apparently ending now. Sensing an impending Democratic electoral pounding this November, the media is already lashing out at the community organizer whose election they worked tirelessly for and heralded as the second coming.
From Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush, presidents have used the potent visual symbol of the Oval Office as a backdrop during addresses to the nation – many concerning the issue of war. Obama used it in a desperate attempt to shore up his plummeting approval ratings. In doing so, Obama showed himself to be a small and petty man.
After such presidential addresses, opinion polls show a positive bump in a president’s approval ratings. That was not the case for Obama. The reason, according to the New York Times is the “mistrust of the news media: it is at an all-time high. Many Americans are more likely to assume that anyone they read or see on television has a political bias.” Gee, you think?
Here is the big lesson to be learned from the Obama phenomenon: Always – and I mean always – distrust politicians lionized by the mainstream media. But if you must use the media to help you form an opinion, go with those who were out front about who and what Obama was before it was cool to trash “The One.” Most of these voices were on the right. You know, the guys who were labeled crazy right-wing extremists, alarmists, and haters.
In other words, go with those too independent to go all gooey over a politician's child-like pronouncements -- the manly guys who would never say in public, let alone on national television, that they feel a thrill going up their leg.
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