Quote:
Originally Posted by sck5
Obama's past has been much dug through. He even wrote an autobiography to get the facts out on his own terms well before the election.
I suspect what you REALLY are talking about is that you wish that Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright and Rezko had been harped on nonstop so that people thought there was a real issue there. As it turned out people really didnt care all that much, except for the right wingers who werent going to vote for Obama anyway.
And as for Palin, how could you NOT think they would rake over her past given:
1. She was new to the national scene, and also was the first woman on a Repub. ticket ever.
2. She NEVER ONCE gave a press conference during the campaign, allowing any reporter to ask any question they wanted. That gave an impression that she either couldnt answer the questions or didnt want to. (Rightly or wrongly, many people interpreted it that way)
|
I disagree. I think, objectively, that Palin was mistreated, especially by the media. And Obama really was given a pretty easy ride. I like Obama too, but I think anyone who really watched the news during the election with an open mind could easily see the bias. I would actually play a game sometimes where I'd walk into a room, past a television at a hotel, etc, and intentionally look to see how the media was reporting something. It was very obviously biased. Stories on CNN for example were typically of the following sort ...
1) Obama doing something great.
2) McCain doing something stupid, with comments from guests about how that would affect Obama's campaign.
3) Palin is an idiot, or what Saturday Night Live was saying about her, or what clothing she was wearing, or comments about how she doesn't represent whatever female guest was on at the time.
It got so one sided that watching the election results come in I was amazed to see the following happen - in the very beginning as results started to come in, of course, the rural vote gets counted before the urban vote, everyone knows that. In rural areas the polls typically close earlier because you don't have the long lines, and you also have fewer votes to count, typically more staff to deal with them, etc, so in the early running McCain was of course showing good on the CNN percentages of actual votes cast. CNN, in it's infinite wisdom, then decided that they needed to say the following - they actually came out and started to reassure Obama voters by saying it was early and not to get upset, because the vote tallies didn't represent what was actually going to happen that night. I kid you not at all. I'm not saying CNN was on Obama's side, but it was very obvious CNN felt the need to reassure Democrats that it wasn't going to be another 2000 or 2004. In what world is something like that objective hands-off reporting, would CNN have felt the need to reassure Republicans that everything was going to be okay if the shoe were on the other foot ? No, of course they wouldn't.
I was glad to see that CNN did do two more positive things this time around, one that didn't have the obviously biased Judy Woodruff on during the election, and two they made a point of separating out the spinsters from the reporters, putting them over at their own table, something they haven't always done. That really helped their presentation a lot, and it was especially helpful to only have people like Blitzer running the show, someone who actually has objective credibility with the public. I mention Judy Woodruff because when the Kerry result started coming in during the 2004 election the woman almost started crying on the air she was so disappointed. Campbell Brown was an excellent choice for CNN.
One last comment on Palin, specifically. Like it or not, Palin did represent a huge number of women in this country - no, not the Hillary Clinton crowd, obviously Palin was a hard core Republican, but she did represent a lot of women. Those women were disrespected in this election by attacking Palin, as if to tell them they weren't actually important, something nobody would have stood for if it were Clinton supporters. I thought going after Palin was a real mistake, because Palin had a lot of fans, real women who actually wanted their voices heard. You can say what you want about Palin being brought on the ticket to court the women vote, of course that is true - but I really felt she and her supporters deserved better, at least some basic level of dignity and respect.
McCain should have been hammered on more than he was, he and Obama were both given a relatively free ride. McCain has plenty of stuff out there for reporters if they had only gone after it, same for Obama.