The Media is Told to Shut up (not only by me) by the Presidential Candidates.

I guess today was a slow day for the media. Barely any mention was made of the US Embassy car bombing in Lebanon, although some anchor says it was of ominous portent for the U.S. Only three people died, so I guess it wasn't that important. But the rest of the day was talk about Race in the race to President that is all about Race, but no one is in a race to talk about it, when it's embers are blown out of proportion in an attempt to create a fire. It didn't work. The media tried to make a mountain out of Senator Barack Obama's molehill about Senator Clinton's statement about what Lyndon B. Johnson did for civil rights.

Get real, Senator Barack. You're a friggin' lawyer. Nothing happens without legislation, no matter how important those courageous civic leaders walk and march and sing and -- vote. I believe Senator Clinton might have been making that point. So in no way was Senator Clinton discounting the advances of slain martyr Dr. Martin Luther King. You have special protection because of your race, so let's not drum up the "race" card where it's not needed.

But boy, did the media like this one. How many times did the media mention race. They had different angles discussing the subject, practically salivating over the idea that things were gonna get "mean and dirty."

It was a non-starter.

The American public knows when something is racial, and this one was not it. Try though you might to foment a hue and cry the likes of a Rodney King incident or an O.J. Simpson verdict, you were shut up, not by us (as we weren't listening anyway - we know a cheap shot when we see one). The candidates told you to shut up. This was a good day. The media tried, yet again, to inject its high school morals into a serious time of debate about who will run our country, and they want to see a mudslinging match. Well, they did. The media lost and they're still wiping their mud from their faces.

Here's not listening to you, Media.

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Fear of Tears - Why the Media is so VerKlempt about Hillary Clinton's Emotions

Okay. I know this is controversial, but I just can't understand the mania surrounding the prospect of a woman President. The furor with which the media (mostly male) gushed and blushed over Barack Obama, his winning smile, his oratory, I thought they were reliving an unrequited crush from grade school. Leave it to the women in Media to give them a dose of reality.

Hey cavemen: wo-man-are-po-li-ti-cians-too. And they have to be scrutinized 2x as men. As a resurged internal Taliban nation (that's a later blog when I have a week to write), we must ensure that women dress like women (those pantsuits! the horror!), that if they cry, then it's a show of weakness that makes her--guess what--HUMAN? Hillary Clinton is Human. Oh My God, she's not a Pod, or an Alien from outer space. But can she be a politician? If she cries? How weak of her. We're a strong nation who doesn't cry (Not. We Tear up at Commercials!). But we make our enemies cry with our shock and awe.

Think Again and ask yourself: where was the outrage when these politicians sniffled, chocked back teaars, and even sobbed (I am not making fun of any of these youtube images below. I only make the point that there's a double standard here, and in "Taliban nation," we just don't comment about a man's weakness when he shows emotion, but we do highlight it as a flaw when a woman plays in a man's game.



Here's another show of tears by then Senator Dole at President Richard Nixon's funeral:



Senator Clinton warned us that she cried when she had to get up early in the morning.





[Just an aside -- Rachel Maddow spoke for at least 3 minutes and there was no name or affiliation at the bottom of the screen, then Michael Medved speaks, and his flashes. Again, men.... you'll never learn.... you can't use Taliban tactics to keep women down. We're too strong for that even if we do cry.

If you can't take the effect of too many onions, get outta da kitchen -- go work on a big rig somewhere; you're all so manly sitting at your desks (and your attempts at bravery by being with the embedded troops is absolutely dangerous, and you can't learn fighting on the job - Stay home where you're safe). Write your hearts out, you masculine men of media who use pens for javelins to poke fun at strong women who are strong enough to show emotions.

And Tim Russert: your time is over. You're no longer a media darling. I'm glad Clinton pinched your cheeks. She sees you as the cherub that you are -- who can easily be manipulated by your corporate owners. But I'll study you, later.

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It's the End of the World as We Know It....

You decide what to believe.

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Why They Got it Wrong.

Clinton? Not Obama?

Chris Mattews' Harball intro and analysis read like the Superbowl previews:

So what can we expect to see tonight? Let‘s go to the numbers. Let‘s start with the Democrats. The latest Suffolk University poll has Obama leading by 5 points in New Hampshire. He‘s up 9 points in the American Research Group poll, and the Reuters/Zogby poll has him up 13 points. That‘s Obama in the lead. The Real Clear Politics Web site, which averages the numbers together, has Obama at 38 percent, Clinton down at 30 percent, an 8-point spread, Edwards a distant third at 18 percent, Bill Richardson all the way down at 6 percent.

On the Republican side, the Suffolk poll has Mitt Romney leading by 4 points in New Hampshire tonight, but other new polls show John McCain with the lead. He‘s up by 7 points in the American Research Group poll, up by 9 points in the Reuters/Zogby poll. The Real Clear Politics average on the Republican side has John McCain leading by 4 points at 32 percent to Romney‘s expected 28 percent. Huckabee‘s down at 12 percent. Giuliani and Ron Paul are in single digits.

We go first to NBC‘s Lee Cowan, who‘s covering the Barack Obama campaign. You‘re at the headquarters. What can you report, Lee?

LEE COWAN, NBC CORRESPONDENT: Well, Chris, you know, this campaign had promised all along that it was going to get a big turnout, especially among the young voters, just like they did in Iowa. And we do know that turnout has been so big in some places that they actually ran out of ballots and they had to call the secretary of state to bring in more ballots to some of those places. So it seems as though the turnout is certainly in their favor.

This campaign never particularly looked at the poll numbers of late, though. They say they focused a lot more on the size and the enthusiasm of the crowds that they‘ve drawn over the last couple of days. What we‘ve seen here is crowds that are anywhere between twice to a third bigger than what we saw in the last couple of days leading up to the Iowa caucuses. Almost every place had an overflow room. We‘re talking thousands of people in these rallies, not necessarily hundreds of people. And that‘s what made the campaign feel relatively confident. Again, the senator himself says, Look, we haven‘t won anything yet. He‘s being cautious, but he says they feel pretty good.

MATTHEWS: You know, Lee, it used to be said of Barack Obama—and you can fill us in on this—that he would walk into a room to incredible applause, and then leave the audience a bit lower than he found it or entered it. Now, I mean, I was at one of those events this weekend. I can tell you that I saw, heard and felt the excitement of that room growing and growing and growing throughout his appearance. Is that the sense you get or can report on his appearances the last several days?

COWAN: Yes. I mean, I think it‘s fair to say that a while back, some of the speeches were perhaps a little academic. Perhaps he fell into that professorial mode that was talked about a lot. And you‘re right, he didn‘t sometimes end up on a crescendo.

They sound like they're gushing over a crush or something. But, that's not fair, because nowadays men are allowed to show their feelings (isn't that why they wear hankies in their left breast pockets of their suit jackets?), but Hillary Clinton cannot.

What happened?

Here's the answer: Nothing happened. We weren't listening to you.

America's citizens were talking amongst ourselves. We tuned you out.

I thought the titled click reference to the word journalism might shed some insight into why the media are so off base -- most of the time: because they try to ask questions and answer them at the same time, before they finish the question. They're so quick to state what they think they know, when it is their duty to let us in on the information for us to learn and judge for ourselves. Time and time again, the media give us a pie to eat and tell us how we like it, before we've taken a bite.

Well, without being violent, except in metaphor, they all deserve Boston Creme Pies for a facial -- or maybe they've wiped it off their faces already.

They were not journalists. They were entertainers, talking amongst themselves, telling us what no one can truly predict: The future. Instead of beaming proudly that an American could vote for a black candidate, they should have moved on to actually discuss the differences in the health plans between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And Edwards, for that matter. Instead, the media was frantically finding how many ways or how to count how much they loved the Super star. The uber President. The One and Only. They anointed Obama before everyone else got to vote, thinking that somehow the media represent us, the voters. The media represent themselves, and America reminded them. They don't do their jobs anymore and the definition of their profession has steadily declined.


Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This jour·nal·ism /ˈdʒɜrnlˌɪzəm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[jur-nl-iz-uhm] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

1.	the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business.

2.	press1 (def. 31).

3.	a course of study preparing students for careers in reporting, writing, and editing for newspapers and magazines.

4.

writing that reflects superficial thought and research, a popular slant, and hurried composition, conceived of as exemplifying topical newspaper or popular magazine writing as distinguished from scholarly writing: He calls himself a historian, but his books are mere journalism. (My emphasis. Yep. That's about right)

---

Lawyers take Continuing Legal Education Classes. Doctors take Continuing Medical Education courses. Journalists? They just keep getting published and published -- and they still don't learn their lessons. In one of his humbler moments, Chris Matthews sought advice from a real journalist, Tom Brokaw, about how to do it right next time, in effect:

BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this.

But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.

Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding, in many cases, as we learned in New Hampshire when they went into the polling booth today or in the last three days. They were making decisions very late.

The above was copied from www.thinkhttp://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/08/live-new-hampshire-primary-updates/

Tom Brokaw, I haven't watched you for decades -- please come back. I'll watch you every day for the rest of my life. Please. Come back.

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Betting Addictions and the Media -- Gambling with America's Future

I would be ecstatic about the American election process if only the media could be forced out of the equation. Media -- the very corporations that everyone excoriates, jumps on the first front runner, and tells the rest of us what's happening in the race to judgment. And we end up losing. If one can show me how allowing lotteries helps America's children get a better education, I'll shut up. But for now, in my own Puritan way, I'm against betting. You'd do better to throw your money on the casino floors (as I do in Las Vegas so someone wins, even if it is only a quarter that the lucky sucker finds!).

I am one who always eats her words, and I'm smacking already. I called Lou Dobbs an idiot or something to that effect, but his insight into the mendacity of the media in calling who is the "front runner" in an interview with always-serious-always-monotone Wolf Blitzer was astounding. Again, today on NPR Radio, another journalist lambasted the media for not doing its job to keep the electorate informed about issues, instead of nervously looking at 200 polls to determine who was in first place. Here's a great website written by someone who must do his/her work full-time. It explains the truth behind the Iowa caucus and
the would-be Obama juggernaut and how the media and journalists totally ignored the facts, instead, waiting for the Jeopardy wheel to spin, taking bets on where it would land so they could announce it first.

We are a youth oriented culture, and God Bless them, as they are the nation's future. However, they want everything so quickly, and the media is feeding into that need for quick answers to tough questions, doing us all a disservice. We might be headed into another prolonged mess - this time domestically. Corporations like the status quo and I would not be surprised if the support of handsome and articulate youthful and hopeful Senator Barack Obama -- isn't a strategy to make him the front runner, to be beaten by hawk Senator McCain -- so the war can continue forward..... but I sound like a conspiracy kook, and do not wish to but it so easily surfaces in my mind as to who is the real threat... and it's not Obama. It is the media and the buzzword which explains their attempt to control the world: "vertical integration," explained in the titled hyperlink above. Businesses use it all of the time in branding their products, but when a news source becomes enmeshed in the practice, that's the end of our democracy as we know it (not that we can recognize democracy anymore, anyway). Maybe President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who succumbed to the mandate against his Presidential status for life, should come to the U.S. to teach us how elections work.

Hey, I can take the news, but my problem is that the wrong chefs are in the kitchen, cooking up a recipe that ultimately, can only be distasteful. Or am I just getting older now, and realize that there is no such place called Camelot, no matter how we might try to conjure up a minority cast for the leads?

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