I guess I'm destined to play media critic today. Via Kathryn
Lopez at NRO, I see that the AP is out with a horribly biased
story, not even listed as analysis (and therefore by definition
treated as "straight news"), that tries to downplay GOP success
IN ADVANCE of tomorrow's elections, so that if Republicans or
conservatives win, the media can treat it all as no big deal. The
objectionable parts of
this Liz Sedoti story are legion. The headline starts right
in: "GOP victory Tuesday won't erase party's problems." Says who?
Well, says Sedoti.
"So even if political winds start blowing harder behind them
and even if they can capitalize on Democratic missteps,
Republicans still will have a long way to go over the next year
because of their party's own fundamental problems — divisions
over the path forward, the lack of a national leader and a shrinking base in a
changing nation.
The GOP would overcome none of those hurdles should
Republican Bob McDonnell win the Virginia governor's race, Chris
Christie emerge victorious in the New Jersey governor's contest,
or conservative Doug Hoffman triumph in a hotly contested special
congressional election in upstate New York."
There's a factual error here: "Similar hand-wringing happened
in the GOP ahead of the 1994 midterms. Just weeks before those
elections, Republicans came up with the Contract with America — and ended up taking
control of Congress." Uh, wrong. This makes it sound as if
the congressional GOP did some sort of rush job to create the
Contract. But they didn't just "come up with" the Contract in
1994; it was well over a year in the making, suring which time
the House GOP was hardly involved in "hand-wringing." I was
there; from VERY early 1993 on, the House GOP was amazingly
unified, perhaps for to the largest degree ever, before or
since.
Then there is this nonsense: "very real split between
conservatives who want to focus on social issues — which tend to
work best during peaceful, prosperous times — and the rest of the
party, which generally wants a broader vision, particularly given
recession." Excuse me, but it is the conservatives who have
been driving the bus recently, and it has been mostly on economic
issues, with Tea Party protests specifically focused on
government spending and the planned takeover of one-sixth of the
economy. Meanwhile, it's not as if social-issues conservatives
and economic ones are at war right now: Indeed, they have been
mutually supportive again this year to a greate extent than they
have been in years, and it's not as if social conservatives have
a "narrow" vision. This idea of social issues concerns being
somehow not "broad" is in itself a bad bias of the culturally
leftist media.
Then there is this old trope: "Fiery talk show hosts like
Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have
become the angry white face of the party." If I hear one
more mention of "angry white" people, I may gag. And does Sedoti
ever listen to Rush? His tone is almost never angry. It may be
mocking, and it may be flamboyant at times -- but angry? Nope.
And so on and so forth. This whole article is wishful thinking
and editorializing disguised as news. With almost no attribution
to other sources, either. For shame.
