McCain embraces a lunatic and 'liberal' media clams up.
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(Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:29:43 -0500) ---
March 4th, 2008
A few days ago, in light of John McCain’s embrace of radical
evangelist John Hagee, Time’s Joe Klein argued that McCain has a
choice to make:
“A McCain rejection of Hagee’s support would be seen as another sign
of weakness by Rush and such. An acceptance of Hagee’s support would
spell trouble for McCain with catholics and sane people everywhere.
So, what’s it to be, Senator?”
I’d hoped that McCain would eventually have to answer that question.
Josh Marshall notes today that this isn’t going to happen.
Let’s note that Sen. McCain has decided to hang tough with his embrace
of anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic Pastor John Hagee.
And the major papers and cable news outlets have decided to give him a
pass.
I didn’t think it was possible, but that is most certainly the current
dynamic.
McCain sought out Hagee, McCain traveled to appear alongside Hagee,
and confronted with Hagee’s anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim,
anti-gay, and anti-woman record, McCain didn’t care.
Given the inordinate media interest in Farrakhan’s kind words for
Barack Obama — a weak comparison, given that Obama didn’t reach out to
Farrakhan, and wants nothing to do with him — it seemed unlikely the
media could justifiably give McCain a pass on this one.
But that’s exactly what’s happened.
I checked Nexis a few minutes ago, to see if any of the major
newspapers had done stories about the Hagee controversy.
The combined number of articles from the New York Times, Washington
Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Boston
Globe is zero.
Literally, not one.
In two instances, the WaPo and the NYT made brief references to the
controversy in round-ups or in articles about something else, but none
of these dailies ran stand-alone items about McCain cozying up to a
lunatic.
What’s especially odd about this is the lengths news outlets had to go
in order to ignore the story.
In most instances, reporters look for a news peg — some kind of timely
event that makes a controversy worthy of attention.
In some instances, an awkward relationship between a candidate and a
scandalous supporter might go unreported unless someone’s out there
raising a fuss.
In the case of McCain and Hagee, we saw Bill Donohue and the Catholic
League, Catholics United, prominent Jewish organizations, and the
Democratic National Committee all trying to generate some interest in
the story.
Reporters couldn’t be bothered.
Howard Dean personally went on national television to question
McCain’s integrity over his embrace of Hagee, and reporters just
yawned, barely lifting an eyebrow.
McCain’s Bush-like strategy apparently worked like a charm — pretend
the problem doesn’t exist, refuse to answer questions, and wait for
the storm to blow over.
This was made especially easy in this case because reporters didn’t
want to lift a finger to cover the controversy in the first place.
______________________________________________
Surprised? Of course you're not
Harry
Harry Hope (rivrvu@ix.netcom.com).
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