Answer: not one.
Every time there’s a debatable issue the media needs to get expert opinion on, let’s say military related before Kerry replaced Hillary, do they go with the guy who was shot down and spent most of his time in prison, or the other war “hero?”
Nope, they go with John McCain: damn near every time.
Do they attempt to balance him out with someone from the left?
Damn near never.
Issues of State, do they go with the recently retired lady from the Obama administration?
Nope, or anyone else for the most part. It’s like were stuck on some retirement home-only episode trashed by Matt Groening as unworthy to air, starring who? John McCain.
There he is, on my TV again and again: all albino-like with his age driven white hair. Once again he’s reprising his perpetual part as the always mad, “get off my lawn” grump-filled grandpa who rarely met a war he didn’t like, and has little concern for another soldier who was in captivity. We must remember there were also questions about McCain as a prisoner: talents as a pilot that got him there, and more important his patriotism while held by the Vietnamese.
But, hey, regardless of all that you’d think they’d give the Republican Grandpa Simpson a rest, maybe just to bring the blood pressure down. I’m concerned someday he’ll blow a heart valve out of his chest, squirting the camera lens with blood and pieces of heart… kind of like Gallager used to cover his audiences with juice and pieces of watermelon. But I hate to deny him his role being the rightward political edition of Jon Stewart’s go to guy for fury: Lewis Black, so damn much. If only McCain was as entertaining.
Yet one must ask: why so damn much of John? I can’t recall any former candidate for president, or even VP, who has been so much the go to guy for Palin’s supposedly “lamestream” media. Neither Caribou Barbie or Cheney even come close, and you see both of them more than most lefties.
Al Gore gets very occasional coverage: more like “never” these days and that’s usually when it’s an environmental/global climate change issue. And these visits are often followed by swift snark. Jimmy Carter? Rare, if at all. Hey media, is his corpse buried in your backyard or something? Probably right next to Michael Dukakis.
You’d think if we had a “liberal” media we’d be hearing from Al Gore at least as much as John McCain.
Nope.
And McCain?
He’s everywhere. He’s a hot media interview. You’d swear he was the hottie man-babe all the cheerleader-like female anchors want to have their next baby, the secretly gay male anchors drool over and the program directors hope will be their Jeff Gannon.
When have we ever had a losing candidate who is such a welcome oracle of “wisdom,” such a media darling? Certainly not even Bob Dole, to go Republican for a moment. And it’s not as if McCain is some pure white haired knight absent of controversy: questions about crashing his plane in Nam, how he was finally released, what “trades” may have been made and rumors McCain survived North Viet captivity because he was his captive’s bitch are out there.
Do I think any of these rumors true? I have no idea, and am willing to believe the best. But for every reason one can give not to use Gore, or Kerry, one can certainly find at least one against using McCain.
Let’s stop there, OK? I am not actually writing this with the ultimate goal to smear or slander McCain. And I do loathe the current smear-based, Rove/Atwater-inspired political environment: treated as if it’s some holy news grail for news gatherers. Let’s just leave the personal at this: McCain sure shows a lack of sensitivity towards another recently traded for prisoner who there are rumors and speculation about. One imagines McCain’s captivity happened today there would be a ginned up, paid for, campaign to frame him poorly… if his release had been been achieved by a black Dem president.
Sometimes it’s so damn obvious such cruel efforts are less about the target than over the top partisanship.
And my comments here are not just McCain-based. If you watch the Sunday talking head shows the claim they’re all part of “Republican Sundays” is quite valid. And bringing back every architect of the bloody Iraq boondoggle to insist we need to pump more steroids into the boondoggle?
Yup, oh so “liberal.”
The right has been crying like baby bullies wearing packed to the brim diapers about the “liberal media” since I was a kid in the 60s. Back then maybe they had a point, in that their story wasn’t being told and the left’s was simply because those who make noise get the coverage. Youngsters tend to make a lot of noise, especially so many of them. But without the mostly youth excuse, who makes the most obnoxious noises now still gets the coverage. The situation is the same today despite the boom having passed, and those making the most noise sure ain’t ain’t the left.
But despite all the coverage they continue to hold their infantile tantrums over that mythical creature: the “liberal” media.
The claim reminds me of what may be another myth…
A trainer died because after he fed his huge charge way too much laxative he went back and used a stick to clean out the elephant. He did a little too good of a job “cleaning out the elephant,” and suffocated much like the bully in Back to the Future could have when his car kept running into the manure truck.
The concept of “liberal media:” at least these days, is what was in the truck, and what the elephant had been holding back the trainer suffocated in.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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