The Politico Is Puzzled that Conservatives Aren’t Gullible Morons.
The guys at the Politico seem baffled, in an objective news-writer sort of way, about why conservatives seem to be savaging the New York Times for its story about John McCain. Their confusion is made worse by their not knowing what the heck they’re talking about. Take this, for example:
Some of the loudest voices of the modern conservative movement — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Gary Bauer, CBN.org — flogged the Times while hardly pausing to consider the underlying facts of the story. Immediately, almost reflexively, these commentators assumed the worst motives and behavior by The Times and accepted McCain’s bland yet broad denials.
That paragraph would work really well if there actually were any underlying facts of the story. The problem is, as the writers themselves admit, there weren’t. Well, they don’t say that quite as starkly as I, but they do nibble around the edges timidly.
Times made it easier for those who wanted to justify, rationalize or defend McCain’s actions. The paper did not definitively prove McCain was involved in an inappropriate relationship. It used an indirect and elliptical article to suggest more than it proved. Then, the paper tucked the allegation into a story that rehashes other examples of McCain contradicting his claim of being a trustworthy reformer.
In other words, the Times used innuendo and assumption to suggest that something was going on, then tacked on a few warmed-over allegations of dishonesty to further suggest that the old stuff happened because of the salacious stuff. That, folks, isn’t what you’d call a wealth of “underlying facts”. That’s a gossip column.
The guys at the Politico ought to know that. They’re better journalists than this story indicates. I can’t help but wonder whether their story wasn’t a knee-jerk, even “reflexive”, defense of their MSM brethren. They went ahead and answered their own question in less than two paragraphs, pausing long enough to ask why conservatives didn’t spend a little time wallowing in the mud and spinning off a few baseless assumptions of their own.
I’d suggest that we didn’t do that because we’re not complete idiots. We knew that the Times article was garbage when we saw it, and it was old garbage at that. Why on earth would we spend our time doing the bidding of the New York Freaking Times? We may be baby-eating, old person-starving, poor person-killing imperialist Earth-rapers, but we’re not gullible. We know a put-up job when we see it.
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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., The 2008 Horse Race
