On The Media

Kittly Kelly, Craig Unger, Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, and Greg Palast (just to name a few). It seems that the "outrage" and the "indignation" over smears and swiftboating is notable when a liberal is the target of the smear.

Me thinks you all doth protest too much.

David Remnick made a stunning omission discussing press coverage of the events in Georgia. There is a difference between entering a secessionist territory within your own national borders (as Georgia did), and invading a foreign sovereign country, occupying and destroying large portions of its cities and forests (as Russia did in Georgia). Press coverage of Georgia attributed less culpability to Georgia's attempt (however ill-advised) to reassert control over its own land of S. Ossetia than to Russia's vengeful excesses in Georgia far beyond S. Ossetia. Debunking hawkish comparisons of Putin to Hitler in 1938-39, Mr. Remnick neglected the exact analogies of history: (1) Russia's 2 brutal military campaigns in Chechnya, regaining control over its own secessionist "autonomous" republic, flattening the Chechen capital and many of its people; and (2) the USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In Georgia, Russia also violated the boundaries of another territory where Russia had undertaken a "peacekeeping" role -- Abkhazia. On August 8, there was peace in Abkhazia; instead of keeping the peace, Russia itself violated the agreement it was to safeguard, and incited the Abkhazians to join them in breaking it (they obliged).

You ignored the main reason that smears (and even negative facts) against Obama are not working: since Feb. the mainstream media - print, TV, and radio (including, I'm sorry to say, NPR and OTM) - have been in the tank for Obama and have, indeed, acted as a part of his campaign. They used all their energy to smear Hillary and Bill Clinton (finally succeeding in doing what they were unable to do during the 90s: bring down a President) and, having gotten Obama nominated, are not about to let all that hard work go to waste.

The wife (McCain) is out and the mistress (Obama) is in.

This has nothing to do with journalistic standards or the relative strength of Fox or the WSJ and everything to do with the fact that the bias this year is toward the Democratic candidate and not the Republican one.

Like always, it seems that the Republicans keep resorting to the same smear tactics...plain lies that no man in his right mind shoul heed to; unfortunately, I suspect that many people do not make the effort to inform themselves on the issues and they become extremely manipulable by smear campaigns; I hope there are fewer of them than in previous years, when, tampered elections or not, there were at least a considerable part who voted for Bush in the first place, which makes you wonder..; on the short term, maybe one solution would be the Democrats intensively airing ads that precisely dispel the unfounded accusations posed by the Republicans; on the long term, I believe it's education, education, education for the masses, because 'the wisdom of the crowds' seems to sometimes elude those very same crowds, provided the 'right' type of media coverage..