the media paint it black...

There’s no excuse for lying, misspeaking or whatever the eff your campaign manager tells you to call it, but with each ‘Hillary’s a liar’ stories that breaks, I see how damaging the media’s coverage of her has truly been.  Let’s be honest- Hills has always had a bit of an image problem.  Even as the first lady- a post typically reserved for frozen-faced Stepford’s like Laura Bush- she was basically seen as a castrating bitch by most white male Republicans with mommy issues.  But how much of this image has been based on her actions and how much has really been the creation of the media- who has hounded her (from the left and the right) mercilessly for nearly 2 decades- is not clear.  Hills poses for a photo with an AIDS patient and the headline reads “Hillary Gives Man AIDS”.  She walks an old lady across the street and it’s “Clinton Steals Your Grandma”.  She makes a speech and it’s “Hillary trying desperately to get people on her side”.  She says nothing and it’s “Hillary in hiding- why won’t she speak to her dwindling supporters?”  She can do no right. 

At the same time, the media has crowned its darlings- McCain and Obama- and has largely treated them with delicate hands, softball questions and, in Obama’s case, a certain fellatious delight.  These men are extraordinary- there is no doubt about that.  I don’t ask that they be skewered or muckraked.  However, since the media gives us the impression that their job is to be unbiased, it’d be awesome if they’d actually ever fucking get around to being that way.  Since short of replacing reporters with robots, that’s never gonna happen, what I’d settle for is for them to drop the ‘unbiased, fair & balanced’ CHARADE and call a spade a spade.  If you wanna give Obama a handy in the bathroom- that’s toooootally fine- just let me know so that as you lavish praise on him, I understand that it is coming from someone who wants to swallow his man juice.  If Bill O’Reilly masturbates to George W’s State of the Union address, I’m fine with that (though seeing those words in print has indelibly scarred me for life).  I just want to be able to put the Bush love in context. 

I do believe it is impossible for journalists to truly be unbiased- especially when it comes to politics.  This belief is at odds with what we’ve been taught is the fundamental role of journalists- to deliver fact-based, unbiased investigative news to inform, enrich and sometimes enrage the American public.  Because people in news tend to be smart and passionate about the shit- a hazard of the trade- it would seem IMPOSSIBLE to ask them to refrain from having opinions.  And if they have opinions, then it would seem IMPOSSIBLE that those opinions aren’t informing their decisions, tainting their coverage and skewing their reports.  Done.  End.  Turns out – you’re humans (with the exception of Dan Rather who is, indeed, a robot) and as such, you’re impossible of total impartiality.  When it comes to tainted drinking water- I don’t really need impartiality because tainted drinking water pretty much sucks all around.  But when it comes to political races- there is no black and white (pardon the pun)- there are opinions.  And I guess all I’m saying is that if the people in the news media do have political opinions (they do) and it is possible that consciously or subconsciously it could be swaying their coverage (it is) then they should stop pretending that what they’re spewing is fact-based objective news and admit that they’re cherry picking stories, carefully framing headlines and giving the candidate of their choice a free hall pass.

BUT ONE MORE THING, YOU SONSABITCHES.

I think it’s GREAT that you have the time to really take Hillary to task for her lying about the Bosnian sniper.  I think it’s great that you take Barack Obama’s pastor to the cleaners for his angry but honest sermon.  And I think it’s fantastic that you’ve got so many great journalists digging into the truth about Hillary using that story about a preggers chick that ended up not being provable.  There’s just ooooone little thing I’ve been wondering…

WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH TOOK US TO WAR??  Where was your in-depth reporting then?  Where was your non-stop coverage of the hundreds of thousands of protesters that poured into America’s streets?  Where was your brutal questioning of the faulty WMD intelligence- which was shoddier than an American made car?  Where was your relentless badgering of George W. Bush, with his seeming tunnel vision towards invading Iraq regardless of world opinion, UN approval, or legal justification?  Where?  WHERE?  I’ll tell you where, you fuck-ups.  You were asleep at the wheel.  Things got tough in America for a little bit.  We got hit with some planes and some people died and people got scared and we were looking for answers and we were looking for someone to make sense of it all.  George W. offered us some koolaid.  You knew it was tainted.  But you did nothing, you asked no questions and you even played along as we drank the toxic brew.  When things got tough, most of you threw in the towel, imbedded yourself with the administration to get a better seat at the press conference and repeated the party line.  When Americans needed truth, news, information and hard questions, you were asleep at the wheel.  I’m so glad you’re awake now- just in time to break some new presidential blow job story and poor Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter’s 1^st birthday party bash in the Bahamas.  Goooooood.