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| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Ummm yea I think it would be handled in the exact same light given similar context. Of course if it had been someone like Bush there would a lot more nonsense raised but that's because he's a much bigger figure politically. Can you provide any evidence whatseover that if it had been Webb who said "macaca" and George Allen who wrote the book it would have been treated any differently? |
Well obviously you're asking me to speculate on something that didn't happen so nobody can say with exact certainty, but it seems to me that often times the media is much more eager to jump all over anything that makes republicans look bad while more willingly taking a pass on scrutinizing anything unscrupulous on the other side. Perhaps that changes when you have Dems running the asylum but I still believe there is a liberal media bias.
For example, what ever happened to "Roll Over Rove?" Everyone was so certain that Karl Rove was the source of the leak in the whole Plamegate affair. Maureen Dowd wrote about it extensively, Paul Krugman wrote about it extensively. I'll bet David Gregory liked to masturbate to the thought of it at night. Michael Moore had the whole "Roll Over Rove" banner on his websit for months. Then lo and behold we come to find out it was Richard Armitage that fucked up the whole thing and not Karl Rove and nary a mention of the fact that they were wrong. No apologies for mis-reporting the whole incident. There is no interest in reporting stories that might cast the GOP in any positive light. Not that I think Rove is a great guy, but that's certainly one example where I think the media's position was much less ambiguous.
I watched a TV show on PrimeTime the other night. It was some gay drama called Brothers & Sisters (and it sucks by the way). However, it struck me that most of the show seemed to harp on how bad Republicans are. I watched TV for an hour and my primary takeaway was that Republicans are greedy, wealthy, selfish assholes, while Democrats are innocent and good (though they couldn't run a simple business to save their ass and had to have some evil republican businessman come in and bail them out). That still didn't change the fact that he must've been a bad guy, even though he saved Sally Field's pathetic ass.
SNL which loves to lampoon all sides of the political spectrum (and rightfully so), takes a much more harsh and vigorous stance against the GOP than I've seen them take against political parties in the past. I usually laugh because it's just comedy, but the amount of spite and hatred cast on Republicans seems more heavy handed than I remember. Daily Show, Colbert Report...much more heavy handed towards the GOP than a balanced criticism. If it could show GOPers more positively, it is generall under-reported.
So you ask me if I have hard evidence that the media would handle it differently were the tables turned--no I don't have "hard" evidence, but I have made enough observations from watching way too much TV and reading way too many articles that seem more critical of one side when they fuck up, while sweeping nasty things about the other side under the rug when they occur that I can say with a decent amount of confidence that the media would be in a bigger uproar right now if the tables were turned.
Yeah, maybe it is just fiction and we shouldn't read anything else into it, but in the age of the Mark Foley's and the focus that has brought to the subject of pedophilia, incest, etc., had this happened to the GOP, I think the media would've been much more outraged and would've said this is just one more example of how sick, twisted, perverted and untrustworthy the evil republicans are. There seems to be a much broader brush-stroke used to criticize one party over the other. The only broad brush stroke I can think of off the top of my head that is used to criticize all Dems is that they all want to raise taxes and that they're all a bunch of "cut & run" pussies, when I don't believe that's an accurate characterization of every democrat. But yes, my opinion is that favorable news to the GOP tends to be underreported whereas embarassing things are harped on and pushed around in the public eye much more aggressively.
Again, could just be because they control both houses of congress and the news is a function of the good ole 4th wing of government being more scathing in their review of said policies, but that doesn't change the fact that it still seems to be more unevenly covered when there is good news vs. bad news. Same thing with Iraq--it's hard to find the good news being reported even though there have been many positive developments over there. It is generally overshadowed by negativity which is then used to make the GOP in general look worse.
Rabble, rabble, rabble. You probably disagree with me, but maybe news is reported differently in your neck of the woods.
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