WhatFinger


Bias in Media: Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column. They have an agenda completely divorced from anything remotely resembling even-handedness or integrity

South Carolina Goes for the Media-Masher



Everyone with a functioning brain knows why Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary. In fact it's as easy as ABC—along with Fox News' Juan Williams and CNN's John King—to understand that while many Americans may have differing political opinions, an overwhelming majority of them are united in one respect: they absolutely despise the mainstream media.
Raleigh, N.C.-based Public Policy Polling (PPP), a Democrat polling firm, interviewed 1,540 likely South Carolina Republican primary voters from Jan. 18 to Jan. 20. When asked about the media, 77 percent of them gave the so-called Fourth Estate a big thumbs down. And no one benefited more from that animosity than the Newtinator. Juan Williams got the ball rolling with an attempt to paint Gingrich as a racist, because Newt had the temerity to suggest that poor kids, who rarely get the opportunity to learn job skills, might get a better understanding of responsibility, showing up on time, earning money, etc. by—gasp!!—working as school janitors. That got Newt halfway to Racistville. The other half of the journey was completed when Gingrich referred to Barack Obama as a "food stamp president." For Juan and his progressive media counterparts, that was all it took: Newt was channeling evil slave owner Simon Legree from "Uncle Tom's Cabin." (look it up, history-deprived OWSers, et al.) The trouble with that kind of thinking among the media types is that it is offset by the one thing they seem to have the most trouble with: reality. Poor kids—of every ethnicity—don't have job skills and there are more people on food stamps than at any other time in our history. If there's a racist undertone to that reality in the minds of progressive media types, it might be because progressives and their enablers have eviscerated the nuclear family, and nowhere is that evisceration more pronounced than it is among black Americans.

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Nearly three-out-of-four black children are born out of wedlock, a reality that can be traced directly to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, notably the deadly change made in the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program (AFDC). AFDC was originally designed to fund once-married women who had lost the primary male supporter of the family. In the 1960s, president Johnson and Congress changed the qualifications: any household where there was no male family head present became eligible for taxpayer subsidies. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan accurately predicted where this change was leading—in 1966—he too was branded a racist by the progressive establishment. So why is Newt a racist? For the same reason anyone who points out the colossal failures of big-government progressivism is. It's a classic case of projection: we screwed up, and you're the racist for pointing it out. It didn't fly in South Carolina. Newt got his first standing ovation. Next up was ABC and their EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH NEWT'S EX-WIFE!!! Again, another heavy-handed media attempt to paint Gingrich as a serial philanderer, which he undoubtedly is. This, of course, flows neatly into the current progressive narrative about character and its importance with respect to the presidency. I say current because, if there's one thing as certain as a sunrise, it's that progressivism is all about changing the narrative without the slightest regard for consistency, morality—or character, for that matter. Exhibit A would be the word "compartmentalization." Exhibit B would be the phrase, "public versus private persona." Both Exhibits were used to rationalize a serial philanderer with a far healthier appetite for fooling around outside his marriage, and for whom a "lack of character" was seen as no particular impediment to sitting in the Oval Office for eight years. Even when Bill Clinton, not only fooled around, but lied under oath and obstructed justice—for which he was eventually fined $90,000 and disbarred. He also settled with Paula Jones, paying her $850,000. What did America hear from an "unbiased" media as the entire episode was unfolding? It was "only about sex," that Bill's "private and public persona" could be "compartmentalized"—and that none of it was detrimental to his effectiveness as a president. Thus, when CNN's John King was dumb enough to open up the next debate with a question about Newt's former spouse, Gingrich issued another slam-dunk answer, and got another standing ovation. It remains to been seen how far Gingrich can take this, but there's no question he has struck a nerve. Perhaps the only thing more amazing is the fact that none of the other three candidates seem to understand how deep America's disgust with the media goes. That anger is further exacerbated for many by the reality that, even after three years, the same media that reaches down to the atomic level and back to the year zero for every bit of dirt they can find on the Republican presidential candidates, retains a pathological level of incuriosity regarding substantial portions of Barack Obama's past. Apparently most of them believe that once the issue the president's birth certificate was settled, the idea that his college, graduate and law school records remain off limits was A-OK. So too his association with domestic terrorists, a racist preacher, and a convicted Chicago felon that remain largely unexplored as well. How unexplored? How many Americans are even aware that the LA Times is sitting on a videotape of Mr. Obama at a 2003 farewell bash in Chicago, where he lavished praise on the guest of honor, an uber-anti-Semite named Rashid Khalidi, who was a former spokesman for terrorist Yasser Arafat? Can anyone remotely imagine the LA Times sitting on anything that might negatively reflect on Newt Gingrich? Couple this with the media's grim determination to downplay every scandal that afflicts this administration—when they bother mentioning them at all—and you've got a tsunami of anger brewing in the American heartland. And not just anger, but fear as well. It is a fear centered around the idea that, for the next year, no mainstream reporter will ask this president a question he might have trouble answering. Or, in the event one of them grows a spine, that he or she won't take some schlock stock answer as the gospel truth, abandoning any follow-up questions. As for those on the right who yearn for a Gingrich/Obama debate, let the scales fall from your eyes, my friends: there is no way in hell, barring being ten points behind in the polling, this president puts himself in any position where the parameters of any debate, be it the format, the media questioners, the questions themselves, the post debate "analyses," or all of the above won't accrue to his benefit. Gingrich truly recognizes the "two against one" reality this presidential campaign presents. It would do Romney, Santorum and Paul to do so as well. If they can't learn that much from the outcome of South Carolina, they're collectively comatose. As I've said before, for many Americans, the Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column. They have an agenda completely divorced from anything remotely resembling even-handedness or integrity. That they would blast Gingrich or anyone else for lack of same is laughable. If Republicans don't snap out of it, the mainstream media might laugh Mr. Obama right back into the White House for another four years.


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Arnold Ahlert -- Bio and Archives

Arnold Ahlert was an op-ed columist with the NY Post for eight years.


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