Media turning against O. and his minions?

Kristor writes:

I watched the debate on ABC news, and then afterward there was a bunch of “analysis.” The bright young anchors of that show were, openly, verging on expressions of contempt for Obama, and of respect for Romney. They were skeptical of the Democratic operatives who came out to spin the story afterward, and credulous toward the Republican operatives who did the same thing. The Republicans were treated as if they were merely speaking the truth, whereas the Democrats were explicitly told, at one point, “OK, good luck with that story.” This was stunning to me, a complete reversal of what we are used to seeing from the networks. First time I have ever seen that from MSM.

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Kristor continues:

Thanks for posting this. It came out of an email exchange from my wife, who is on retreat in a remote location and had not seen any of the reactions from the pundits. She suggested that the “reaction might have happened because so many commentators hadn’t actually listened to Romney speaking previously and based their low opinion of him, and their exalted opinion of Obama, on spin from the Left Wing Machine. When forced to see both with their own eyes, the Truth prevailed.”

My response to that: Perhaps. But these are professional journalists covering politics, who watch speeches and press conferences all day long. They earn their bread and butter by coming up with insights into the character of politicians. Certainly, then, they would have had a lot of exposure to Romney. Normally what they would do is watch Romney and themselves apply the left-wing spin to what he said and did. They would do this automatically, and without thinking about it, without realizing they were doing it. I.e., they would do it “with their own eyes.” The leftward processing of the data would happen before the data reached their cerebral cortices, before they could then analyse it. That’s why they are called knee-jerk liberals.

What we are used to from these people is, “OK, here’s the noble statesmanlike Democrat, who may be a philanderer, a liar and a crook but, because he is a Democrat, is at least on the side of the angels, and then on the other hand there’s the evil idiot running against him.” Whether the opponent was a virtuous genius or not would never even appear on their radar. Because he opposed the Democrat, everything he did or said would be evil idiocy, ipso facto.

This time—for the first time on an MSM channel since I became conscious—it didn’t work that way. I don’t quite know how to take this in. Have some of the younger journalists started to realize that the Emperor is naked? Have they begun to realize they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid all this time?

October 5

Jennifer writes:

I had always figured that the very liberal whites in the media must have deep-seated feelings of superiority to minorities, thus the savior complex and projection of racist motivations onto conservative whites that they exhibit. Is it possible that they have always worried Obama would be incompetent and embarrass them?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 04, 2012 09:21 PM | Send