Remember when Ronald Reagan was referred to as the Teflon President, usually in a derisive manner by journalists hoping something negative would stick to him so that they'd have something juicy to write about? Well, it looks like the Fourth Estate is up to its old tricks already with Obama, this time hiding behind segments of liberal interest groups -- Obama's most loyal core supporters -- to make it seem that the left is "unhappy" with something or other he or Biden are up to.
Gay leaders are said to be furious with Obama over his choice of a prominent evangelical minister to deliver the invocation at his inauguration because of the minister's support for the California constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Never mind that Obama himself does not support gay marriage. Never mind that barring this preacher from participating in the inauguration would mean that any traditional Catholic priest -- a faith shared by 23% percent of Americans -- not to mention any traditional minister from the huge Evangelical community, would be similarly barred. Let's be perfectly candid: the gay community as a whole realizes that it has the best friend coming to the White House that it has ever had. Yet the news reports make it sound as if Obama has turned his back on the gay community. The fact is, Obama is a smart guy and he understands that a president is president of all Americans, not just a portion of his political base. By having an Evangelical participate in his inauguration, Obama is reaching out to a vast percentage of Americans who would not appreciate being excluded -- and on this issue, the minister in question is closer to the political mainstream than are the gay leaders supposedly furious with Obama.
In addition, some feminist writers are picking a fight with Obama over his proposed stimulus package. Understand that the recession has hurt male workers much worse than female workers: "The nature of the recession and the long-term shift in the American economy has caused more men to lose than jobs than women. According to the Labor Department, 1.1 million males lost their jobs the past 12 months while 12,000 women found employment during the same period." Did you get that? Men are being tossed out of jobs in record numbers while more women are actually finding work. But that doesn't stop some feminists from bellyaching that Obama's stimulus package is ignoring women. Giving money to stimulate construction is akin to giving money to men, they insist with a straight face: "A just economic stimulus plan must include jobs in fields like social work and teaching, where large numbers of women work. "
Hmm. Must be nice to insist on looking at complex issues of critical importance to our nation through a simplistic, unnuanced gender lens that admits of no grays and where every act is either a subjugation or an empowerment of women.
It is unfathomable that most women share the inane view of that op-ed piece. Infusing money into construction will jump-start the economy, not to mention employ more people who've lost jobs, far better than tossing money into, for example, schools, where teaching jobs are rarely ever in danger and where infused money has far less ripple effect on the economy. More men than women are the primary support of families, and when an out-of-work father gets a good construction gig, his wife and daughters are more likely to say, "Thank you President Obama" than "President Obama, your policies are misogynistic." So to the feminist writers who like to stir up gender divisiveness in op-ed columns, leave the man alone -- it's going to be difficult enough to jump-start this moribund economy without whiny catcalls from the bleachers of ideological politics.
Some environmentalists are supposedly unhappy with Obama's choice of Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior because Salazar has worked to allow more offshore oil exploration.
And PETA is unhappy with Joe Biden because his new dog isn't a pound puppy.
I could go on and on, but here is the reality: American print journalism is in trouble. Newspapers can't figure out how to make a profit from publishing on-line, and readership and ad revenues for the print editions of America's leading dailies have plummeted. To generate readership, journalists need to generate sparks, so they latch onto anything with even a whiff of a conflict. The problem is, by highlighting, by underscoring, and by over-emphasizing conflict -- by injecting a New York Post mentality into their publications -- the print media is creating a false impression that there is more conflict than there really is.
The really scary part is that some in the print news media have already declared the honeymoon over even before it has begun.
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8 comments:
sad, isn't it? i'm not happy with warren but i'm not ready to declare obama a failure.
the media,has for the most part become lazy and/or forgotten how to BE journalists.
i'm not confusing journalists with political talk shows. they are a different animal and serve a different purpose. i'm talking about the old get off of your butt and chase down leads and work to curry sources and get the story right.
now, we have news agencies like FOX which has been caught and admitted to carrying water for the whitehouse(a sin no matter the administration in power)
or we have people that either outright lie or just bend the truth enough to suck up to either political side or to their bosses or just to become semi-famous.
i'm tired of the whole thing.
but i have hope now, albeit small, that somethings will improve for the country. that would be a blessing in itself.
hope and trust are good things when not misplaced.
me? i've never voted with my ovaries and i didn't this time.
just as obama has far more on his shoulders because he is bi-racial, so too the first woman president will be carrying a burden to prove herself as well.
i want to be damn sure she will be more than expected. it isn't fair. not to obama or to whoever becomes the 1st. woman president but that is how life is.
like they say,"ginger rogers did everything fred astaire did and she did it backwards and in high heels!"
life isn't fair but it's all we have to work with so i learned at a very young age to just get moving.
And, Sherry, I happen to agree with those people who say that at least the electronic news media was sexist toward both Hillary and Palin. (I heard a story from an unimpeachable source that during the campaign a female University president who professes to have liberal values referred to Palin as a "bimbo." Sorry -- I don't care that you're a "feminist," that's inexcusable. Even before the Palin clothes controversy, I saw that one of the major news services had a picture of Palin's shoes. Who the hell cares about her shoes?) I suspect, though, that the news media being what it is, will give Caroline Kenney a free pass as she becomes the next senator from New York.
they may and they might not.i think people are becoming tired of the same old names, the sort of british aristocracy -ish feel of it all. she may very well be the brightest and best for the job but i'd rather see new names. no more(at least for awhile) buhes and clintons and kennedys etc.
as to hilliary and palin. oh yes, the media(some of the media) were quite sexist and once again, woman was pitted against woman(and frankly, i'm tired of that stuff as well)just like in the "mommy wars", phooey!
i do have more respect for clinton than palin. being female, i can see exactly what palin's camoflage was and those damn red heels were a big part of it. i was insulted as a woman when she was chosen. no, a woman doesn't have to look like a mud fence to be taken seriously but she also doesn't have to wink and touch the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue when being interviewed by a man. leaning forward and using well rehearsed body language.
that's why she was called "bimbo"
that and the fact that, she's street smart, but dumb. one can be that way.
i was trashed by younger radical feminists because i supported obama. they really got hostile in some instances, but they would have voted for ANYONE with a vagina.
that's not right nor wise or good for everyone in the country.
it just satisfies their precious little egos.
me? i want the right person at the right time. hopefully i will live to see a woman president. there will be one. that i know.
There certainly will a woman president. All things being equal, I'd vote for a woman over a man until that finally occurs (that is, if it came down to a toss-up between the two). And hopefully it will be someone who has earned it, as opposed to Caroline Kennedy.
As for the radical feminists, they have so marginalized themselves by refusing to see the complexities of the world, by elevating ideology over facts and the politics of victimhood over fairness, that they are as easily dismissed as those who believe Lyndon Johnson was involved in the JFK assassination. I would dare say that every right thinking American agrees with the principles of equity feminism -- no woman, or man, should be afforded less opportunity due to the gender -- or race -- they were born into. But to assume with a knee reaction and with cookie cutter consistency that every difference in outcome is due to patriarchal oppression (which is, despite all their twisting and pounding and self-righteous blather, their code word for "men") is naive in the extreme and would be insulting to men if it came from a half-way intelligent source. To their credit, the vast majority of young women do not adhere to that cult but voted on the basis of factors other than vaginal ownership.
yes, they did and that made me feel good.
there are fanatics in every movement. i've never been one to go to extremes. i've always tried to give the benefit of the doubt, to try a little empathy but mostly, i understand that we are all different human beings and see life thru the filter of our experiences.
blanket staements and blanket ideas, people suffocate in them.
funny thing, because i accept almost anything as long as it is lawful and kind i get a lot of people and groups po'd.
i think they'd rather i just picked a side, any side so that they could pin me down to 1 ideal and either agree or not.
it's easier than thinking rationally at times i suppose.
well, i've had tons of labels hung round my neck over my lifetime.
i think i like "she's delightfully mad and terribly kind."
the most.life is short and most times painful, why make someone else's day bad?
Yes, yes, the fanatics. And the most dangerous of the fanatics are those who are certain in their opinions and who feel the need to stereotype others -- whether it be blacks, women, men, Christians, Muslims, Jews or anybody else. The stereotyping . . . that's what I can't tolerate. And sadly the far left has become as adept at it as the far right, under the guise of dreaded political correctness.
The older I get, the fewer the opinions I have, the less certain I am of anything.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the whole Warren thing. Part of me is PISSED, I helped the Obama campaign because I wanted change. Another part of me hopes (perhaps naively) that the goal is to "turn the other cheek" and be respectful to people like Warren even when you disagree.
yes, but the wiser we become. if we've learned anything at all.
life is shades and shadows, never just stark black and white.
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