It's The Press Stupid

When President Bush and his administration wanted to sneak past Congress and shock and awe Iraq, not one journalist stood up and said "Now just hold on one gosh darn Jimmy Stewart minute there sir."

When President Bush and his administration stood in front of this country, our congress, heck the entire world, and blatantly lied about the reasons they had to "liberate' Iraq' not one journalist or congress person lifted one finger to investigate further than regurgitate back to their readers and television viewership Bush's talking points. Not one journalist had the courage to question, and if need be, question again, and then question again, no matter how many times it was necessary to get under Bush's skin in order to uncover the true meaning behind Bush's doctrine definition of what 'to liberate' meant.

When President Bush and his administration wanted to get the Patriot Act passed by Congress not one journalist stood up and said "Can you explain to the American public sir exactly why you're determined to take away some of the very same rights Americans fought and died for too many times over?"

When President Bush and his administration knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction aimed at us or Israel or hidden behind any Iraqi school, hospital or industrial plant, not one journalist stood up and "Now just hold on one gosh darn minute here sir. When your own top weapon inspector, Scott Ritter, came back and swore he found nothing, absolutely nothing to support your claim that Saddam is hoarding anything, never mind weapons of mass destruction, you and Cheney turned a deaf ear to him and slammed Iraq with the stale old defense that Saddam was defying UN resolutions and no one other than your pal by default, Tony Blair, England's prime minster, backed you up, you still went ahead with your plans against everything and everyone that cried out loudly to stop! Then when our footprint was firmly planted in soil we had no business stepping onto, you hired Blackwater, a private military contractor to shadow our own Army and help you destroy any shred of decency our code of ethical conduct as a country had left to feel proud about."

Nine years ago when Bush and Gore were out on the campaign trail no journalist ever sat Bush down and sternly eyeballed him as Charlie Gibson just recently did to Sarah Palin. Not one American journalist ever tried to ridicule Bush about his glib answers to critical issues that were facing our country at that time. They never brought him to task over his corny imitation of a cowboy when he was nothing of the kind. Not one reporter, other than the comedy news outlets (see Can You Tell a Good Joke from 10/24/08) made mincemeat out of his inability to form grammatical correct sentences or speak articulately on any subject matter pertinent to someone who was running for the highest office in the land.

Not once did our press corp ever hold Bush's feet to the fire even when he ran four years later as an incumbent and his greasy, dirty, scrawny, incoherent handwriting was already plastered on every single wall.

Now fast forward to our present electorally process - you have to hold your ear very closely to the ground to hear the rumblings from the Republicans. They are seriously upset and rightly so about the press giving Obama a free pass. The same free pass the press gave to Bush over and over and over again. McCain's campaign staff are complaining that the press is giving a free pass to Joe Biden's verbal blunders. Sarah Palin herself brought it up to the press asking them to imagine what kind of media circus would have been going on right now if she had made the same sort of statement Biden made about this country being dangerously tested if Obama is elected president. Yet in the press it was immediately swept under the rug as if the words were never spoken.

Our so called free press has made it very clear they want Obama as the next president. Where is the difference between what MSNBC and CNN is doing now in comparison to what FOX News has been doing for the last decade? The world of politics is no different than the world of children at play. When the ball is in your court you're happy, but when the ball is taken away and the other side is winning you no longer feel like playing. You may complain bitterly that your opponent has the advantage but who really cares? Only the other players on your team and if no one steps up to the plate and cries unfair!! your words become just dust in the air.

The idea that we have a free press has become at this point just an urban legend. The press is no longer free nor does it want to be. It's very grateful to it's corporate sponsorship. Apart from Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on CNN, cable news is nothing more than sheer entertainment for political junkies who crave junk news without substance or investigative backbone.

PBS stations across the country are probably the last hold out for independent, intelligent news discussion, but the ridiculously easy questions lobed to the candidates at the Sept. 28th debate by PBS's Jim Lehrer's certainly do not make a strong case for that argument.

There were so many missed opportunities to ask the kind of questions that might have kept us out of Iraq and saved how many lives - the concept is just too deflating to think about. It's too late to turn back the last eight years but if the press doesn't stand up and ask the hard questions now, then no matter who is in the oval office, there will be no one looking over their shoulder, there will be no one looking out for you.