Cheat Seeking Missiles

n this week’s Sunday Scan, I’ve looked at how the news media, which has had an unusually large role in this election, is handling the last big readership day before the election. You’ll see what The LA Times, the SF Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and the New York Times chose to feature - or not feature - at the culmination of their reprehensibly pro-Obama election coverage.

New York Times: Living On The Edge Of One Sided Seats

he NYT’s pre-election Sunday feature is The Year of Living on the Edge of Our Seats, a title that implies a nail-biting story line of two conflicting sides. But this nail-biter only has one side: Obama.

In the 39-paragraph story, 19 paragraphs are neutral, either mentioning both candidates or neither of them. Twenty mention Obama.

Math experts: How many paragraphs mentioned McCain? Correct. Zero.

The edge of the seat to the NYT is all about how Obama threaded the needle to defeat his Dem primary opponents and position himself against the candidate they describe as, should he win, “the oldest American ever to win a first term,” vs. Obama who is, of course, “the first black-American” who would be president.

Here’s a typical Obama passage:

Think back. When Mr. Obama took the stage in Iowa after his victory in the state’s caucuses last January, he was not yet the favorite for the Democratic nomination, and he was a long way from becoming the general-election frontrunner.

In videotape from that night, you can see and sense an astonishment and exhilaration — in him, around him — that seem almost quaint just 10 months later.

“They said this day would never come,” he tells a euphoric Iowa crowd, and not just his eyes but the whole of him twinkles, gleams. “They said our sights were set too high.”

While he’s talking specifically about himself and his campaign troops, it’s impossible not to hear in his words a statement about all minorities in America, for whom the week-by-week, month-by-month advance of his candidacy would hold an especially powerful message.

Shall we interject a little race into the campaign? And shall we interject a little GOP-bashing?

How will some younger voters react if Mr. McCain prevails? Or some older ones if Mr. Obama does? In recent weeks, the ire and ugly catcalls of some supporters of the McCain-Palin ticket have suggested a division in this election that goes well beyond tax policy or Iraq strategy.

What of the calls of “Rape Palin!” that broke out at an Obama rally without so much as a “Tsk, tsk” from The One? Or what about Palin hanging in effigy, a bit of misogyny that didn’t merit BHO’s attention?

In short, the article is the perfect exclamation point on a political season that showed the NYT and its MMM brethren (that’s”Mainly Marginalized Media”) to become vile house organs for Obama, content to co-opt any journalistic ethics that are clinging to survival in order to influence the election.

Washington Post: Reminding The 60 Percent

ashington DC is 60% black, and WaPo chose pre-election Sunday to focus on the city’s largest demographic in a story For Older Blacks, Election Offers Fruit of Hard Journey. It’s’ really a nice little story:

Once or twice a week for the past month or so, Ruth Worthy, 91, has been going door-to-door in her Northeast D.C. neighborhood campaigning for Sen. Barack Obama.

She made the trek in her wheelchair or resting on the arm of her nurse.

“Dear, are you registered?” she would ask.

Worthy belongs to a generation of African Americans who have journeyed from some of the rawest and brutal eras of racism to the present, when they find themselves relishing the idea of a black man possibly becoming president.

We certainly understand and are even sympathetic to the strong black vote for Obama. We don’t understand why there isn’t a companion piece on blacks who opted out on Obama, or maybe a story about all the investigations into Obama’s weaknesses and foibles WaPo opted out of during the campaign.

Chicago Tribune: A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Insults

he home page of the ChiTrib is pretty much devoid of big election news - except for an ominous blog link about swat teams from the Dem Atty Gen’s office that are going to be sweeping the state for voter intimidation (what we always get blamed for) or voter fraud (ya think?!).

But there’s a photo at ChiTrib that just may be a teensy-weensy bit biased:

Boston Globe: Five Questions

ou don’t get more pro-Dem than Boston, so the mask of objectivity in its lead story today is a bit thin. Five Questions About America This Election May Answer takes a long romp through the five questions, all adorned with the accompanying powerfully pro-Obama photo.

Is the Reagan Revolution Over? Like the LA Times, the Globe minimizes the socialistic nature of wealth redistribtution:

During the heyday of the Democrats’ New Deal coalition, which dominated politics from 1932 until 1980, the idea of spreading the wealth around was hardly political poison - it was the backbone of the party’s economic philosophy.

So the New Deal is alive and well, while the Globe has McCain as the Grim Reaper for the Reagan Revolution.

Is America Prepared to Move Beyond Racial Divisions? Could you have stated the racist meme of the election more straightforwardly? To move beyond racial divisions means making a selection without reference to the color of the candidates’ skin; not voting for the black candidate.

Are young people becoming a driving force in American politics? The assumption to this section reaffirms youngsters to join the 61% of young voters expected to vote for McCain, according to Pew. No mention here of late-breaking news showing young voters are moving to McCain big-time.

How much do Americans care about their image in the world? This is really one of the big five? Only if you hate Bush. Not asked by the Boston Globe is the really important question: How much do Americans care about their ability to stay safe in a terror-riddled word?

What does it mean to be a conservative? Really, Boston Globe thinks this - not “What happened to the moderate Democratic party?” - is an important question. At least it’s important because it allows the Globe to bring up Terri Schiavo, evangelicals, war and abortion, while ignoring socialists, racists, anti-Americans and all the Obama-baggage.

S-F Chron: Another Tape-Hider

ike its downcoast rival, the SF Chronicle finds itself covering up for Obama in the final days of the election. Newsbusters provides the text of an audio of Obama addressing his plans for coal - comments the Chron has covered up:

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. (emphasis added)

The Wrongicle’s coverage of the event somehow managed to ignore this snippet, which likely will nonetheless get a lot of play in battleground Pennsylvania in the final days of the campaign.

LA Times: No Video, But An Econ Cover-Up

he LA Times has gained quite a reputation for last-minute hit pieces, but not this year. The possible hit piece, the transcript of the video of Obama shot at the going away party for Rashid Khalidi (who the LAT steadfastly refers to as a “Palestinian scholar,” like Bill Ayres is just an education professor), is nowhere to be found.

Instead, the lead story is an effort to dismiss concerns raised by Obama’s comments regarding redistributing the wealth. The paper sets up a leftist view of the economy, then tells us Obama’s economic plans (presumably including bankrupting the coal industry) is no big deal:

Ever since the late 1960s, incomes have been growing more unequal, leaving middle-class wage earners with a smaller share of the American pie while vast fortunes have been accumulated by a tiny few at the top.

The nation has just ended a long era of economic growth that left the median incomes of Americans lower in 2007 than in 1999, according to Census Bureau data. The impact was particularly hard at the lower end of the income scale.

These trends — and how to fix them — are at the heart of the campaign. Yet, despite the complex problems facing the nation, the detailed economic proposals both candidates have put on the table are hardly radical by historic standards.

Yes, indeed-y; it’s not radical to propose for the first time ever raising taxes for high income earners and businesses and writing checks to people who don’t work enough to have to pay taxes. Nothing to see here, folks.

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