Stark Favoritism on the Campaign Trail With the NYT; 'Obama's 'Well-Known Gift as an Orator'
There were some stark contrasts on the campaign trail in Wednesday's New York Times. After Vice President Joe Biden warned a racially mixed south Virginia audience of the Republican ticket: "They're going to put y'all back in chains." A five-paragraph brief on Biden's comments by Rebecca Berg made page A14 Wednesday, including a brief quote of Mitt Romney's counterattack on the Obama camp in Chillicothe, Ohio, under the soporific headline "A Metaphor Draws Notice."
Berg helpfully corrected Biden's grammar by removing the veep's condescending second-person plural Southernism ("y'all"), replacing it with the more standard "you all." By contrast, the exchange was highlighted in a front-page Washington Post article, which retained Biden's contraction.
Barack Obama's Tuesday stop at the Iowa State Fair was heralded with a large photo and a favorable story by Helene Cooper, "Obama Returns to Iowa in Bid to Reignite the Fervor." Cooper spoke of the president "using his own well-known gift as an orator to try to get the flame going again." Meanwhile, Mitt Romney was forced to make do with only a small photo from the campaign trail, speaking at a coal mine in Ohio.
Also, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was portrayed as shady and secretive in meeting Tuesday with a Republican donor, Sheldon Adelson, who had previously bankrolled a SuperPAC that helped Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign, in a story by Trip Gabriel and Nicholas Confessore:
Four days after his announcement as Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan was not in Florida talking Medicare with elderly voters or in drought-ridden Iowa talking about a farm bill. He traveled to the Venetian hotel here for a meeting hosted by Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who has pledged to spend as much as $100 million this year to defeat President Obama.
....
But a closer connection with Mr. Adelson also holds risks for Mr. Ryan and the Republican ticket. Mr. Adelson’s casino empire, which has made him a billionaire, is the subject of a federal investigation into whether his company, Las Vegas Sands, bribed Chinese officials to help him expand into the mainland. Mr. Adelson’s company has denied any wrongdoing and has attributed the accusations to a disgruntled former executive.
At the fund-raiser Mr. Adelson attended in Jerusalem, Mr. Romney’s assertion that cultural differences explained economic disparities between Israelis and Palestinians was criticized as ethnically insensitive. Mr. Romney also declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and promised to move the United States Embassy there.
The Times has certainly done it's best to make Adelson radioactive, with a front-page story (featuring a whopping nine contributors) on the China bribery investigation in Tuesday's edition.
