Newsweek's Alter: No One Ever Accused Biden of Racism

Joe Biden's insulting remark about Indian-Americans and Dunkin' Donuts franchises didn't indelibly taint the Delaware senator not because the media don't hype Democratic race gaffes but because "no one ever accused Biden of being a racist."

That according to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter in an August 23 column exploring why some politicians' gaffes stick and go on to practically define them -- Dan Quayle's misspelling of "potato" for example.

Argued Alter, "[t]he most common standard for [a meme's] stickiness is whether it fits into a pre-existing impression."

Yet nowhere in "I'm Rubber, You're Glue" did the Newsweek Conventional Wisdom editor admit that the media's liberal political slant has a heavy role in burning impressions into the political consciousness of the body politic, such as holding Republicans to higher scrutiny on race than it does Democrats and hence explaining why the notion of Biden having racial prejudices is unthinkable to the mainstream media.

Alter also came to the defense of liberal Democrats by insisting their gaffes were unfairly blown out of proportion:

After Obama's gaffe about "bitter" voters "clinging" to guns and religion, McCain operatives worked overtime trying to tag the Democratic candidate as an elitist, down to the brand of iced tea he drinks. This despite the fact that Obama was raised by a single mother (who sometimes relied on food stamps) and attended top universities on scholarships and loans. The most persistent meme of this campaign season, that Obama is a Muslim, is a lie based on his foreign-sounding name and brief attendance at a public elementary school in Indonesia.

[...]

Truly harmful memes work more insidiously. Gore's Internet misquote was never a headline; it never sucked up all the media oxygen. But it ate away at his credibility because it played on an impression that he sometimes inflated his own importance.

By contrast, Alter doesn't take former President George H.W. Bush that his supermarket scanner gaffe was blown out of proportion:

To his dying day, George H.W. Bush will insist that in 1992 he knew perfectly well what a supermarket scanner was; he was just commenting about some new technology. But the image helped sink him.