As Barack Obama took his legislative victory lap Tuesday, he boldly claimed this was "the most productive postelection period we've had in decades" and "the most productive two years that we've had in generations."
Not caring what "productive" means, media across the country dutifully parroted the President as the following video created by the folks at Breitbart TV marvelously demonstrates (video follows with commentary):
To give readers an idea just how parroted this concept was, a Google News search of "most productive Congress" yields over one thousand results.
Yet how does one define "productive?"
According to Dictionary.com, as it pertains to economics for example, productive means "producing or tending to produce goods and services having exchange value."
I reference an economics term because for most Americans after 2008's economic collapse, the most important issue facing the new president was solving a rising unemployment problem.
Has that occurred in the past two years?
Today, as the President and his fellow Democrats pat themselves on the back - with the assistance of the media, of course! - unemployment stands at 9.8 percent with 15.1 million people jobless.
Is this really what so-called journalists see as "productive?"
That's kind of like grading a batter by how many times he's at the plate or how many pitches he sees rather than by his hits, average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, RBIs, and number of home runs.
But such analysis isn't important to today's media when reviewing the "accomplishments" of Democrats and the current White House resident.
Would the same be true if Republicans controlled everything the past two years?
Just imagine if Bush was president, John Boehner was House Speaker, and Mitch McConnell was Senate Majority Leader. If the exact same number of bills was passed with unemployment having risen as much during the same period, would the press be giving Republicans a standing ovation?
Hardly.
