Taking liberal media audacity to higher levels, John Heilemann would have you believe that the loss of support from liberal journalists is itself evidence the wheels are falling off the McCain campaign. Heilemann recently wrote about a "shift" in the attitudes and opininos of the media away from John McCain and towards Barack Obama. His examples are, well, typical.
Jonathan Alter, Joe Klein, Richard Cohen, David Ignatius, Jacob Weisberg: all former McCain admirers now turned brutal critics. Equally if not more damaging, the shift has been just as pronounced, if less operatic, among straight-news reporters. Suddenly, McCain is no longer being portrayed as a straight-talking, truth-telling maverick but as a liar, a fraud, and an opportunist with acute anger-management issues.
By a show of hands, how many of you knew these guys were, as Heilemann reports, "former McCain admirers?"
Heilemann makes it sound as though they once supported John McCain and because of some recent change (the Modern Great Depression, perhaps?), they have all jumped shipped and changed allegiances. Um, right.
Mickey Kaus writes about this latest twist:
I know Jon Alter. Jon Alter is a friend of mine. He's very good at what he does--I couldn't do it. He wrote an excellent book, has a lot to say. But he's not exactly someone you look to as a political weather vane. Alter is totally for Obama and has been since the beginning of the campaign.
[...]
But of course he hasn't "turned"--missing from Heilemann's piece is any evidence of Alter favoring McCain at any earlier point in the campaign, let alone evidence of Alter favoring McCain once he was the nominee running against Obama. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for his fellow Chicago Dem (and head of the Slate Group) Jacob Weisberg. Nor is it exactly surprising that Klein, Cohen and Ignatius would be on Obama's side in the end.
(emphasis added)
A liberal journalist supporting Obama is hardly earth shattering news. We document the latest and greatest examples of liberal media bias every day. What sets this little piece of reporting apart from every other example of bias is the galling fact that, as Kaus explains it, their bias is being "used as evidence that McCain is blowing it, losing his reputation for "integrity" and his 'gold plated brand.'"
Standing against the tide of liberal media, Mark Tapscott insists that, despite the conventional wisdom, the election isn't over. In fact, Tapscott holds out hope the MSM will actually do their jobs and cover Barack Obama with something other than adulatory tones.
McCain and Palin should also - by name - challenge The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN and ABC to drag themselves out of the tank they crawled into for OBama months ago and start giving voters the rest of the story about Obama and his employment by an ACORN subsidiary, his legal defense of ACORN's aggressive pressuring of banks and other lenders to make sub-prime mortgages, and why after only three years in the U.S. Senate, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's political decision-makers made him the second most frequent receipient of their campaign contributions.
This remains the untold story of the 2008 Presidential Campaign. It's one that until recently, only got airtime on talk radio and the conservative blogosphere.
John McCain and Sarah Palin have started pounding away at these points, but will the MSM report it as anything other than the crazy rantings of a cranky old man and his dumb, beauty-queen runningmate?
