If an administration is rife with scandal, and no one is around to cover it, is it still a scandal-ridden administration?
Rachel Maddow, back Tuesday night from the illness that had kept her off of the air for over a week, apparently thinks not. Speaking of the Obama administration, she claimed:
“It's definitely true that in modern times almost every president has hired outside legal counsel. Almost every modern president has relied on private lawyers to help him respond to whatever scandal that administration is facing. President Obama, I should mention, is an exception to that. President Obama had a private lawyer but there was never a major scandal during his administration that required him to use that private counsel.”
This suggestion, which was presumably taken by Maddow’s audience as beyond dispute, is simply not true. From the IRS’ illicit targeting of conservative groups to the Benghazi disaster, it was the leftist media’s unwillingness to disgrace their beloved candidate that lead to the appearance of impunity, not any objective refrain on the Obama administration’s part from malfeasance.
The delicately crafted Obama legacy is sacrosanct, beyond reproach, and enshrined in rarified air in the world of the media. NewsBusters has covered numerous other instances of scandals the networks skimped on.
