The title itself, ‘Right-wing media feeds its post-election anger,' demonstrates that Rainey will not be pulling any punches with his article. But why is he focusing on the reaction of conservative talk show hosts less than one week after Obama's election? Did he forget the liberal media's - nay, the mainstream media's - chronic case of misplaced anger since election night of 2000?
The answer, of course, is no. Rainey's employer, the LA Times, has been one of the biggest offenders of liberal media ignorance in quite some time. After all, The Times has produced rants that read like a rap sheet of bias.
An examination of the piece follows...
Rainey's conservative radio bashing dives head first with paragraph one:
You have to give Rush Limbaugh a perverse kind of credit. At least when he is demonizing Barack Obama, fabricating Obama policies, blaming Obama for single-handedly causing the recession and the stock market crash, he doesn't pretend to be fair.
Questioning our under-experienced President-elect isn't being fair? Is it truly unfair to question the effect that a potential Obama victory had on our markets, and what an actual victory has done to send the stock market into the tank?
Rainey is referring to Limbaugh's commentary that with the two day post-election stock market plunge, the Obama recession is in full swing. Rush isn't the first, or only one raising such a point. Investor's Business Daily ran an editorial on October 10th, regarding the link between a market dive and the election of America's first socialist President. Our President-elect will make a dramatic shift away from capitalism, and will raise income, capital gains, dividend and payroll taxes, but it is simply unfair to assume any relationship between that knowledge and the biggest two day market loss since 1987? Rainey wishes only to indulge in mindless Limbaugh bashing.
Rainey then shifts this mindless focus to Sean Hannity, criticizing what he views as insincere support for Obama.
Sean Hannity, on the other hand, insisted on feigning a post-election detente, telling his Fox News television audience last week, "I want Barack Obama to succeed."
Didn't he think anyone would notice that, just a moment later, he was back parroting the failed campaign argument that Obama is a "mystery"?
After eight years of pure unadulterated hatred for President Bush, the liberal media simply do not have the mental capacity to grasp the concept that a conservative just might not hate Barack Obama in the same manner. Or, that a conservative like Hannity or Elizabeth Hasselbeck could throw their support behind our President despite disagreeing with his policies. Hannity has every right as a journalist to question Obama's past, and the media has the responsibility to explore these mysteries as well, though they clearly have no desire to do so.
Rainey confuses such questioning as proof that Hannity doesn't mean what he says, while simultaneously dismissing the argument that Obama remains a mystery as purely false. On the contrary, the mystery of Obama's past associations has never been aptly explored, can therefore not be considered false, and in fact, has been perpetuated by the LA Times themselves when they refused to release the Khalid Al Masour video, creating their own mystery.
The article becomes unintentionally funny with this statement:
But many on the losing end of last week's election want to hold on to their anger.
Holding onto a week's worth of supposed anger hardly compares to several years of tangible liberal anger, but I digress.
Rainey proceeds to attack Limbaugh's commentary about Democrats and a takeover of 401(k) retirement plans.
In a time when the nation calls out for cool leadership and rational discussion, Limbaugh stirs the caldron, a tendency he proved in a particularly grotesque way last week when he accused Obama's party of plotting a government takeover of 401(k) retirement plans.
"They're going to take your 401(k), put it in the Social Security trust fund, whatever the hell that is," Limbaugh woofed. "Trust fund, my rear end."
A slight problem with Limbaugh's report: Obama and the Democrats have proposed no such thing.
The proposal, in fact, emanated from a single economist, one of many experts testifying to a congressional committee.
Research into the issue seems to contradict the assertion that the idea is relegated solely to one radical economist spouting off ideas, as Rainey is suggesting. The proposal was raised at a hearing held by Rep. George Miller, a Democrat from California and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, who considers 401(k)s ‘a big failure.'
Not to mention, the phrase ‘plotting a government takeover' is quite misleading, when Limbaugh actually had stated that Obama's party ‘is talking about a government takeover of 401(k) plans.'
Talking and plotting are two very different things. Talking and proposing - also two very different things. Rush never claimed they were plotting or proposing anything. He said the Democrats were talking about such things. Rainey skillfully has taken Limbaugh's comments out of context, a staple for an LA Times writer.
Rainey states his disdain for this alleged falsehood:
To broadcast such a report -- so drained of context as to constitute a lie -- would be a shameless act at any time. But Limbaugh needlessly stirred the fears of the millions he holds in his thrall -- making the 401(k) thievery sound like nearly a done deal. Shameless.
‘Drained of context' is more aptly applied to Mr. Rainey's counterpoint, as we've already examined. And shameless, well, that more appropriately describes the LA Times disturbing history of anger and bitterness towards conservatives - something Rainey is deriding in his own work.
Some all-star examples of this hatred follow:
A Times Op-Ed column in 2006 considered George Bush a greater threat to civil liberties than Richard Nixon.
An LA Times Columnist defined President Bush as our Torturer-in-Chief. The columnist's anger was so blatantly obvious, that NewsBusters Mark Finkelstein declared that ‘so virulent is her anger at President Bush that she appears blinded to the bigger picture.'
They also ran a column in which their writer stated matter-of-factly that he despises the efforts of those in Iraq. His words? ‘I don't support our troops.'
A search of past NewsBusters posts involving the LA Times will show a bevy of anger and hatred towards President Bush, and conservatives in general.
Rainey's week of enduring ‘right-wing anger' does not compare on any level to the Los Angeles Times own history of ‘right-wing hatred.'
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