Disappeared News: Pundits unreformed, but what did we expect

Friday, November 07, 2008

Pundits unreformed, but what did we expect

by Larry Geller

This just-concluded election campaign has been punctuated by some stunning lies. Far from deflating the falsehoods, political pundits have thrown gasoline on the flames.

Their track record, if one kept track, is not very good, but it seems their audience cares not. Here is a short essay by Jamison Foser on the subject, Media Matters: All over but the lying, from the Media Matters for America website. This is just a snippet, I recommend clicking on the article link to read the entire essay:

On Tuesday, Americans chose as their next president an African-American named Barack Obama who campaigned on a near-universal health-care plan, allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, and a move away from the belligerent foreign policy of the past eight years. Republicans, and some journalists, had spent months (falsely) saying Obama is the single most liberal member of the U.S. Senate -- and maybe even a socialist. The American people responded by electing him in a landslide.
This, naturally, is very good news for the Republicans, according to many pundits. It proves once again that America remains a "center-right" nation.
Right about now, you're probably scratching your head, wondering how the election of the "most liberal" member of the Senate, a man who campaigned on a promise of near-universal health care, could possibly be described as evidence of a conservative country.
To be sure, it requires some creative thinking.
NBC's Tom Brokaw, for example, looked at county-by-county election results and concluded that counties carried by John McCain account for greater land mass than those carried by Barack Obama. This would be meaningful, if only fields and streams and rocks and trees were conservative voters. . . .