Top
| Introduction | p. ix |
| The Media Muzzle and the Hope-a-Dope Mantra | p. 1 |
| Will You Be My (Facebook) Friend? | p. 25 |
| The Dave Matthews Electoral Magnet-And Other Ways to Manufacture a Crowd | p. 45 |
| The Peacenik Phantom | p. 63 |
| Global-Warming Ghouls | p. 85 |
| Health-Care Hypnosis | p. 109 |
| The Economic Igor | p. 129 |
| I Want My MTV | p. 149 |
| The Dynamic Duo | p. 169 |
| Conclusion: A Six-Point Battle Plan for Awakening Obama Zombies from Their Brainless Slumber | p. 195 |
| Notes | p. 209 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 239 |
| Index | p. 243 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
1
The Media Muzzle and the Hope-a-Dope Mantra
Liberal Media? What Liberal Media? No Biased News Media Here! (Pssst . . . Vote for Obama!)
During the 2008 campaign, I saw the most honest, fair, and intrepid reporting of the candidates, especially of then-senator Barack Hussein Obama. Hard-hitting questions, engaging profiles, skeptical eyes, distrust of the politician—I saw it all.
And then, I woke up.
In the real world, no “reporting” or “investigating” occurred. Instead, journalists became fawning teenage schoolgirls licking the heels of their teen idol. Indeed, the sexual undertones (overtones?) were hardly secret. We had legions of Nina Burleighs covering Obama, zombies masquerading as reporters. I call them Nina Burleighs because Nina Burleigh was the Time contributor who said she’d be happy to give Bill Clinton a blow job for “keeping abortion legal” and “the theocracy off our backs.” Back then, journalists were even surprised by Burleigh’s comments. Sure, the press corps is overwhelmingly liberal, but few were that open about it, let alone sexual in their commentary.
How times have changed. It’s amazing the power a skinny dude with big ears and a deep voice can wield. During the primary, when on his campaign plane talking on his cell phone, Barack Obama caused a gaggle of female journalists to get funny feelings in their pants. And by funny, I don’t mean ha-ha funny. While being filmed, in the background you hear these female journalists moaning and wetting themselves over B.H.O. “Agent, sit down,” several members of the press shouted. Their view of Obama was blocked. “You’re killing us” and “Move, please move,” they snickered, all while clicking away at their cameras like adoring fans to photograph Obama spanning his left leg across a row of seats. Yes, Obama was stretching. That’s it. CNN even put the video on their website with this caption, “Obama in jeans: Sen. Barack Obama surprises the press corps by wearing jeans.”1 Luckily, Nina Burleigh was at the tarmac when the plane landed to hand out kneepads to each of the oohing and aahing “reporters.” And these are the people we’re expecting to give us balanced, fair, and straightforward coverage? Yikes! While volumes upon volumes can be filled on the press corps’s—dare I say erotic—love affair with B.H.O., the crowning moment of acknowledging the bias came out of the mouth of King Zombie himself!
During the star-studded White House Correspondents Dinner, packed with more than twenty-five hundred journalists, politicians, and celebrities, B.H.O. said this of the media: “Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table.”2
Well, you gotta give the man credit for that one; he’s right. Hey, even a broken clock is right two times a day.
Speaking to the New York Times, longtime columnist Clarence Page inadvertently confirmed the gist of B.H.O.’s joke. “With this president, they [the media] just want to be in the same room,” he gushed.3
Richard Belzer, the faux cop on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, summed up the night and the Obama presidency this way: “The difference is palpable. It just seems more glamorous. Now it’s rock-star, Kennedy elegance,” to which he added smugly, “Nothing wrong with being cool.”
Belzer and Page may have forgotten that they elected Barack Obama, not Will Smith, to lead the country. But hey, for liberals, it’s all about what you feel; facts are stubborn realities. Conservative media critic Brent Bozell summed up the news media’s infatuation by saying that their new motto should be: “B.H.O., you had us at hello.”
The cheering, fawning, slobbering, and lip-puckering had its benefits: jobs. After the election of His Holiness, more than a dozen prominent members of the media turned in their zombie media credentials for zombie White House credentials. They went to work for Barack! Yes! From reporting his campaign, to getting a biweekly check from him. These supposedly unbiased members of the media actually cashed in! Prostitutes don’t have sex for free, you know. And if you think prostitute is too strong of a word, let’s recall that the Washington Post was offering inside access to Obama officials for as much as $250,000 until the ruse was uncovered and made public.4
But don’t take my word for it. Meet a few of the prostitutes for yourself. The following reporters were rewarded with administration jobs.
Warren Bass: Washington Post Outlook deputy editor, now adviser to Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
Daren Briscoe: Newsweek Washington correspondent, now deputy associate director of public affairs for the Office of National Drug Control Policy
Jay Carney: Time magazine Washington bureau chief, now the director of communications for Vice President Joe Biden
Linda Douglass: ABC News Washington correspondent, who was a senior campaign spokesperson for the Obama campaign and is now the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services
Kate Albright-Hanna: CNN producer, transitioned to director of “new media” for the Obama campaign, and was involved in the Obama transition website
Peter Gosselin: Los Angeles Times Washington correspondent, now speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner
Sasha Johnson: CNN senior political producer, now press secretary at the Department of Transportation
Beverley Lumpkin: Justice Department correspondent for ABC News, now press secretary at the Justice Department
Roberta Baskin: a veteran of CBS News, ABC News, PBS, and ABC’s Washington affiliate, now with the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services
Vijay Ravindran: chief technology officer for Catalist, a voter database provider which worked for the Obama campaign, now chief digital officer and senior vice president of the Washington Post Company. (Notice how this prostitute went in reverse—from the Obama campaign to the media. Can someone say “George Stephanopoulos,” the Bill Clinton hack who is now host of ABC’s Sunday news show This Week?)
Rick Weiss: Washington Post science reporter, now the communications director at the White House Office of Science and Technology
Jill Zuckman: Chicago Tribune Washington correspondent, now the director of public affairs for the Department of Transportation5
Okay, so you might be thinking, “Who cares? They work for Obama. Big deal.” Well, it is a big deal. I wish it weren’t, but it is.
Let’s take Daren Briscoe as the first example. He was a Washington correspondent for Newsweek, writing extensively about the 2008 campaign. He penned one article with his colleague, a huge Obama Zombie, Richard Wolffe, on how Obama transcends race and is able to bring black and white together. It repeated the postracial narrative that Obama injected into his public persona, the narrative that the media unscrupulously ran with. The July 16, 2007, article was titled “Across the Divide: How Barack Obama is Shaking Up Old Assumptions About What It Means to be Black and White in America.”6 The puff piece, masquerading as a legit report, gave credence to the lie that Barack “Typical White Person” Obama is a bridge to white Americans, that he is above and beyond the racial grievance-mongering that has defined demagogues like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Briscoe took his cue:
Many of Obama’s supporters are enthralled by the content of his character—by his earnest desire to heal the nation’s political divisions and to restore America’s reputation in the world. Many also are excited by the color of his skin and the chance to turn the page on more than two centuries of painful racial history.7
The postracial meme certainly wasn’t carried only by Briscoe and Newsweek. Obama staked his campaign on it. Other journalists followed suit in reporting it. NPR, for instance, said the “post- racial era, as embodied by Obama, is the era where civil rights veterans of the past century are consigned to history and Americans begin to make race-free judgments on who should lead them.”8
The next up to bat is Jill Zuckman. She used to be the Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, that is, before she found her true love: working in the Obama administration.
On MSNBC News Live on July 8, 2008, host Tamron Hall discussed a TV ad by John McCain that emphasized his time as a POW, obviously noting McCain’s love for his country. Hall asked Zuckman, still a “reporter,” of course, how Obama could compete with such a powerful and moving personal biography. Her reply:
Well, look, Senator McCain’s got this great story about what he survived and what he endured and his campaign wants to tell that story as much as possible because they think that that’s something voters respect and it gives them a sense of what he’s made of. But Senator Obama’s got a great American success story, too, and it’s just a different one and I think voters are equally impressed with what he’s all about.9
Ah, yes, the story of a kid who was sired by Ph.D. parents, went to two Ivy league schools, and grossed millions in book deals is somehow comparable to the hellish brutality Senator McCain faced as a prisoner of war. Beam yourself back down to reality, Zuckman. As a “reporter,” Zuckman has referred to Obama as an “electrifying orator.”10 Shortly after McCain tapped Sarah Palin to be the vice presidential nominee, Zuckman wrote, “On the campaign trail this week for the first time without McCain, Palin’s down-to-earth persona has generated wild enthusiasm and boosted McCain in the polls. But it remains to be seen whether swing voters will interpret that persona as showing a lack of sophistication and seasoning at a time when Wall Street is in crisis and the nation is at war.”11 Earn those leftist creds, Zuckman. Suggest that Palin is an inexperienced dolt. You go girl! Why not attach your rÉsumÉ at the bottom of the article with a note that says, “Hey Plouffe, Axelrod, and Obama: If you liked this hit piece call me and we’ll do lunch and discuss my salary requirements.”
Jay Carney, formerly Time’s Washington bureau chief, now over in Joe Biden’s office, was certainly no surprise. From the time that Obama announced his candidacy, Time ran seventeen Obama cover stories, all showing glowingly iconic images, cementing his cool factor. “How Much Does Experience Matter?” was one cover story, featuring Obama. Then-senator Obama’s biggest knock against him was his age and his inexperience, especially when lined up against someone like John McCain. Time’s editors understood this shortcoming of Obama, and as a result, helped carry water on his behalf.
There’s something egglike about the concept of experience as a qualification for the highest office. At first blush, the idea appears to be something you can get your hands around. Presidential experience means a familiarity with the levers and dials of government, knowing how to cajole the Congress, understanding when to rely on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and when to call on the National Security Council—that sort of thing. But bear down even slightly, and the notion of experience is liable to crack and run all over.12
The Time correspondent then poses this question: “Was it Frank- lin Roosevelt’s experience as governor of New York that gave him the power to inspire in some of the nation’s darkest hours? Or was that gift a distillate of his dauntless battle with polio?”13
The core of it: Experience may or may not matter, but for Barack, it doesn’t matter. He’s Barack, after all.
Newsweek has had some of the most embarrassing, slobbery covers of Obama yet. That weekly definitely gets the Nina Bur- leigh award! After his victory in Iowa, Newsweek carried an iconic photo of Obama smiling with this quote from him: “Our time for change has come.” In it, the editors called Obama an “icon of hope” who won’t “kneecap” his foes. His campaign, Newsweek ogled, is “not about Red America or Blue America, but Obama’s America.”14
Other fawning cover stories on Obama included one with him stepping into what is presumably Air Force One with the caption “How to Fix the World.” Another with him praying and the caption “What He Believes.” But probably the most outrageous and the most prescient of how badly the media would be biased toward him during the presidential campaign was the December 20, 2004, Newsweek cover story with Obama: “Seeing Purple: A Rising Star Who Wants to Get Beyond Blue vs. Red.” The entire premise was built off one speech, the speech Obama gave during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Bear in mind that this speech was one giant heap of nothingness, offering little detail.
Astonishingly, many “reporters” were open about their bias. At an Obama rally, Lee Cowan, the NBC correspondent assigned to cover B.H.O. on the campaign trail, had this exchange with Brian Williams: “From a reporter’s point of view, it’s almost hard to remain objective because it’s infectious, the energy, I think. It sort of goes against your core to say that as a reporter, but the crowds have gotten so much bigger, his energy has gotten stronger. He feeds off that.”15
If that weren’t unbelievable enough, Cowan doubled down on his bro-mance, confessing to the New York Times that it’s “especially hard” for him and his colleagues “not to drink the Kool-Aid.”
“It’s so rapturous, everything around him. All these huge rallies,” he added.16
Hey, at least this dude’s honest about his love affair with Barack. I’ll give him that much. As the 2008 election demonstrated, our fearless journalists’ cup runneth over with “Kool-Aid.” In a Time cover story (yes, another one) titled “Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President,” Joe Klein described Obama as “the political equivalent of a rainbow—a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy.”17 I’m sure being compared to a rainbow was even a first for Obama. Klein’s exaltation really had no limits. In fact, B.H.O. would eliminate all discord in America, according to Klein.
There aren’t very many people—ebony, ivory or other—who have Obama’s distinctive portfolio of talents. . . . He transcends the racial divide so effortlessly that it seems reasonable to expect that he can bridge all the other divisions—and answer all the impossible questions—plaguing American public life.18
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journal- ism picked up on the bias. Before the Iowa caucus, Pew noted that Obama had gained nearly double the favorable coverage that Hillary Clinton had received, and nearly four times more favorable coverage than John McCain.19 I wonder what tipped Pew off? Perhaps the comparison of Obama to a rainbow?
In a similar study, Pew found that in the time period from the Republican National Convention to the final presidential debate, John McCain was getting pilloried by the press: negative stories outweighing positive ones by a factor of more than 3 to 1.20
Politico’s John Harris was asked on CNN whether he thought journalists were, in fact, rooting for Obama. Harris said yes, relaying this monumental gem from his days at the Washington Post: “a couple years ago, you would send a reporter out with Obama, and it was like they needed to go through detox when they came back—‘Oh, he’s so impressive, he’s so charismatic,’ and we’re kind of like, ‘Down, boy.’ ”
It turns out “reporters” at the Washington Post never did get those detox sessions. On Christmas Day of 2008, the paper ran a front-page story on Obama’s workout routine that highlighted his “chiseled pectorals.” I kid you not. Meet Eli Saslow:
Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, [Obama] was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.21 (Emphasis added.)
For more than thirty years now, study after study has shown that, by an overwhelming majority, the journalists we rely on to give us the news straight vote for liberal candidates.22 Even MSNBC.com noted the newsroom is filled with a bunch of lefties. The website identified 143 “journalists” at prominent news outlets across the country who made political contributions during the previous two presidential campaign cycles. Of them, 125 “gave to Democrats” and other “liberal causes,” while only “16 gave to Republicans.”23 Liberals are indeed covering liberals.
IN ADDITION TO devouring B.H.O.’s talking points like manna from heaven, the lapdogs in the press felt it was their duty to protect Obama’s fanciful image. During the primaries, all the big three networks covered Obama marking the forty-second anniversary of the 1965 Bloody Sunday march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama, Jr. was born,”24 Barack recounted. “This is the site of my conception. I am the fruits of your labor. I am the offspring of the movement. When people ask me if I’ve been to Selma before, I tell them I’m coming home.”25
There’s one problem with Obama’s claim: It was total bunk. He was actually born three years prior to the march. No worries for him, though. The media cleaned up the mess. CBS’s Gloria Borger acknowledged that Obama was born three years earlier but, “Even so, [Obama] says, he’s still the product of Selma.”26 Oh come on, Gloria! Obama can’t even tell the truth about his own birth, and all you can do is make excuses for him? ABC and NBC ignored the gaffe altogether.27
CHRIS MATTHEWS, WHO may be the mother of all zombies, is an anchor at the faux news network MSNBC. In an interview with the New York Observer, Chris Matthews compared B.H.O. to . . . the New Testament!
“I’ve been following politics since I was about five,” said Matthews. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising.”
It gets better (worse). Matthews even compared Obama to . . . Mozart!
I really think there’s a Salieri-Mozart thing going on here. . . . Salieri was the court composer who did everything right. He was impressive. Along comes Mozart. And everybody couldn’t get the music out of their heads. Hillary is really good at doing what she is supposed to do. She’s impressive. He’s inspirational. That’s the difference. One’s the court composer. And one is the genius. There’s something he does. I don’t know what. Oprah said it. It’s not that he’s black. It’s that he’s brilliant.28
Matthews himself embodies the revolving door of the news media and liberal circles, having worked for Jimmy Carter and Democrat Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill.
Did I say that Matthews takes home the prize for the mother of all Zombies? Well, I may have spoken too soon. Martin Snapp of the Contra Costa Times, located near San Francisco, may give Matthews a run for his money. Snapp compared Obama to Moses, King David, and the Jedi warrior Luke Skywalker. And as if that weren’t bad enough, Snapp writes that Obama’s biggest draw among supporters is that “they love him because he’s taught them to love themselves—specifically, that part of themselves that is responding to the better angels of their nature.”29
Do you think I’m kidding about erotic coverage? One contributor to the Huffington Post postured that Hope and Change stimulated a new generation of lovemaking! Yes! As the writer exclaimed, “Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino . . . couples all over America are making love again and shouting ‘yes we can’ as they climax!”30
One young Obama supporter named Noah Norman, a twenty-five-year-old tech consultant, captured the liberal media’s irrational exuberance for Obama when he candidly told the Washington Post, “Obama has this almost irrational following and I myself can’t sometimes explain why I’m supporting him. He’s all things to all men. At least that’s how I put it.”31
Did the fawning dry up once Obama got elected? Yeah right. I bring to you this gem, courtesy of Politico:
During his first 100 days as president of the United States, Barack Obama revealed how different he is from all the white men who preceded him in the Oval Office, and the differences run deeper—in substance and style—than the color of his skin. Barack Hussein Obama is the nation’s first hip president.32
And why is B.H.O. our first “hip” president? “See the body language, the expressions, the clothes. He’s got attitude, rhythm, a sense of humor, contemporary tastes,” blathered Politico.
The message was that if you were not down with Barack, it meant “you were not hip—you were square.” Exactly the point. It’s about image and not ideas. And if not being down with Obama’s socialist power grab is “uncool,” well then, I will settle for that label.
Obama is apparently so hip that some Zombies have coined the term Baracking, and even embrace each other by saying “What’s up, my Obama?” Instead of “God bless you” or “Gesundheit” after a sneeze, the Zombie, er, hip, response is now “Barack you.” No joke, people!
Got beef with your people? Well, “Barack’s in the White House” now means “Show some respect.”33
Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, approves of the new Obama lingo. She told Politico it’s “the most emblematic, positive thing that kids could say. It’s connecting them to him, saying that there’s something special in the connection between them.”34
When I think of terms of endearment, “What’s up, my Obama?” doesn’t come to mind. It sounds cultlike and creepy.
In promoting Obama’s “hipness,” CNN may have had one of its more embarrassing segments to date. To mark his first hundred days in office, the network’s T. J. Holmes and Kyra Phillips had an entire segment “assessing” Obama’s “swagga.”35 Seriously! Kyra enters the segment with Jay-Z’s “Swagga Like Us” hip-hop song in the background, chuckling that the “white” cameraman is “trying to swagga” with the camera. After that, she wants to make it clear to the CNN audience that “swagga” is different from “swagger” (it’s “swagger” with “a lot bit more flava”). Kyra then goes on to introduce the “swagga guru,” her fellow anchor T. J. Holmes, a black male who has just concluded a panel discussion with black men to celebrate their perception of Obama as another “brotha” who has “swagga.”
Kyra has this unbelievable exchange with T.J. And remember, this segment is meant to fit into the meme of Obama’s first hundred days in office.
Kyra: “So bottom line, every white president has had absolutely no swagga. Is that what you’re saying? They’re stuffy, uptight presidents.” She laughs, as this is all a big game.
The resident black man, swagga guru T.J.: “Some would say that . . . and maybe it’s not one of these things you’re supposed to say, but you can go to Billy D. Williams to Shaft to whomever you want to talk about, there’s just a bit of a swagga sometimes that people associate with black men.” Swagga guru T.J.’s proof of Obama’s swagga? “He sits courtside at basketball games; he goes out on the town; he goes out to nice dinners; he’s not scared to be this young, hip guy.”36
Kyra finishes off the segment by giving T.J. a fist bump. How “down” you are, Kyra. Holla!
But Obama’s connection to reporters hits much closer to home. David Axelrod, B.H.O.’s chief political strategist, was himself a Chicago Tribune reporter before he segued into political consulting. His clients have ranged from the Clintons, to liberal U.S. senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, to John “I may or may not be yo’ baby daddy” Edwards, to Obama’s current chief of staff, Rahm “Ballet Dancer” Emanuel (Rahmbo used to be a ballet dancer . . . Kid you not . . . Google it). David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, was also an embedded Democrat operative since his college days, having worked his way from Congressman Dick Gephardt’s staff to Axelrod’s Astroturf (artificial gassroots) operation, AKPD Message and Media. This gang knows politics, that’s for sure. But they don’t represent change. The mainstream media embarrassed themselves, prostituting their journalism and surrendering their professionalism to cozy up to the “cool campaign.”
But those who saw Obama close-up in Chicago knew that he came from a thugocracy and was no reformer. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass, a straight-shooting newspaper writer and an expert on Chicago’s political machine, had this to say: “Why is Obama allowed to campaign as a reformer, virtually unchallenged by the media, though he’s a product of Chicago politics and has never condemned the wholesale political corruption in his home town the way he condemns those darn Washington lobbyists?”37
Kass pointed out that B.H.O. backed Mayor Richard Daley, Jr., and the thoroughly corrupt Chicago machine, never making “waves,” so that he was in a position to move up the political ladder. That ladder was mounted by Illinois state Senate president Emil Jones. Just so you’re aware, the Associated Press described Jones as Obama’s political “Godfather” and as an “old-school politician” who “has relatives on the state payroll, steers state grants to favorite organizations and uses his clout to punish enemies and bury GOP legislation.”38
B.H.O. was anything but a reformer, even though the media carried that narrative for him to high heaven. In fact, some of B.H.O.’s colleagues in Illinois were pissed that Obama was allowed to take credit for nearly every high-profile piece of “reform” legislation even though he would have very little to do with it. In Chicago, such action was called “bill jacking.”39 One colleague described “bill jacking” as carrying “the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.”40 Obama was the halfback.
B.H.O., you may have figured out, was allowed to bill-jack because he needed a record to run on for the United States Senate. Sounds like Obama learned under quite the reformers, eh?
And in regard to his running for president, how can we forget Obama promising to accept public financing of the campaign, then reneging on that promise because he said the financing system was broken. Make that before Obama’s campaign realized they could rake in historic levels of financing, he was all about aggressively pursuing “an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Not so much when he opted out.
The point is that Obama is not a man of integrity; he’s a man of callousness and calculation; he and his advisers are ruthlessly savvy in getting what they want, and the mainstream media went right along like the prostitutes they are. Not only was and is Obama a doctrinaire liberal, but he’s prone to mind-blowing lies and deception. The media gave Obama a pass. And they continue to do so.
At an online forum on health care, Obama said this: “There’s something about August going into September where everyone in Washington gets all ‘wee-weed’ up.” And he used wee-weed up the same way you might say you “tinkled” the bed as a toddler. While Obama instantly became the butt of jokes within the blogosphere, Katie Couric took a different approach: a defense of the phrase wee-weed up!
The aging CBS anchorwoman did a segment on “neology,” which, as she defined it, is the invention of a word, or breathing new life into an old one. She then went on to give a history of presidents who’ve coined new terms, including Teddy Roosevelt’s lunatic fringe and George W. Bush’s misunderestimate. Barack Obama, she noted, introduced Americans to wee-weed up. Couric wondered if the phrase would make it into pop culture and the dictionary, as past presidents were “proud” neologists.41 You know it: Couric gets the Nina Burleigh award as well!
Or what about Obama’s increasing power grab on private capital? Americans are voicing frustration and alarm as he hits us with record deficits and national debt, car company takeovers, and liberal, big-government forays into health care, the economy, and the environment. Americans want to be left alone, with Uncle Sam out of their wallets. Conservatives have accurately pointed out that the Messiah’s policies toward nationalization are socialist. Heck, his key influences were committed and outspoken socialists. But did you know that, according to MSNBC, when conservatives call Obama a socialist, what they’re really doing is calling him the n-word? If you didn’t know that, have no fear, because MSNBC’s Carlos Watson is here! He can find a racial epithet in an empty room. Here’s good ol’ Carlos doing the tired ol’ race-baiting two-step:
Today I want to talk about a word that we’re hearing more and more, and that’s the word socialist. You hear it from a lot of conservatives these days, that’s usually critiquing the President, or more broadly Democrats. And while that’s certainly a legitimate critique, there certainly is an ideology that can and should be critiqued at certain times, it also sometimes is just a kind of a generic conservative bludgeoning tool. And that’s all right, too, because you hear it on the Democratic side as well: rightwingnut, what have you. But what concerns me is when in some of those town hall meetings including the one that we saw in Missouri recently where there were jokes made about lynching, etc., you start to wonder whether in fact the word socialist is becoming a code word, whether or not socialist is becoming the new n-word for frankly for some angry upset birthers and others.42
Actually, Carlos, calling Obama the n-word would be like calling him . . . well, the n-word! Labeling someone a socialist, especially when all races and creeds are out protesting Obama’s agenda, is obviously not racist. But MSNBC is in a league all its own. And the White House acknowledges that. One cabinet official actually stated publicly that “at the White House, as we always like to say, we love MSNBC.” As one blogger put it, what kind of thrill would this give Chris Matthews?43 I’d say a big one, of the wee-weed up variety.
It comes down to the members of the “mainstream,” or as talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh calls them “drive-by” media, are nothing more than a bunch of beta male types slobbering over Obama and refraining from asking probing questions of his administration; they’re more likely to ask about his adjustment to the White House than about any of the scandals and contradictions of his administration. These members of the media are the Screeches of Saved by the Bell, the Carlton Bankses of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. They were the dorks who got picked on in high school but who now relish their roles of importance. And even though they still can’t land the prom queen, they’ve substituted their affection for Barack Hussein Obama. When they watch Napoleon Dynamite, they see themselves.
The media, though, have outgrown the traditional outlets. Besides the big three networks, which are becoming more and more unimportant (thank goodness), there’s talk radio, the blogosphere, and cable news. Yet there’s also a part of the news media that has a huge effect on liberal coffers: Google. The Internet search engine giant is a household name, quickly morphing into everyone’s favorite verb . . . Who did you google today? But it was also a high-stakes player in electing Obama. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Google contributed more than $800,000 to Obama’s presidential bid.44 To be clear, Google as a company did not give to Obama, but employees and family members of employees “bundled” money together. In fact, Google was the fifth-largest industry campaign contributor to Obama, out of the twenty largest. Dwarfing Google was the University of California college system, Goldman Sachs (yes, the large bankers on Wall Street that Obama decried!), Harvard, and Microsoft, another tech-savvy giant. Google also gave more than $200,000 to the Democratic National Committee.45
In fact, Google affected the election with more than just cash. Its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, went out on Obama’s campaign trail, stumping for the One just shortly before the election. It was a natural progression for Schmidt, since he was serving as an unpaid adviser to Obama. Besides technology (obviously), one of Schmidt’s core stump issues for Obama was “clean energy.” As you’ll see later on in the book, clean energy is just another one of the left’s euphemisms for seizing private capital and rationing energy. Schmidt, specifically, has proposed “cutting oil use for cars by 40 percent” within the next twenty years. He thinks that the transition away from oil would cost “trillions of dollars” but would save money in the long run, with an annual cost less than “the $700 billion offered to” Wall Street.46
“Clean” is the new “red.” Schmidt was the perfect Zombie, paying lip service to the greatness of the free market but really pushing for more government expansion and more government control. After the election, Schmidt spoke at the left-wing New America Foundation and called for a fusion between socialism and capitalism. “The right answer is a balance between these,” he said. “The objective is to win as a country.”47 The Google leader was one of Obama’s “advisers” helping him to sell the “stimulus” package that turned out to be an absolute disaster. Schmidt oversees the Internet giant, but he’s a run-of-the-mill liberal, believing, as does Obama, that we can spend our way into prosperity. “Businesses, by law, have to serve their shareholders,” he explained at the conference. “They’re not going to invest in R&D. . . . It takes government policy.” He, like every other left-wing special interest group out there, came begging like a pauper for your money. Schmidt acknowledged he is also “a big fan” of alternative energy subsidies and “startups with funny names” financed by . . . Uncle Sam.48
Continuing his voyage into loony-liberal land, Schmidt advised Obama to pay bonuses to auto companies that go beyond the current CAFE fuel-efficiency standards—with your money, of course!49 Um, earth to Schmidt: Consumer demand and not Washington bureaucrats should determine the types of vehicles that are offered. This guy is straight-up Obama Zombie.
Like the media, Google had its own revolving door to the Obama administration. Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s director of global public policy (otherwise known as the “head” lobbyist), and Katie Jacobs Stanton, Google’s business development executive, were both tapped to work for Obama, McLaughlin as the deputy chief technology officer and Stanton the new director of citizen participation.
The website Gawker described Obama’s incestuous relationship with the Silicon Valley behemoth this way:
It’s Google’s presidency. We’re just watching it. Six Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt and cofounder Larry Page, have donated $25,000 apiece to fund President Barack Obama’s swearing-in party. Taken as a whole, the Googlers’ cash is one of the largest corporate donations to Obama’s inaugural committee.50
Now on to Google’s cousin, Apple. Even though Apple and Google are competitors, that didn’t stop them from teaming up to design Gmail and Google Maps for Apple’s iPhone. As one tech website observed, “The iPhone drives a lot of traffic to Google, which dominates Internet search and advertising.”51 Google is the Internet titan, while Apple is the computer titan. And like Google, Apple is run by liberals. Steve Jobs is a big left-wing donor. His employees follow in his footsteps; Obama swept in six times more in campaign contributions from Apple workers than did McCain.52 In fact, the average across the twenty largest Silicon Valley companies is five times in favor of Obama! So much about liberals being for the little guy, eh?
But the left-wing activism continues.
Both Google and Apple share a senior adviser of sorts: Al Gore. Gore is a member of the board of directors of Apple Inc. and is also a senior adviser to Google, a good indicator that Google and Apple are open to environmental alarmism and liberal policies in general. It should be no surprise that Schmidt is flacking for Obama when his own senior adviser is Al Gore.
Google and Apple are overflowing moneymakers. In 2008, Google generated $4.2 billion in net profits, while Apple posted a net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion at the end of the same year. Can someone say “capitalist cows”? And the big winner is, of course, liberals.
Bottom line: Google and Apple are liberal media titans. Ironically, both Apple and Google make good products, and unlike liberal policies, they actually create jobs. But they are liberals nonetheless and have aligned with a liberal president. Liberals before business, I guess. They are part of the Obama-biased media, the sleek, beta-male crowd that could never land girls in college but now have enough money to pay for all the high-priced journalist prostitutes they want.
YOUNG PEOPLE ARE consumers of information. They’re not always up to speed on the activist nature of the media—old or new. They have better things to worry about, such as school and family. Unfortunately, that means they have a big red zombie target on their foreheads. During the 2008 election, World News Tonight anchor Charlie Gibson asked his colleague George Stephanopoulos, “How do you run against hope?”53 With a compliant, fawning, and sycophantic press corps. That’s how, Charlie.
© 2010 Jason Mattera
Need Help? Copyright © 1999-2026
