Death of a Meme: The Media Loves Obama

You call this an attack ad? Showing remarkable desperation considering how much time remains until the election, John McCain's campaign has assembled a three-minute video of clips that ostensibly prove the political press is "in the tank," as the saying goes, for his opponent, Barack Obama. Watch:

McCain's campaign says it will let supporters vote on the best version of the ad and then air the winner on TV. But there are so, so many reasons not to do that, starting with this one: It makes McCain look pathetic. This is why we're supposed to vote for him -- because the hated elite media loves the other guy? That's the best argument going for him?

Also: It makes McCain look jealous -- never an attractive trait. Didn't Obama teach us all that no one likes to be seen as bitter?

Also: It makes McCain look like a hypocrite. Does anyone remember McCain protesting in 2000, when he was the one benefiting from reporters' hero worship?

Or you could ignore all those reasons and scrap the ad solely based on the risible weakness of the evidence McCain's advertising gurus were able to marshal in support of their case. Let's take a look shall we?

You have Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and Democratic consultant Terry McAuliffe saying the media prefers Obama. Both men were major backers of Hillary Clinton's campaign, so their complaints can be dismissed as working the ref. What else would they say?

Then you have Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough and Lou Dobbs all making the same claim, and criticizing their fellow talking heads for their bias. All three are conservatives and thus not kindly disposed to Obama. Also, all three are members of the media themselves, so their very appearance in this video is proof that pro-Obama sentiment is not universal in the press.

Next, there is the fact that all three broadcast network anchors -- Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson -- are traveling with Obama to cover his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as The Caucus notes, it was McCain who built up the trip into a big to-do in the first place by making an issue -- in the press -- of how long it had been since Obama had been there.

You can pretty much forget about The New Republic's "Why You Love Him" cover, since TNR is a partisan magazine, and thus under no obligation to appear impartial. Its readers probably do love Obama. They're Democrats!

That leaves us, more or less, with incriminating soundbites from MSNBC's Chris Matthews and NBC's Lee Cowan. Matthews is a special case: He did seem to favor Obama over Clinton, and betrayed his feelings regularly thanks to a pathological inability to avoid voicing any thought that comes into his head.

But Matthews' "thrill up my leg" comment didn't deserve the derision it occasioned, nor did Cowan's comment that it was "hard to remain objective" about Obama. Both men were talking specifically about the experience of being in the room when Obama gives a speech. Their remarks were, in fact, objective observations about the subjective experience of being in a crowd while a world-class orator is working his mojo. They're no more proof of bias than the testimony of the many reporters who've said McCain is charming and persuasive when he's holding court on his bus.

All in all, a preposterously misguided spot.

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