Targets and Temper Tantrums

By William L. Garvin

Heads up, Mitt…you’re about to be Palin-ized by the main stream media.  No matter what you say or do, you will be subjected to blatant distortions by the mainstream media propaganda arm of the Democrat party.  You undoubtedly expected the 118,775 broadcasts of negative commercials by the Obama campaign (according to the New York Times) but you probably never expected the manufactured controversies of the media.  You’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

That’s the way liberal media works because numbers are boring.  There’s forty-one straight months of unemployment over 8%; there’s four straight years of $1 trillion deficits; there’s a $16 trillion national debt; there’s record numbers of people in poverty; there’s record numbers of people on food stamps; there’s the lowest workforce participation rate in fifty years.  The GDP only grew at 1.5% last quarter, which is one-third what a healthy economy needs.  This is the slowest recovery ever yet there’s a president who thinks the private sector is “doing fine.”  He says his economic plan is working and tells private sector business that “you didn’t build that” but that’s all boring.

Instead, let’s fabricate controversy out of your use of the word “disconcerting” in reference to the London Olympics.  Let’s fabricate a controversy if you praise Israel.  Let’s fabricate suspicions about the tax returns you’ve filed with IRS.  Let’s demand every detail of every tax return even though only seventeen members of Congress released their returns to McClatchy News.  Let’s criticize your overseas investments even though it’s estimated that Nancy Pelosi made $1-4 million dollars from her Asian investments last year.  Of course she refuses to release her tax returns.  Let’s fabricate and distort your role at Bain Capital.  Let’s speculate about the role your religion will play in how you would govern but ignore the impact of Reverend Wright and Black Liberation theology.  Let’s fully explore your every childhood prank but ignore the President’s two years of high school as a self-professed “stoner.”

Truth will not matter.  Facts will not matter.  It’s true that the traffic patterns and security concerns in London resulted in monumental traffic jams.  It’s a fact that British airport workers were talking about going on strike during the Olympics.  It’s true that the government had to activate thousands of military personnel because private security was inadequate.  A rational person might just think that would be “disconcerting” and “wonder how it will play out.”  If you’re the anti-Obama, that will be enough to turn the stiff upper lip of the Brits into pouting petulance and political tantrums.  It spontaneously combusts the vulture media into a frothing frenzy.  However, in a rare moment of lucidity for MSNBC, their resident Brit, Piers Morgan, admitted that there was “nothing factually inaccurate” about what you said.

If you subsequently praise an ally such as Israel by pointing out that their per capita GDP is higher than surrounding countries, expect to be skewered and Chick-fil-A’d.  If you praise Israel’s entrepreneurial and start up ingenuity, expect it to be linked to your insensitivity to Palestinians.  Of course the President’s State Department can say that the status of Jerusalem is “subject to negotiations” and the President’s press secretary can refuse to state that Jerusalem is the capital and holiest city in Judaism but that’s not being insensitive to Israelis.

When you’re a media creation, you can give away billions of dollars in taxpayer money to your campaign donors and their green energy companies while the media refuses to cover or investigate.  You can watch them dole out huge bonuses to corporate cronies just before they declare bankruptcy.  If you’re a Democrat, you can say there’s a language called “Austrian.”  You can refuse to release college or health records.  You can take “poetic license” with your autobiography.  You can say there’s a Mexican holiday called “Cinco de Quatro.”  You can say there are fifty-seven states.  You can repeatedly say the military has a position known as “corpse-man.”  None of these gaffes will be conspicuously noted in order to perpetuate the contrived “brilliant intellectual” media myth.  You, however, Governor Romney, will find every word you utter distorted, disparaged and distributed in prime time but the apologies (if they exist) will be late night on the weekend.  All the charges will be in bold headlines on the front page but the acquittals and exonerations will be in fine print on the back page.  You will be Palin-ized!