Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Rush Limbaugh, Valerie Plame, and the Mainstream Media

It's official, at least according to some, Rush Limbaugh has lost his mind. When the CBS Nightly News came calling and asked the Maha Rushie to do a 90 second spot under the title a "Free Speech", he accepted. HE WHAT!!! He agreed to appear on a mainstream media outlet, doesn't he know that they will savage him?
But wait a minute, CBS News attracts people like my in laws and my mother. People who are not tuned in to the "New Media", get their news from the mainstream outlets, (IE CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and CNN). Most of what they hear they believe is accurate and correct. Our parents and many older Americans are form a generation when the evening news was sacrosanct. People like Walter Cronkite were revered and trusted to deliver the news without bias. They are naturally attuned to believe what this new breed of reporters tells them. In many a discussion with my mother and others, I usually as them where they got their information and almost without fail, they tell me it was from one of the major news outlets. My point here is that Rush was allowed to present, without edit or rebuttal, the conservative point of view.
Now to the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame debacle. In any other world, anyone who had deliberately fabricated information in order to attempt a political coup on the executive branch, that person would have been prosecuted. Instead, we have a presidential aide who is attempting to fight back against charges leveled against him by a prosecutor who's investigation we now know was initiated based on complete fabrication by those who claim to have been harmed. If there was ever any doubt about liberal political methodology, this incident highlights it for what it is. In short, when you lack a cohesive ideology to rebut someone, simply attack them personally using whatever method you can. This is to the detriment of all those out there who might actually be harmed by this behaviour.
The mainstream media outlets are now and have been part and parcel to the Valerie Plame affair. They took the story, embellished and ran it until they thought they created public outcries for the removal of President Bush. Let their be no doubt that this was their ultimate goal. Perhaps they figured if they ran the polls down far enough, then President Bush would come around to their point of view. Unfortunately for them, Mr. Bush is a man of principle and stuck by his guns, underscoring the fact that he does not lead by focus groups and polls like his predecessor did. Now I am not a Bush Fan, I will say that up front, many of his policy decision sit wrong with me on a personal level. However, his two opponents would have us in a much worse situation than we are in now.

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