Hope you enjoyed your day off Kate. It looks like today is going to make up for it.

Of related interest, if you have time to listen, is this entertaining podcast. A mix of conspiracy theories, media bashing, and poking fun at Obama.

Kate is quite correct to point out the piece by Lorne Gunter at the National Post, regarding the blatant double standard of the the MOULDED NEWS MEDIA (thenew name for the former MSM )in the US.
Salient or crucial points heard nowhere else in Canada, regarding Obama and US media.

Sadly Canada does not have a staunch corporate conservative voice such as FOX network right here in Canada.
SDA is currently one of our best voices, and thanks to Lorne Gunter we at least get a sniff of what transpires in the US.
Perhaps Conrad Black will take up the fight back in Canada with a true conservative medium, when he wins his battle with the US legal system.

I am very surprised at LG's supposed surprise. The MSM does not deal in "balanced coverage"and hasn't for many decades. The MSM deals in leftist orthodoxy to solidify its base and full coverage of wedge issues to weaken and divide its enemies on the right. The Sarah Palin witch hunt is firstly designed to nullify a threat to leftist rule and secondly to estrange her from the "non-partisan do business with anyone" rich and wobbly "sophisticated" Republicans of the NE USA.

"rich and wobbly "sophisticated" Republicans" already have a name - RINOs. The eastern seaboard is filthy with them. Like our Progressive Conservatives - CINOs...

Regarding the American MSM, "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue." (Balzac quote, I think.)

Shameless propagandists for all things lefty and what angers me the most about the MSM is their thin-skinned self-righteous pretense at unbiased objectivity.

Lorne Gunter's opinion piece offers precisely no new insights. A simple google search quickly shows that everything he mentions borders on common knowledge. People have regularly suggested that Obama's links to Wright, Ayers and Acorn DO in fact reflect badly on him. Even arch-liberal Jon Stewart as been justly lampooning Acorn of late. But I guess we should thank Mr. Gunter for, uh, mentioning it all again.

"Lorne Gunter's opinion piece offers precisely no new insights."

Posted by: at September 18, 2009 12:59 PM

What is however truly noteworthy, that Lorne Gunter's piece even appears in Canadian newspaper.

Despite waiting for the their asteroid fate, newspapers still have some opinion shaping ability.

Lorne's piece is helpful in that regard.

The internet is not there yet.

pherzen says "Lorne Gunter's opinion piece offers precisely no new insights. A simple google search quickly shows that everything he mentions borders on common knowledge."

Well except that the big difference is in information "push" as opposed to information "pull". The so-called MSM "pushes" the type of information they select to those who aren't necessarily looking for it. Sort of the media version of Chinese water torture....or the constant propaganda regarding "global warming".

THAT is the big difference.

I agree that most US corporate media is liberal and that many outlets tend to be unfairly biased against conservative viewpoints. But that doesn't change the fact that there are and have always been alternative voices. Surely in this dawning age of the internet, individuals are free to choose the media they prefer and have no excuses when they claim to be unrepresented. I refuse to believe anything is shoved down people's throat unless they allow it. I remember well my mother counseling my father to turn the channel rather than endure perspectives that made him seethe. Turn the dial, change the channel, click to a different page. Unless of course you enjoy being riled up.

Off topic, but relevant: did you happent to catch much-vaunted journalist Wolf Blitzer on Celebrity Jeopardy last night? The man is as DUMB AS A STUMP!!!

p, that's a difference between being informed and ignorance

'What is however truly noteworthy, that Lorne Gunter's piece even appears in Canadian newspaper'.

I agree, Joe Molnar - it is truly remarkable since msm Canadian types seem to be getting even more 'thrills down their legs', for a foreign leader, than do most 'fringe media' Americans. I guess the Canadians were reliving their juvenile 'PET Daze'. I find the two 'thrillers'(Obama and PE Trudeau) remarkably similar. Both repell me.

Well, pherzen, if Mr. Gunter is merely repeating what is already known, then surely the popular press can run an occasional column on Obama and his really iffy ties to the worst sort of people. You know- for balance.

Barry wouldn't have been elected if the NYT had done to him whta they did to Sarah Palin.

But they wanted to prove their Liberal creds so badly they opted to ignore his past so they could vote for the first black POTUS.

The MSM spawned BAry, now they, like doting parents, feel they have to protect their child.

For awhile longere anyways, until Barry throws the MSM under his bus when he feels they nolonger serve his purpose. The MSM will then change their thei narrative.

Barry will be a one term blunder of a President - maybe even worse than Jimmy Carter.

Lorne Gunther is the best. He definitely stands apart, and stands tall, by consistently telling the plain, unvarnished truth. One small criticism of today's column, though: while he amply notes the "free ride" Obama's been given, and provides undeniable evidence of it, he doesn't quite spell out the exact reason for it: Obama and his defenders have been able to take enormous liberties - with the truth, with common decency - because Obama is black.

The left in effect insist that individuals always be judged by their race while they constantly accuse utterly non-racist conservatives as being immoral on the grounds of racism. In other words, if you insist on always bringing race into the equation, you're a racism-fighter, a campaigner for pure, sweet justice. If on the other hand you don't believe people should be judged on their race, you're a racist.

In the case of Obama, being black is NOT a liability but an all-powerful weapon. He has hitched a free ride in the slipstream of cultural sensitivity about race, and he's dragging the country down because of it. Don't like Obama's policies, or his anti-American, radical foundations? That's because you're a racist. Don't like his lack of qualifications, or his arrogance? It's only because you hate all black people.

Jonah Goldberg has a must-read piece, "A Tackle Box Full of Race Bait," in today's NRO. Excerpt:

"...no significant conservative politician, pundit, or intellectual has said that they object to Obama’s agenda because he’s black. Rather, they’ve said they oppose his agenda for precisely the same reasons they oppose Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s and Barney Frank’s agendas. They stand athwart Obama yelling 'Stop!' just as they did with Clinton and Democratic presidents before him.

"Magically, the alchemic powers of Obama’s black skin transmogrify the same arguments and the same rhetoric into racism."

Goldberg hits the nail on the head. It's absolutely critical that all American conservatives stop wasting time denying the charge, because it's not a charge, it's a cynically, mindfully-deployed false conviction. And the only reason the false accusation is floated constantly and reflexively only because it *works*: even Glenn Beck, a couple of days ago, spent what I thought was a little too long emotionally denying that racism was the issue for those, including himself, who oppose Obama. If a conservative is going to get choked about something, it should be over the sad state of affairs wherein utterly specious accusations are treated as proof, and those who level the charges, who mindfully LIE about it, have seized power based on this sad state of affairs.

To paraphrase a line that Kathy Shaidle and others have used, "If opposing Obama makes one a racist, then by definition we're all racists. What else you got?"

They've got NOTHING, once that's off the table.

Obama would not be President today if he wasn't black. Put differently, a white candidate with his attributes, with his attitudes and his record and his associations would never even have come close to attaining the office. Lorne Gunther's effective rhetorical questions make that entirely clear to anyone with a lick of sense.

MSM, asteroids:

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni1003243/

pherzen: "A simple google search quickly shows that everything he mentions borders on common knowledge."

So? How many Canadians are Googling the Obamessiah? Not too many.

I find that the more common reaction to Obama by many Canadians is "oooh .... ahhhh, a black president, how cool, how neat, 'wish we had a more exciting PM ..."

The "bordering on common knowledge" is the point. Obama's involvement in ACORN and other dubious organizations and individuals gets whitewashed because he's black.

How's that for irony?

K, yes I saw the video via Drudge. Wolf Blitzer couldn't spell his own name if the teleprompter broke down.
http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0909/wolf_bombs_on_jeopardy.html

Since Obama is 50% "Anglo/Saxon/Celtic", 43.75% "Arab", and 6.25 "indigenous East African" in ancestry, it seems a bit of a stretch to play the "racist" card against his critics. His physical appearance and cultural influences growing up bore no similarity at all to those Afro-American peers who can trace their origins back centuries in the USA, the West Indies, and finally to captured slaves transported from West Africa. Strange.

Not only a free ride did they give this Radical. they supplied the limo & bar.