Snitch of the Week: 9/2 - 9/8 (Vanity Fair)

(Limousine liberals can't complain about Bush...)

The older I get the further I get from my youthful naive affection of the NY Times.

This article from Vanity Fair (long and really worth the time) details the absolutely deplorable kid gloves the media handled Bush with in 2000 and how George Bush ended up being sold as the political equivalent of Al Gore. George Bush is not the same as Al Gore. Joey from Straight Bangin' agrees.

And these are "lefty" papers like the Washington Post and the NY Times doing this shit.

Media coverage of presidential candidates has never been more relevant as the 2008 Election swings around and hucksters like Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Giuliani, and even Hillary all step up to the plate and try to sell stories and looks instead of ideas.

• As the Daily Howler noted, MSNBC anchor Brian Williams went after Gore's clothes at least five times in one week. "Here is a guy taking off his suits.… This is the casual sweater look—what's going on here?" … "He would have been in a suit a month ago." … "He's wearing these polo shirts that don't always look natural on him." Williams's frequent guest Newsweek's Howard Fineman later chimed in: "I covered his last presidential campaign, in 1988. One day he was in the conservative blue suit, the next he was playing lumberjack at the V.F.W. hall in New Hampshire."
  
  And Gore just kept going on about issues. Alluding to five speeches he made in two months on education, crime, the economy, faith-based organizations, and cancer research, Seelye wrote, "Mr. Gore becomes almost indignant when asked if his avalanche of positions might overwhelm voters." The Washington Post's David Broder later found Gore too focused in his convention speech on what he'd do as president. "But, my, how he went on about what he wants to do as president," wrote Broder. "I almost nodded off." As for the environment, while Gore was persuaded by his consultants not to talk about it as much as he would have liked, whenever he did, many in the media ignored it or treated it as comedy. Dowd wrote in one column that "Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating." In another, referring to his consideration of putting a Webcam in the Oval Office, she wrote, "I have zero desire to see President Gore round the clock, putting comely interns to sleep with charts and lectures on gaseous reduction."
  

WOW.

Look, Gore ran a horrible campaign, I will always admit that, but the media handed Bush the presidency (that he actually lost in the popular vote) in 2000.

The media coverage had this basic theme,

"Stupid ass Gore wants to discuss issues, but I want him to charm me and be my friend. Frat-boy Bush is funny! Here take the presidency!"

That turned out well huh?!

• Maureen Dowd boiled the choice between Gore and Bush down to that between the "pious smarty-pants" and the "amiable idler," and made it perfectly clear which of the presidential candidates had a better chance of getting a date. "Al Gore is desperate to get chicks," she said in her column. "Married chicks. Single chicks. Old chicks. Young chicks. If he doesn't stop turning off women, he'll never be president."

  "I bet he is in a room somewhere right now playing Barry White CDs and struggling to get mellow," she wrote in another.

  Meanwhile, though Dowd certainly questioned Bush's intellect in some columns, she seemed to be charmed by him—one of the "bad boys," "rascals," and a "rapscallion." She shared with the world a charged moment between them. "'You're so much more mature now,' I remarked to the Texas Governor. 'So are you,' he replied saucily." And in another column: "You don't often get to see a Presidential candidate bloom right before your eyes."

Bush bloomed alright...

Vanity Fair, for calling out the myth of liberal media, Maureen Dowd and her ilk's disgraceful political coverage, you are the Snitch of the Week.