Rising Above Ceaseless Liberalism

Just say "no" to the mainstream press

by Vincent Fiore
05/01/04

For most of us, a typical day in America starts with just thumbing through the local paper.

If you’re a typical reader, the headlines are the first thing that will catch your attention. Often incomplete and purposely tantalizing, a headline is more of a shout than a story. The headlines are just for the selling of the paper, the skin if you will. The meat is inside. The “real” story, as any political devotee will tell you, is the editorial and op-ed pages.

Anyone who has ever picked up a paper in nearly any major market (think New York, California, Chicago, etc.) knows that unbridled liberalism is glorified within those pages. The “news” that these papers report upon sounds suspiciously analogous to the op-ed pages, and vice-versa. For conservatives and Republicans in general, opening the paper is the equivalent of a self-inflicted wound. We mutter under our breath, rue the source, and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we start the day off as the progressive media intended: doubtful, dejected, and thoroughly disheartened.

Not confined to the morning’s papers, liberalism pervades your television, your schools, your private institutions, your churches, your favorite sports, and yes, your AM/FM radio, all four stations worth. Having failed to pay the bills, Air America lost 33% of its new progressive empire. Al Franken and company, ever mindful of “The Mission” carry on in unrestrained righteousness.

“The Mission,” is the defeat of George W. Bush. But it is more. It is the grinding of Bush under the heel of this election year’s ceaseless liberalism. It is the complete and unsparing humiliation of a man who dared to be a conservative President. It is the media blood sport of the ages: the hunting of the President.

The hunt continued at the live Presidential press conference. Resplendent in their best hunting attire, the White House press corps hit a new high in journalistic low brow. Bush’s mini speech/news conference had careened into the genteel world of “Oprah politics.” Reporters, or the “gaggle” as they are called, presented Bush with no less than eight questions pertaining to an “apology” for 9/11, and “admitting” to any wrongs he might have done.

Now, it isn’t often that this president has live press conferences. That night’s performance by the press reminds us why. Out of the twenty questions asked of the President, five dealt with Iraq directly, seven dealt with the 9/11 commission and the August 6 “Presidential Daily Brief” memo, or PDB, and eight with the media’s demand for Presidential contrition.

There was not a single question on the economy. Think about that. An issue that only last week had the media mechanically quoting John Kerry’s campaign spokesman Phil Singer: “At a time when the country is being confronted by the rising costs of war and record budget deficits, the president is stubbornly clinging to the same failed policies that have caused the worst economy since the Great Depression.”

As it turns out, Bush did not give the media what it wanted, namely a sound bite for the Kerry campaign’s next commercial. How powerful would it have been to have this President apologizing to the nation that he was (as liberals and the mainstream media see it) asleep at the switch leading up to the country’s most horrific day? Resisting the pull of “Oprah politics,” Bush rightly refused to take blame for what was no fault of his own.

The following day, the mordantly minded media set out to give the proper response to the questions and veiled accusations of the previous night. Opening your New York Times newspaper to the editorial section, you’ve just invited one of those self-inflicted wounds I warned about earlier:

“The second issue that has overwhelmed the nation in recent days is the 9/11 investigating commission. While repeatedly expressing his grief over the deaths related to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Mr. Bush seemed to entertain no doubts about the rightness of his own behavior, no questions about whether he should have done something in response to the domestic terrorism report he received on Aug. 6, 2001. The United States has experienced so many crises since Mr. Bush took office that it sometimes feels as if the nation has embarked on one very long and painful learning curve in which every accepted truism becomes a doubt, every expectation a question mark. Only Mr. Bush somehow seems to have avoided any doubt, any change.”

But conservatives and Republicans, and even you open minded “Independents” out there already knew what was in store the minute that press conference ended, didn’t you? So why even bother to open the paper? Because we just cannot help but think that there is some semblance of honesty and integrity left among our country’s media outlets. Sorry, you stand to be disappointed, and you know better.

My advice to the GOP guy or gal out there is to just say no. No to the continuous stream of editorial beheadings in our nation’s periodicals; no to the alphabet media outlets of ABC, CBS, and NBC; no to the nightly Kerry campaign via cable from the likes of Chris Matthews and Judy Woodruff; no to the liberal “Book of the Month Club,” which presently features Watergate snoop and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack. In a week or so, Woodward’s book will mean virtually nothing.

Understand, if only, this one thing: These people that inhabit the institutions that deal directly with opinion have made up their minds a long time ago. They really think they are connecting with you. The problem is that they have no idea who you and all the other millions of mainstream Americans are. These are the elites of our society, the self-imposed colossi of intellectualism. They have no more in common with you and me than President Bush has with Usama Bin Laden.

So relax a little. The election is nearly seven months away. A lot can, and will, happen within that time. Everyone has a stake in this election, and that includes the liberal establishment. Liberalism, if anything, is blinded by its intentions. Liberals cannot defeat what they cannot possibly understand, and that is you.