Media

Is This a Hoax?

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The major news agencies are doing their best to find something to use to smear Gov. Palin. I think they have finally slid into that dark and moist abyss called madness.

This news article relates how some YouTube video the author came across shows Palin being blessed in her church before she tossed her hat in the ring to become Governor. A bishop visiting from Kenya asked that she be protected from witchcraft.

Okay, so what? I mean, what does this have to do with anything at all?

The reporter who wrote the story seems to think they have a major scoop, though. You see, Gov. Palin was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church when she was an infant!

I can’t make this stuff up if I tried, folks.

Shannon’s Prodigality

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I am thankful to Shannon for continuing his prodigal prodding (those words don’t work together very well, do they?) that leads us to define our own agreements with him – and sometimes disagreements.  Mine keep outgrowing the comments section, so here’s another long-winded response.  It has moved from elitism to the last discussions between Shannon & Sean.  If you want more of that, hit the key below.  If you don’t, don’t.  Reminder:  this is someone who makes her living in the nebulous (Shannon) or uncertain (Sean) realm of the liberal arts.

 

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A Parenthetical Point About The Wall Street Journal

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Shannon cites a Wall Street Journal article in one his recent posts.

I’m not sure if everyone is aware of this but the WSJ functions as two separate newspapers, an editorial page and everything else. The editorial page has its own staff, publishes libertarian/conservative opinion pieces of generally high quality, and stands out amid the leftist mediocrity of so many American editorial pages. The news pages are written by people who are not much different from New York Times reporters. So it’s not surprising, and not significant, that a hit piece about Palin would appear in the Journal’s news section. That’s just how the Journal operates. (I’ve always been curious about the social dynamics between the editorial and news staffs, but that’s another issue.)

Dual Standards

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From National Review Online:

  But recall that the public cannot get access to paperwork related to grants to distributed by then-state-legislator Barack Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren’t available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm’s clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won’t release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he’s never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor. Then there was the effort against Stanley Kurtz for his effort to examine documents relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where William Ayers hired Obama to be board chairman. Oh, and Biden has released his earmark requests for one year out of his 36 in the Senate.

The double standard in the coverage of Republicans and Democrats on the part of mainstream media just boggles the mind. 

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Another Point About The Atlantic and its Photo of McCain

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Most discussion so far has centered on the photographer. The Atlantic‘s editor says she blindsided him by tacitly going out of her way to make McCain look bad.

But The Atlantic nevertheless used one of Greenberg’s photos on its cover. It may be the least bad of the photos but it’s still, I think, an unflattering portrait. It is harshly lit and makes McCain look older and uglier than he is. The editor calls it respectful, but I don’t think that’s plausible unless you ignore the flattering portraits of Obama that are everywhere. Why not make McCain look better? They could have bought a better photo from Getty. They weren’t obliged to use Greenberg’s work. (If you are going to make a respectful portrait of an older man or a middle-aged woman, you don’t use harsh, direct light that casts shadows and accentuates skin flaws. Look at the diffuse light in the photo of Greenberg on this page. That’s the kind of light she should have used on McCain. The Atlantic‘s staff know this stuff.)

It looks to me like the magazine wanted to denigrate McCain in a way that was subtle enough to be deniable.

UPDATE: Neptunus Lex posts The Atlantic‘s Obama and McCain covers side by side.