www.nikitas3.com
When The New Yorker magazine recently ran a cartoon cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as radical, gun-toting Muslims who burned the American flag and revered Osama bin Laden, the Obama campaign was outraged. And while The New Yorker is fully in the can for Obama along with all of America’s leftist intelligentsia, their cover “joke” was lost on the Illinois senator, the joke being that the cartoon really was intended to poke fun at the right-wingers who apparently are hinting that Obama is nothing less than a Muslim jihadist.
But Barack Hussein Obama is being thin-skinned yet again. If a guy with that name wants to emerge from the underbrush and run for president, he’d better expect some skepticism. Americans have a healthy habit of wanting to know who they are voting for for president.
And after almost a decade of savage attacks and acid cartoons of Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc., you don’t see GWB & Co. playing victim as Obama has done on everything from Reverend Wright (quit the church) to his 1996 questionnaire answers that were perceived as anti-gun (a staffer filled it out) to any mention of his wife (she is off limits).
What nation does Obama think he lives in? Could he believe that indeed he lives in a fundamentalist dictatorship where mullah Barack is beyond reproach?
Apparently. That certainly is the way he is running his campaign.
New Yorker readers — all those wine and cheesers from Manhattan and the leftist diaspora beyond — were not too happy with the cartoon cover either, flooding the mag with phone complaints. Publisher Drew Schutte said advertisers have not been so vocal, and the question is why.
The answer is simple: Elite advertisers need to reach their wealthy leftist target audience with ads for expensive fashion and jewelry and real estate through the socialist enterprise of media in which rich people are thoroughly trashed.
Those other rich people, that is. You know… Republicans…
The New Yorker, called “among the most troubled magazines at Conde Nast” by Keith Kelly writing in The New York Post, is in big financial trouble like much of the rest of the Ancient Media, its ad revenue down 21.2 percent(!) from one year ago. With many other publications on life support, internet reading skyrocketing and conservative talk radio stronger than ever, the left certainly is reeling these days from the loss of its media monopoly.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is cutting 8% of its workforce, or 200 jobs. Dwindling advertising revenues have been cited as well as internet competition and rising newsprint costs.
The stock of USA Today is at its lowest price since 1985 after its 2nd quarter 2008 profit plunged 36% on huge drops in ad revenues. USA Today ad sales fell 27% in June alone. “The weakening economy had a dramatic impact on our results,” said CEO Craig Dubow.
Who says recessions don’t have positive side effects?
The ultra-liberal Oregonian newspaper, way out there in Portland, is closing three regional offices and merging staffs in a cost-cutting move.
Newsweek magazine, once an authentic news vehicle that has moved far left in recent years, has seen a 22% drop in ads from June 2007 to June 2008, while Time has seen a 21%. drop. US News & World Report will go biweekly in 2009 in response to a 30% drop in ads year to year.
Meanwhile, the three Ancient Media TV network anchors Gibson, Couric and Williams are accompanying Barack Obama on his trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe. After barely mentioning John McCain’s trip to Iraq in the Spring, “Dancing with the Stars” is going to take on a whole new meaning after Obama waltzes with the anchors throughout a trip that was supposed to be a fact finder, but instead is turning into yet another huge national photo-op for the Democrat nominee-in-waiting.
“It certainly hasn’t escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama’s trip,” said McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker.
Panted Jim Rutenberg of The International Herald Tribune: “The extraordinary coverage of Obama’s trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media.”
The Tribune, by the way, is The Global Edition of The New York Times, according to its masthead.
The Tyndall Report notes that the networks spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June, and just 48 on McCain.
Fairness Doctrine anyone?
“If this were John McCain’s first trip to the war zone, that would be a story and we would cover it big time,” said Paul Friedman of CBS, adding that McCain and the Republicans have made the story bigger by questioning Obama’s credentials and keeping a count of the days since his last visit to Iraq.
What does all this mean?
First, it is interesting to note that the three TV networks have about the same total discrete audience over a week – about 20 million viewers a day, mostly all repeat viewers each day – as conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who has 22 million discrete listeners per week.
Second, it is important to scrutinize what Obama is doing on his trip.
He obviously is trying to appear statesman-like for someone who is decidedly not, having established a presidential campaign committee after only 143 days in the US Senate.
He is seeking to appear engaged on the issue of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after taking the usual off-the-shelf Democrat positions and being savaged by McCain for his failure to visit.
And he is trying to deflect criticism for his reversal of position on Iraq from “troops out in 16 months” to “we’ll see what the conditions are” and back to “troops out in 16 months”. This first flip had hurt Obama among the radicals on the far left who have fueled his campaign, while the second flip came BEFORE his trip to the Middle East.
Not too bright. You would think that he would have at least waited to see the situation firsthand. But then again, Obama’s is a campaign of only political expediency.
Obama, along with his media friends, is playing a dangerous political game with our national security that should be of concern to all Americans. His foreign policy advisors include people like Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, whose lax performance and lack of vigilance during the Clinton administration led to 9/11.
Obama is calling to get troops out of Iraq and for more troops in Afghanistan, which are evolving positions for Bush, McCain and even Iraq’s al Malaki after years of managing a war that we finally are winning. Yet there does not seem to be any connection between Obama’s positions and reality. He just blurts out whatever sounds good at any given moment and then “refines” his position when the time is right.
Bush and al Maliki want to start downsizing our presence in Iraq because the war there suddenly appears won. What a difference a year makes, an improvement that Obama’s cut-and-run anti-surge posturing would never have allowed. Considering the defeatist attitudes in the media throughout the war, the drumbeat of negativity about all things military from Obama’s buddies at Newsweek, Time and The New York Times (which also is seeing major ad losses and employee downsizing), and you start to wonder: If their publications are failing, who are they to judge whether our military is succeeding or not?
On his trip, Obama will get lavish coverage, will smile a lot, will appear to be listening to the generals on the ground including Petraeus, and will return to the United States having learned little. Obama has no intention of learning from an experience like visiting Iraq. He will simply use what little he absorbs to micro-adjust his position to whatever he thinks the public mood is until election day.
On his return trip, Obama plans to stop in Europe to address (rallies?) (crowds?) (supporters?). This will be covered in depth by Ancient Media stars Couric, Gibson and Williams. The point will be to show how much Europe wants America to elect Obama in order to repair relations - as if Americans care what Euros think - and to finally see America defeated in Iraq, which is the position of all Euro-media. Unfortunately it is too late for that outcome.
The question is: Why should we listen to leftist Europe or even our own leftist media? Europe gave us communism, fascism, two world wars and certain defeat in the Cold War were it not for gun-toting thuggish America coming to the rescue in the wake of World War II. Now Europe is being undermined by Islamic fanatics.
Although scrapped, Obama’s original plan to speak at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin simply was over-the-top narcissism. In case you don’t remember, Ronald Reagan stood at the Gate and famously ordered Gorbachev “Tear down this wall!” in reference to the nearby Berlin Wall. Obama certainly planned to use the backdrop to appear Reagan-esque and to spout a few platitudes about freedom, a subject on which he certainly would have waffled in contrast to the strong and confident postures of Reagan, Pope John Paul and Margaret Thatcher.
Obama’s waltz with the media is typical of how some people still believe that the Ghosts of America Past can prop up the ghosts of the present. If only it were so. Dan Rather is disgraced and gone. Tim Russert is dead. And Katie Couric is barely hanging on to her post. NBC has lost its credibility by drifting far to the political left while The New York Times is riddled with errors and questionable reporting every day. And of course the dreary New Yorker magazine, the banal house organ of postmodernist drudgery, puts a cartoon on its cover that enrages the guy it was supposed to help.
Bright people… really bright…
The Ancient Media in America are adrift. Their world is collapsing. Yet they now are trying to prop up the Illinois senator for just a few more months until election day. Unfortunately for the elites, on issues that really matter like patriotism and military credentials, John McCain is way ahead of Obama.
The media will continue running pro-Obama polls that are tightening uncomfortably. Perhaps if they could figure out why their own publications are failing, and why their own jokes are backfiring, they could legitimately offer us a reason to vote for their guy. But there is no legitimate reason to vote Obama except for some ethereal notion of “change”, just as there no longer is a reason to purchase a skinnier and skinnier copy of Newsweek. America has broken from the Ancient Media monopoly over their decades-long manipulation of the news and their utter predictability. 50 years is enough of all that nonsense.
Please visit my website at www.nikitas3.com for more.
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