By Jeffrey Lord on 10.2.12 @ 6:08AM
Media Research Center 25th Gala a graphic reminder: media bias to cast Romney as loser.
Why bother?
Forget all the fuss and feathers.
Tomorrow night's presidential debate between President Obama and Governor Romney has already been settled.
Obama wins. Romney loses. Case closed.
One had only to attend another recent event to know this.
That event was the Media Research Center's 25th Anniversary Gala. Held last week in Washington to celebrate Brent Bozell's ingenious idea-turned-reality to document liberal media bias in the glossy chapter-by-chapter, newscast-by-newscast way in which it actually unfolds in real time. The evening, attended by almost a thousand, was a glittery affair populated by conservatives in and out of the New Media, a considerable tribute to Mr. Bozell. The Master of Ceremonies was talk radio's Chris Plante of Washington's WMAL. The evening's presenters were talk radio and Fox star Laura Ingraham, the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, and National Review's Jonah Goldberg, with a presentation by columnist Cal Thomas. The crowd feasted on a complete menu that ranged from good food to an uproarious collection of biased liberal media video clips that, well aside from their always unintentional hilarity, were stunning in their reality.
While the subject of the presidential debates never came up -- those video clips made plain what the outcome of the presidential debates will be.
If Mitt Romney turned in the best debate performance since Lincoln took Douglas, Kennedy clobbered Nixon, or Reagan trounced Carter, it would not matter. If Barack Obama forgot not only the size of the debt (as he did on the David Letterman show), but admitted that, well, yes, he knew the attacks in Benghazi were coming about six months earlier but had a golf game scheduled and forgot to warn anybody -- it would not matter.
No matter what happens tomorrow night -- Barack Obama will be declared the winner of not only this debate but the two that follow. Not to mention that the gaffe-prone Joe Biden will suddenly be recast as experienced, seasoned, and don't forget compassionate when he puts that young whipper-snapper Paul Ryan in his place.
If you had any doubt as to what a set up the media coverage of these debates will be, let's go through some of the clips presented at the MRC dinner. Clip after clip that showed in vivid living color exactly how the "mainstream media" plays the game -- and will play the game in covering the debates.
The clips were presented in a series of Oscar-style "awards" with the various presenters -- Ingraham, Hayes, and Goldberg -- opening the envelope announcing the winner after each set of clips were played.
The judges were an All-Star team of conservatives (listed alphabetically): Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Lou Dobbs, Erick Erickson, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, David Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh, Al Regnery, Cal Thomas, Walter E. Williams and Thomas S. Winter.
The first award, presented by radio talker and O'Reilly substitute Laura Ingraham, was the, um, well, "Obamagasm Award." The nominees were NBC's Chris Matthews, ABC's Diane Sawyer, and CNN's Piers Morgan. (Note: links to all the nominated video clips are provided here courtesy the MRC.)
Now let's be real.
What chance does Mitt Romney have for objective analysis from the winner of this award -- NBC's Chris Matthews? Matthews won the "Obamagasm" award over Sawyer and Morgan for this wonderful example of objective journalism in discussing Obama.
"This guy's done everything right. He's raised his family right. He's fought his way all the way to the top of the Harvard Law Review, in a blind test becomes head of the Review, the top editor there. Everything he's done is clean as a whistle. He's never not only broken any law, he's never done anything wrong. He's the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect American. And all they do is trash the guy."
Matthews, by the way, was already famously on record as saying:
"I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."
But not to be left out were CNN's Morgan and ABC's Sawyer.
Here's Morgan on Obama to Obama aide David Axelrod from Morgan's December 5, 2011 CNN show:
"When you watch the President like that, I always feel he's got so many pluses, doesn't he? In a sense, he's personable, he's handsome, he can be funny. You know, abroad he has this great image for America. A lot of things are just perfect about Barack Obama."
And here's ABC's Sawyer on October 10, 20122 waxing enthusiastic about the Obama-endorsed Occupy Wall Street movement:
"We thought we'd bring you up to date on those protesters, the Occupy Wall Street movement. As of tonight, it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries -- every continent but Antarctica."
Get that? The Occupy Wall Street movement is so fabulous it has spread to 1,000 countries around the world! Wow! Incredible! Particularly considering that -- taking into account the usual wars and border disputes -- there are only about 190-250 countries on all of Planet Earth, give or take.
Also, take note of the 2009 video collection found on the above link, with various reporters waxing on enthusiastically about everything from the socialism of the Soviet Union (from a Ted Turner special on TBS before the Evil Empire was tipped into the abyss by Ronald Reagan) to Cuba's Castro to Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. The gushing over both Clintons. Nancy Pelosi. And the must see of media figures comparing Obama to the "messiah" and -- yes indeed -- God.
Really.
There's more.
Next up was the cheeky "Vast Right-Wing Knuckle-Draggers Award" (linked here).
The three nominees were selected based on the degree of contempt these media pooh-bahs expressed on-air for conservatives.
The winner was NBC's daytime anchor Thomas Roberts for this gem on September 23, 2011. What was Roberts discussing when he said what follows about -- that's right -- the previous night's debate featuring the various Republican presidential candidates, Mitt Romney prominently included? Here's how Roberts did his bit:
"I get out of all of these things that many of these candidates would rather take legislation to build a time machine and go back in time to where we had, you know, no women voting, slavery was cool. I mean, it's just kind of ridiculous."
Got that? Quite aside from the simple fact that it was all those white liberals who supported slavery, that making sure women had the right to vote was a cornerstone of the Republican Party, and that in fact it was liberal Democrat Woodrow Wilson who resisted women's suffrage (here being picketed by suffragettes outside the White House, getting with the program only after he felt he was getting bad PR), the ridiculous Mr. Roberts seems to have zero knowledge of American history.
Does anyone really think Roberts will be fair to Mitt Romney?
Not to mention the other two nominees for this award. The first being former CNN'er Bob Franken, now transplanted to an NBC show to say this:
"These seem to be appeals to the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. That is to say that there continues to be among many conservatives a real resentment against blacks.… I think it is part of a hateful campaign that is being very methodically run in the hope it's going to appeal to voters who would love to see us return to the good old days of Jim Crow."
Franken is a smart guy. Does he really not know that Democrats were the Party of Jim Crow -- and that it was the GOP that consistently opposed segregation? Yes, he surely does. But hey… who cares about the facts?
Number three in this category was our old friend Chris Matthews, losing out to Roberts but still declaiming last November:
"The utter confusion in the Republican presidential nominating process results from two discernible facts. One: they hate. That's the simplest explanation of the disastrous course of this selection process. They hate so much they are not in the mood to fall in love with a candidate or even fall in behind someone. Their brains, racked as they are by hatred, they lack the 'like' mode. They are in no mood to go around looking a politician they like. The hating is so much more satisfying."
This Matthews gem was one more contribution to the gales of laughter that swept the dinner last week. Here are television personalities who are so unbelievably caught up in sheer hatred, not to mention racism (remember those Al Sharpton rants about the "n…." this and that, along with his graphic, televised "punk faggot" gay bashing moment?) that it becomes crystal clear they are engaged in a vast game of what psychoanalytic theory refers to as "projection." Specifically defined here:
In Psychoanalytic Theory, the defense mechanism whereby we transfer or project our feelings about one person onto another.
Which is to say, being on the side of a political philosophy that literally enslaved blacks and had to be shamed into giving women the right to vote, these media personalities deal with the issue by ascribing what their side did to others. This is the reason the Media Research Center is so valuable -- it catches liberal media types in these out and out lies, and puts the video evidence out there for all to see… and remember. It creates a video record, a library that among other things has documented over time just why it is places like CNN and MSNBC have long been sucking ratings-wind.
Again. Does anyone seriously think Governor Romney will get a fair shake from the media based on these "did he/she really just say that?!!!" moments of undisguised hostility captured on tape?
Please.
The MRC's next award was the "Damn Those Conservatives to Hell" award. The three nominees were Howard Fineman, Piers Morgan, and Ann Curry.
Here's Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post (and formerly of Newsweek, the once powerful magazine whose liberalism had so damaged the magazine's circulation it sold not long ago for a dollar) on NBC just this past July discussing Mitt Romney:
"He [Mitt Romney] is playing to -- and has from the beginning of the campaign -- played to the kind of nativist base of the Tea Party. And by nativist, I mean people who are, in essence, afraid of the world.… The Republican Party is going to cripple itself beyond recognition if they don't quit being xenophobes."
Ahhhhhhhh yes. Mitt Romney the panderer to xenophobes. Coming from Fineman, an advocate for a political party that stays alive by playing the race card from slavery to illegal immigration and once foamed about legal Chinese immigration ("servile races" was the Democrats' reference to Chinese and Mongolian immigrants), that's quite an interesting statement.
So too this from Piers Morgan, who went after Rush Limbaugh over Sandra Fluke in this fashion:
"Limbaugh's disgusting comments are the work of an archaic old dinosaur living in a warped, ugly swamp, who thinks it's okay to degrade decent young women for sport and ratings. Well, it isn't. Shame on you, Rush Limbaugh."
But wait! Once again the MRC was on the job. Here's Brent Bozell directly calling Morgan out in a letter to the CNN host noting that Morgan mysteriously didn't have the same standards for Bill Maher's tirades using the "C-word" about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin or when Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a "slut."
Morgan looked the fool.
The winner of the "Damn Those Conservatives to Hell Award," however, was NBC's then-Today host Ann Curry. In yet another example of "unbiased" journalism, here's Ms. Curry opening an "interview" with Congressman Paul Ryan -- way back in April -- which is to say before Ryan was picked as Romney's running mate:
"The Center of [sic] Budget and Policy Priorities says, you're smiling because you know about this, says 62 percent of the savings in your budget would come from cutting programs for the poor, that between eight and ten million people would be kicked off of food stamps, that you would cut Medicare by $200 billion, Medicaid and other health programs by something like $770 billion. Where is the empathy in this budget?... Do you acknowledge that poor people will suffer under this budget, that you have shown a lack of empathy to poor people in this budget?"
Right.
Be sure to take a good look at some of the other videos of the American "unbiased media" on these clips. From one "mainstream" network to the next there is a symphony of hate, disdain, racism, and more flowing from network anchors and correspondents past and present. They have not the slightest pretense to fairness, to balance, to evenhandedness.
They are, in the vernacular, "in the tank."
And Governor Romney is seriously thought to have a chance in these upcoming debates?
There's a joke out there about a man visiting a zoo and seeing a child stick her head between the bars of the lion cage to see the lions. A lion pounces, the child is caught as her terrified parents scream. The man leaps into action, pounds the lion on the nose and pries the girl free unharmed. A reporter witnesses the whole incident, interviews the man, and the next day the local paper runs a front page story headlined:
Bigot Assaults African Immigrant, Steals His Lunch.
Which is another way of saying, the media coverage of the 2012 campaign is a joke.
To drive home the point the other night, the last award was "The Worst Reporter in the History of Man." The nominees were ex-CBS anchorman Dan Rather, ex-Today host Bryant Gumbel, current NBC anchor Brian Williams, and the perky Katie Couric, once of both NBC and CBS, where she co-anchored respectively the Today show and sat in Dan Rather's old seat as the anchor of The CBS Evening News.
It was a tough competition -- and this award was voted on by the MRC audience. Gumbel's liberal propaganda was hysterical to watch. After repeatedly attacking Ronald Reagan, dismissing the allegations of sexual harassment against Bill Clinton (it would be hard, said Bryant, to determine exactly who was really being harassed -- the women or Clinton), and lauding Jimmy Carter, Gumbel sat straight-faced and told the late Tim Russert of NBC that gee… why… no… of course he never let his bias show on the air!!! The MRC audience roared with laughter. But alas, even Gumbel's liberal media shenanigans couldn't catch up to the other two.
Dan Rather made it to the run-off based surely on his "news" story about those documents that "proved" George W. Bush had played fast and loose with his service in the Texas National Guard. The documents, recall, were ID'd as phonies… computer generated in an age when computers did not exist. Rather lost his job at CBS, sued CBS for $70 million, and lost.
Williams is shown gushing -- absolutely gushing -- over Bill Clinton. Then playing the sycophant to Barack Obama. One wonders how Williams can look himself in the mirror with on-camera performances like this.
But the winner by popular acclaim was Couric. (All the collected videos of Gumbel, Rather and Couric can be found here). There is our Katie gushing over Al Gore as a "movie star" and pounding President Obama with such hardball questions as -- really -- this:
"You're so confident Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say 'damn, this is hard'?"
The only possible reaction to this kind of "journalism" was sheer, hysterical laughter. The audience howled. Katie won the nod as the "Worst Reporter in the History of Man."
So.
What more is there to say?
There they were, the liberal media captured in all their glory. The stars past and present. The well-paid from ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN whose multi-million dollar salaries make them the certain 1%. (No Occupy Wall Streeters protesting them, are there? How strange.) All captured in vivid living color doing their damndest to indoctrinate the other 99% with liberal dogma.
All of which proves one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The moment the debate concludes this week, Governor Romney will still be on-stage shaking the President's hand when the liberal media will be pronouncing him the loser.
Which leads to the obvious question.
Why have these debates anymore in the first place?
The media deck, as they say, is stacked.
No thrills will run up Chris Matthews' leg as he listens to Mitt Romney. If Brian Williams discusses a Time magazine cover on Mitt Romney it will be about the current Time cover that portrays Romney as some sort of stern religious nut, not the glowing, smiling portrait of Obama on a Time cover that Williams lovingly showed to Obama back in 2008. There will be no report from Ann Curry asking why Obama is plunging the nation into a death-spiral of debt. There will be no Piers Morgan reports about how handsome and personable is Mitt Romney.
Are you kidding?
The deck is stacked.
And the pro-Obama media is determined to cut the cards.
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To read another article by Jeffrey Lord, click here.
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