Hey, listen, if you are a member of the elite media, like you are Chuck Todd or Bob Schieffer or Jake Tapper or George Will, please take a moment to pop over to Memeorandum and check out the reaction of various media outlets to the Anthony Weiner scandal. Now, after you’ve done that, I want you to come back here and answer me this: why didn’t you assholes treat David Vitter or, especially, John Ensign this way?
Why did David Vitter have an easy time getting reelected without having to listen to you guys question his morals 24 hours a day? And why wasn’t John Ensign run out of the village on a rail for making a mess of the place? Aren’t senators more than four times as powerful as congressmen? Isn’t it a juicer story when the sex-scandal involves hypocrisy as well as lying?
Personally, I don’t care about Rep. Weiner. I like his attitude, but I’m not much for yapping dogs. Earlier this week he went on the Rachel Maddow Show and lied to my face for fifteen straight minutes. I have no use for the guy. I hope he goes away never to be heard from again. But I don’t want to hear weeks and weeks of breathless speculation about the political career and personal morals of a backbencher who has no leadership position, no important committee chairs, no clout of any kind, and no bearing on the big issues facing the country.
You left Ensign alone. You left Vitter alone. Hell, you barely even reported it when Ensign resigned. But for weeks you’ve been hounding a comparative nobody. Why?
Are you puppets controlled by Andrew Breitbart, Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh? Do you have minds of your own?
And this isn’t new. Remember how you treated Gary Condit? He got more press than shark attacks. And, you know what? He didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of Chandra Levy.
No one ever said a word about Poppy Bush’s mistresses. That wouldn’t have been prudent. How about how Billy Carter had to be a big embarrassment to the president but no one cared that Reagan’s kids weren’t even on speaking terms with him half the time?
The press might have a liberal bias in the sense that they actually paid attention in college and learned something, but they treat liberals like shit and give a pass to the most disgraceful and even criminal behavior by Republicans. How is Marco Rubio even a senator? Isn’t it because you didn’t do your jobs exposing him as a crook and not letting him wiggle away?
Tom DeLay ran an openly corrupt and criminal enterprise right in front of your noses for years and he never got the Charlie Rangel treatment.
I’m all for relentlessly pursuing corrupt or immoral politicians and humiliating them as an example to others. I just want some consistency. Why isn’t Tom Coburn getting hounded for serving as Ensign’s bagman? Lemme see 24/7 coverage of that dirtbag.
Also, too, Whitewater.
Do your jobs.
Righteous…and here, here!!!
Because Anthony Weiner tells the truth and they don’t like truth tellers. Another thing about Weiner: he didn’t do anything criminal, whereas Ensign did. So quite frankly, I don’t give a shit; what pols do in their private lives, absent legal or ethical issues, is not my business. Also, too: IOKIYAR.
I only noticed the irony of this statement in the context of the situation after I posted it. Ok, they don’t like truth tellers who might influence the debate against their interests. Their job is to protect their own, not to inform the public.
There is a greater likelihood that the sun will rise tomorrow in the western sky.
The thing I really fucking hate–and have no sympathy or patience for whatsoever–is that these guys KNOW they’re going to be taken down for this. They’re too smart to be this stupid, and yet they still do this–Clinton, Edwards, Spitzer, Weiner. They’re handing their enemies loaded guns and then pleading with them not to fire.
It started with Gary Hart.
I think Iran Contra is what did it. The powers that be took charge of the major newsrooms and said “no more Watergates — find Democratic sex scandals instead”. Those who refused to comply lost their jobs. Those who played along got promoted, and if they could pretend to be Democrats while promoting Republicans, they got put on the fast track (see: Russert, Tim).
And it also helps if the sex scandal involves actual SEX, too. This “Weiner-gate” story doesn’t even compare to Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment suit that didn’t see much media scrutiny, either.
To hear the young prince of DC Media, Luke Russert, breathlessly report about the owner of the elusive underwear-clad mystery penis, you’d think it was the most significant scandal of our lifetimes.
a component of an unhealthy psychological condition that the media, and the nation, by extension suffers from. Democrats are the nurturers. Most of them want to see people succeed, and fly from the nest with assistance. Unfortunately, nurturing is mistakenly coupled with femininity in simple minds. In attacking Democrats, your media type or conservative is trying to sanitize his inner feminine. Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman are the Twilight Zone exoskeletons of most Republicans inner feminine. Disturbing.
Republicans are the three martini lunch, sleaze ball bad daddy party. They feign street cred Fonzi cool, but most of them have to work awfully hard at that aloof high school jock toughness. And everyone knows, the media especially, that you could get in “willy big twouble” for making fun of bully boy jocks in the cafeteria at lunch time. They might beat you up or something.
Well put. Now I’m going to waste the next hour or so fantasizing about sticking it to the fucking weasels that make up our press corps. Sure it’ll be fun, but what will I have accomplished? Nada.
tell it, BooMan!!!
tell it!!
Back in the fifties as part of the McCarthy witch hunt, gays were hunted and hounded out of government jobs because they could be “blackmailed” and “controlled” by Communist spies.
Right now the Minority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is probably the highest-ranking closeted gay in government. Who do you think holds his leash? What do you think would happen if he ever strays off the reservation?
Right. Fucking. On.
We don’t have time for this!
Look, the rules have been different for Republicans at least since the early 1990s.
Condit is the great example. For the summer of 2001 CNN became the Condit News Network. However, at about the same time there was another Congressman who had an aide die under mysterious circumstances who also was rumored to be having an affair with him. In fact, she was found dead in his home office. Yet the whole story was hushed up in a couple days with NO national coverage.
The Congressman? None other than Joe Scarborough. Look it up.
Imagine Gary Condit being given a national TV show. Yeah right.
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OMG!
That link does not look good.
TERRIFIC post. Mr. Boo.
Right friggin’ on.
Nothing to say to this but . . . AMEN!
Yes. The only question left is why this is so. Is it liberal guilt — a byproduct of rich celebreporters’ angst about losing touch with the “Heartland” that drives them to dance to Breitbart’s tune? I don’t know, but it’s a pretty important question. We should probably look into it.
I find several things wrong with the accusation itself. For one thing, the story was broken by Breitbart, a professional hatchet man. Second, the timing is too convenient. This comes on the heels of Republicans getting backlash for just this sort of thing. Thirdly, and this is very important, THE VICTIM HAD TO BE TOLD THAT THEY HAD BEEN VICTIMIZED! That seems like a rather large stumbling block to me, maybe I’m just crazy. But I doubt Breitbart has suddenly developed precognitive abilities, so I’ll just call bullshit on the entire thing. In essence, this is a set up job against one of our own, and we should be willing to say so.