The New York Times's Jacques Steinberg reports today that George Stephanopoulos "sounded somewhat taken aback" by the storm of criticism that has descended on Stephanopoulos and his fellow ABC-er, Charles Gibson. What did GS and CG do wrong? What caused them to get a headline, in Steinberg's Timesstory, that read, "Who Lost the Debate? Moderators, Many Say." Well, of course, they asked Barack Obama too many hard questions at Wednesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia. You know, questions to Obama about his background, his various comments, and his associations.
One might think that questions about all aspects of a would-be president's life are perfectly legit. After all, plenty of presidential hopefuls have seen their hopes dashed when various sordid--or merely unfortunate--facts came to light. Everybody agreed, for example, that former Georgia Senator Richard Russell (D-GA), was a good guy personally, and well qualified, intellectually and tempermentally, to be president, but by the 60s, his segregationist past in Southern Democratic politics disqualified him from national office--that is, his background, his various comments, and his associations. And think of others who were smart enough, but who got bounced from their ambitions--or even their incumbent position--because of personal foibles: George Romney, Tom Eagleton, and Gary Hart, to name just three.
But of course, all those guys were white, and none of them had the MSM in love with them, the way that everybody in the MSM loves Obama. And so, for example, The Washington Post's TV critic, Tom Shales--who I suspect has more of a crush on Obama than most, if you get my drift--described Stephanopoulos and Gibson's performance as "shoddy and despicable." Indeed, Jim Romenesko's media gossip site is brimming with anti-ABC opinion pieces similar to Shales' poisoned-penning.
Ouch! Nobody in the media wants pain like that, especially when the MSM mau-mau-ers clearly have the angry support of the lefty blogosphere. So you can bet your bottom Nielsen that Stephanopoulos and Gibson both have mental notes to self: "Avoid such pain in the future, be nice to Obama. And to further help recovery, make a point of being mean to George W. Bush or, better yet, John McCain."
OK, so that explains why the MSM will be brought further into pro-Obama orthodoxy. Liberal reporters and their liberal readers will reach a harmonic convergence of Obamatry.
But there is one catch: Just because liberals can all agree on the greatness of Obama--and the awfulness of reporters, or Democratic presidential rivals, who cause their hero any heartburn--that doesn't mean that the country as a whole shares their Obamaphilia. Indeed, it doesn't even seem that most Democrats are swept off their feet by Obama. The screen grab above, from the agenda-setting liberal blog TalkingPointsMemo.com this afternoon, shows two items: first, the news* that lefty journalists wrote a nasty letter to ABC; and second, that Obama's lead among Democrats nationally, according to Gallup, is shrinking. Which is to say, most Americans aren't drinking the Obama Koolaid.
But of course, the MSNBC crew, in particular, seems to be Jonestown-like in its thirst for Obama-aid. Keith Olbermann, Dan Abrams, Chris Matthews, David Gregory, can do what they like, of course. But they should remember that everybody at Jonestown ended up dead.
But in the meantime, expect ABC News to try to make it up to Obama and the liberals. If I were Bush or McCain, I wouldn't agree to any interviews with ABC, because they will be bruisers, alternating with beanballs.
*Strictly speaking "news" is supposed to be surprising. It's not news that liberals love Obama, but a liberal blog such as TPM is happy to pile on ABC, and then pile on some more.
