The Blog @ Spolitics

Question the Timing? Question the Media.

by Heywood U. Reedmore -- November 3, 2008 at 3:35 pm | In 2008 Election | No Comments

When news broke that Senator Obama’s aunt was an illegal immigrant living in public housing, the Obama campaign wasted no time uttering the left-wing response to everything they have no other response to: question the timing.

But this time they make a good point. We should question why this story wasn’t printed a long time ago and why it was dropped on a Friday afternoon, the time-slot were stories go to die.

Furthermore, why did it take a British newspaper to unearth Obama’s aunt in the first place. She was living in Boston. Perhaps the U.S. press had sent too many of their reporters to Wasilla?

The national media wasted no time digging up Todd Palin’s 20-year-old DUI or Bristol Palin’s fiancee’s Myspace quotes. But when it came to the scoop that Barack the Wealth-Spreader’s aunt lives in the projects or that his brother lives in a shanty in Kenya, the U.S. media played second fiddle to the British press. Could it be that they’re just not trying?

Cable outlets happily aired the unsubstantiated rumor that Sarah Palin’s baby isn’t really hers, but they’ve had nothing to say about the rumor Barack Obama had an affair. The New York Times splashed a similar rumor about John McCain on its front page, but they allowed themselves to be outdone by the British press on the Obama affair rumor.

When the US press does cover one of these stories, they spin it into a defense of Obama. Politico ignores Obama’s hypocrisy and the fact that the Senator didn’t do anything to help his aunt. It accepts without challenge his claim that he didn’t know his aunt had violated a court order to leave the country even though she was at his swearing-in ceremony while in the country illegally. Instead, Politico focuses on the leak trying to turn the story into an indictment on the bogey man, Bush — without any evidence to support it.

The national press has been much less concerned with the fact that Democrat officials and Obama supporters have reportedly abused their power to search public records for dirt on Joe the Plumber.

There’s a lot to question in 2008’s election coverage. The timing is just a slice of it.