Fox News Broadcasts Ron Paul Propaganda - Imagine That

As President Reagan once said, "There you go again."

 

 

If any other station did this to any other Republican, it would be generating howls from the righteous-indignation-of-the-month clubbers in all the cool blogs.

But a quick check over at Memeorandum indicate that mum's the word:  today we're supposed to be chattering about "Romney & The Birthers"  and how that big meanie John Boehner is going to lay off government workers.  Like that's going to happen.

Some people at CPAc behaved badly - there's no doubt about it. If we lose elections because some of Paul's supporters are boisterous, then so be it.  If we lose elections because Paul's message isn't popular, then by golly, that's ok too.

But is it too much to ask that Paul himself be shown a little basic respect? If he's really that unpopular, and he may be, does Fox really need to embellish the stories they run about him?

Practically bawl on the floor of the US House while begging your fellow Republicans to vote for TARP and all is forgiven when you get named Speaker Of The House Who Isn't Pelosi.   But tell America that you think the concept of a preemptive nuclear strike, against a country that has never before attacked another, is insane? You're a pariah. And that's on a good day.

One of the wonderful things about the internet is that you get to interact with people who you'd never, ever have a chance to converse with 20 years ago. I once asked one of those people, a veteran of two White House administrations, why people hated Ron Paul so much. I understood not voting for him if you're a social conservative. I understood disagreeing on foreign policy. What I didn't understand was the absolute venom - the open hatred -  he encountered from colleagues his own party.

(I know most of you saw it - John McCain stood up there talking about open borders and open ended bailouts, and he was the pre-ordained king GOP dude. Ron Paul talked about spending less and saving more, and he was branded unelectable. A liberal. In the wrong party. Blah blah blah.)

I expected some long philosophical answer to my question, perhaps references to policies and alliances that I wasn't aware of.  You know what I got?

"He told the truth."

Yep, that's what I got. A freaking tsunami wrecking the order I was trying to create in my mind.

Where are we supposed to put stuff like that? The back burner? This didn't come from Alex Jones or some fringy web site dealing with conspiracy theories and anonymous sources. This came from a guy who has been in the belly of the beast - a guy who knows the players as well as the game.

"He told the truth."

Is that something that's now frowned upon in political circles?  Something that the news channels ostracize you for, because it doesn't match the facts they want to be true?

Do we really live in a world that is absolutely that lost, so corrupt that truth is indeed treason?

Stacy McCain wrote a piece about media bias last week, which probably got a gazillion hits because not only was it some hot ivy league left-on-right action, the blog-almighty Instapundit ( a self-described libertarian) then linked to it.

(Note that McCain also wrote a piece telling his readers that the C4L paid for the students to attend CPAC, which isn't true. But I'm assuming that it was on oversight - he's been pretty square with Paul so far. But he's not the only person making that accusation.)

Here's the rub though - when Mitt Romney won the straw poll, did anybody point out that he actually did pay all the expenses for the busloads of people he hired to vote for him?  No, he was the bona fide winner. The media all said he was. 

It gets better, too. This year, they said the fact that he chose not to pay for enough voters to win this year indicated he was a wise man, making wise choices.  Just what the country needs, obviously.

The Christians are already a little nervous about the possibility of a Mormon rising to the top.

If Fox wants to keep the GOP out of the president's chair, what better way than to drive away  the youth vote, too?

Well, I suppose they could repeat "Muslim Brotherhood" 43 times in 60 minutes and start destroying the TEA Party's small government agenda with talk of the evils that the damned dirty Muslims are bringing to our shores. Oh wait - they're already doing that.

The real beauty is - they don't even have to choose between strategies. They have 24 hours, 7 days a week, and they can destroy any movement they want. All it takes is a simple flip of a script.

You're doin' a heckuva job, Roger. The chances of this hit piece generating any concern from the mainstream right wingers? I'd give it about a zero if last season is the indicator of choice.

Too bad we can't get pics of Megyn Kelly's or Martha MacCallum's topless TSA scanner images to post here - now I'll bet that those would get attention.

Yes, I'm a little bitter tonight. Because frankly, this is .....irritating. Frustrating. Exasperating. Maybe there should be a swear word there. But I see it coming - when we lose the primary, we're going to be told we're a bunch of malcontents - not really Republicans -  when we won't vote for the party's choice.

More intellectual dishonesty. It's not them, it's us.  We're clearly unreasonable, shrill, ill-mannered zealots to expect that even one simple disposable story be told sans embellishment. 

Impractical ideologues, the lot of us. And whiny, for complaining about it.

Thank you sir, may I have another. Until the primaries are over, we're expected to sit quietly and watch them destroy a decent, honorable man because they don't agree with him on one single issue.

And if we don't? Well, then we obviously are closet liberals who hate America and want to see the terrorists win.

Go figure.

Comments

[Eric Parks]

Well, the MSM is disgusting in every way but consistently so. It was the underhanded tactics of all of them in '08, including to my surprise the local papers around here that really opened my eyes to how really "kept" the American public is.

Conversations with various friends and acquaintances over the last few years have shown some anecdotal evidence that people are beginning to wake up to the workings of the spin-doctors.

[Eric Larson]

I never watched this when i got it thru some email. Hard to believe in this day and age with people checking stuff online that one would be so bold as to run that phony clip. I don't think there's any way to say it was a mistake.

Very, very bold.