Everybody Loves Barack

by Lars Eisenberg

2008 has given us the most interesting Presidential primary races in forty years. Not so much for the races themselves - I mean seriously, the GOP rolled out their standard "Pick A Stodgy Late-Middle-Aged Cracker Male" portfolio, and you can't wedge a credit card between the Democrats' platforms without KY Jelly and a French tickler - as much for the media coverage.

It seems that no matter where you turn for your 24-hour news cycle, you simply can't hear a pundit say anything that could possibly be interpreted as non-complimentary about Senator Barack Obama. With the Republican contest largely decided, that Krispy-Kreme-thick sugar glaze of the media's Obama Love is just getting spread around that much more. Call me paranoid, but when FOX News, CNN, MSNBC and the Oxygen Network all pretty much sound identical, I get suspicious.

Obama gives one hell of a speech - that's undeniable. He's the first candidate in my lifetime who gives a speech like he doesn't have a speechwriter. His message is inspirational, forward-looking and positive with just enough of reality's gravel strewn about his rhetorical Rainbow Road to let you know he doesn't live in Candy Land. If Barack were competing in the Illinois High School Speech and Rhetoric Society State Championships, I'd say give him the plaque right now - but he's not. He wants to run the most powerful friggin' nation on Earth, and for that position a great interview isn't enough - I think we should ask to see a resume.

Apparently, I'm alone in the media on that point. This same group of well-coiffed jackals that painted Al Gore as a pathological liar and John McCain a ticking timebomb of instability eight years ago aren't even asking about Obama's qualifications. Why not? Simple: Future Scandal Value

It's Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton for the Dems. Media lives and breathes on and for outrage - and if one isn't one readily available, they make one up. Digging for dirt on an untested commodity like Barack Obama would be easy, and the media is all about picking the low-hanging fruit. On the flipside, there isn't a single political, personal or moral shortcoming that hasn't been attributed to Hillary Clinton over the last sixteen years from the healthcare crisis to 9/11 to the Iraq War to the deal with Mary Kate and Heath Ledger. Digging up new bones on Mrs. Clinton would require a Hoover Dam-like excavation project - and mainstream media "journalism" is as lazy as it is shallow.

Look - for all I know, Barack Obama could be the solution to America's problems. For all I know about him, he also could have been a Hell's Angel, an EEO hire for the John Birch Society, or Vice President of the Jefferson High School Mime and Balloon-Twisting Clown Society as a sophomore - that's all I'm saying, and the media doesn't seem to be interested in learning about any of it... at least until after the Democratic Convention.

Yes, I'm jaded. I've been studying the media too long, and perhaps that could be the tint in the turd-colored glasses through which I'm seeing the media's Obamapalooza of Love. Now that I look back, the last time the media held back and gave a candidate a free-pass was in 2000 when a belligerant once alcoholic and coke-snorting three-time failure as CEO strolled into the Presidency to a chorus of silence from the major news outlets... and that seemed to work out OK for us...