There seems to be a change in the wind with our news media. For the first time that I’m aware, a major media outlet is using the word “lies” attached to John McCain. Sure, it’s “Obama Camp Suggests Lies”, but even that’s a step forward. Normally we’d get a headline like “Obama camp raises questions” or “Disagreements mount over.”
I know I’m not the first to mention this, but the parallel (maybe perpendicular) to the media treatment of Al Gore is absolutely glaring and damn near impossible to ignore. The 2000 campaign centered itself around Al Gore the liar and exaggerator, and his famous “lies” are ubiquitous enough now that even people who don’t follow politics in the slightest are aware of at least one: “Al Gore Invented the Internet”.
In marked contrast to the current situation, Gore’s lies were barely lies and were generally either an overstatement or he just misworded something. In the case of his famed internet quote, the actual wording was “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Well, in the Senate, he championed the cause, pumped funding toward it, got it made into the phenomenon we know today. Did anyone actually think he sat up late at night, bothering college roomie Tommy Lee Jones with the light and sound while he wrote the code? No, he worded something funny and it was a “lie”.
Pick another issue. Love Canal, Love Story, David Lee Whitt. Stories in which he was misquoted, quoted a news article that was itself inaccurate, or legitimately got something wrong as an obvious mistake (respectively), all added to the gigantic narrative of “Gore the liar”.
Contrast that with McCain. It seems like no matter what the guy does, getting the media to really run with the idea of “McCain the liar” is proving tricky. What the hell?
He’s lying about his voting record, he’s attacking Obama for things they voted together on, lying about Obama’s tax plan and legislation in the Senate, lying about Palin, lying about everything. The trail of dishonesty McCain is leaving in his wake is a mile wide. Not to mention his list of flip flops is so epic that they have to be compiled and sorted by category. It’s like someone custom-built a candidate that combined the liar image of Gore and the flip-flop image of Kerry, with the difference that in this case it’s legitimate.
It’s funny that it wasn’t until now that they’re getting called on it. And what’s the x factor? A stepped-up campaign against him, Obama’s fearlessness in screaming “liar”. The media’s liberal or conservative bias largely plays into itself in that the right-wing echo chamber permeated the mainstream media to push Kerry the liar or Obama the Muslim just through repetition, and now Obama’s playing that to his advantage, capitalizing on McCain’s newfound distrust of a media that’s likely more willing to dig in. It’s like Will said, the rope-a-dope.
So far we’re still not where we should be, the media shouldn’t need to quote Obama’s campaign to point out that McCain outright lied about something. Gore could barely say he had to take a piss without a reporter saying “does he in fact have to urinate?” and a pundit commenting “clearly he needed to take a crap, but lied because he wants people to think he’s too pure to shit.” McCain could walk outside and say he singlehandedly won World War 2 and not only would the media provide cover they’d assail anyone who would suggest that it’s possible evidence of age.
