Al Gore was a serial exaggerator who invented the internet. John Kerry was a constant flip-flopper who lied about his Vietnam service. John Edwards was a hypocrite who liked expensive haircuts. Hillary is ruthless, power hungry bitch. Yet..... Bush was a regular guy who you wanted to have a beer with. Rudy was America's mayor. McCain is a straight talking maverick.
It is not at all a stretch to say that a half a million innocent Iraqis are dead because of the mindless, false and simplistic narratives big media regularly spin out. But that's ok, Wolf and the boys still have their health care and, despite their enormous salaries, still keep their fingers on the pulse of the average citizen. The excellant Jamison Foser from Media Matters:
....Over the past year, as journalists mocked John Edwards for getting an expensive haircut and having a big house, they constantly justified their behavior by claiming Edwards is a "hypocrite" for being rich while pursuing policies that would help those who aren't. This is total nonsense, of course. As an Altercation reader noted this week, asking how Edwards can care about the poor while being rich is like asking a doctor: "How can you care about sick people when you're so healthy?"
And yet, again and again, journalists justified their relentless focus on Edwards' wealth by pointing to his policy positions.
And they ignore -- absolutely ignore -- the personal wealth of conservative candidates who pursue policies that would line their own pockets.
For all the news reports you saw about Edwards' supposed hypocrisy, how many have you seen that tell you how big a tax cut Mitt Romney or John McCain or Rudy Giuliani -- wealthy men all -- would get if their policies became law? Probably somewhere around "none."
This is not merely an obvious double-standard; it's a completely backwards double-standard: one that rewards politicians who pursue policies that are consistent with their narrow self-interest at the expense of the greater good; one that penalizes politicians who act out of concern for the greater good rather than narrow self-interest.
Comments