Posted by
Andrews on Monday, September 22, 2008 3:22:49 PM
You have to love media "reality checks". These little news items are supposed to show the validity, or lack thereof, behind the claims of various candidates. However, they usually end up more as partisan little pot shots at candidates who don't match the media ideology.
For example, you will see them "disproving" a claim that Obama will raise taxes thus: First, they will check Obama's campaign materials, and, finding his statement "I won't raise taxes", they present that as exhibit one. Next, they consult the campaign which explains that the expected 800% economic growth each quarter will easily allow them to fund their increased spending. Finally, they will find a sympathetic economics professor who will tell them the 800% growth estimate is low, and the growth will be so spectacular Obama could fund his spending with change he finds in the sofa in the Oval Office. Voila! They have proved that McCain is a filthy liar.
Doubt my characterization is true? Let us look at efforts to disprove Obama is a Moslem.
Now, let me start by saying that I doubt Obama is a Moslem.
As I said before, his religion is liberalism, so I don't think which nominal religion claims his allegiance is important. Then again, I find it hard to believe a young boy, obviously very concerned with fitting in, would go to school in an Islamic country without at least some effort to mimic his peers, so I find it credible that he would have engaged in some study or practice of Islam while in Indonesia, but as that is such a political hot button, and as Obama has made claims he
NEVER had anything to do with Islam, he now has to argue that he never was in the same room as a Koran. And that is just not quite believable.
And the efforts to "prove" it show how incredible that claim is.
Let us look at just one article,
an MSNBC article that claims in its title to "debunk" claims that Obama is a Muslim. Except, in the article itself it has the following:
Obama's mother, divorced from Obama's father,
married a man from Indonesia named Lolo Soetoro, and the family
relocated to the country from 1967-71. At first, Obama attended the
Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis, where documents showed he enrolled
as a Muslim, the religion of his stepfather.
The
document required that each student choose one of five state-sanctioned
religions when registering - Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or
Protestant. Gibbs said he wasn't sure why the document had Obama listed
as a Muslim.
"Senator Obama has never been a Muslim," Gibbs said. "As a six-year-old in Catholic school, he studied the catechism."
The Illinois senator is a member of the United Church of Christ.
Now, let us think about that a bit. The article itself says he was enrolled as a Molsem, yet, because someone states Obama was never a Moslem, that is good enough for the "investigators" at MSNBC. Instead of looking more deeply into the question, they accept the excuse of OBAMA'S COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR and move along.
Let's try this explanation. Obama was a young man, eager to be accepted in a Moslem country, whose father was a Moslem, so he enrolled as a Moslem to fit in. He no longer has any Islamic affiliations, but, in his youth, he decided to adopt an Islamic appearance to fit in, the same way he adopted a black identity to fit in in Chicago politics. Does that not make sense? Isn't that the sort of thing a reporter might investigate, rather than simply accepting the excuses of those who support Obama?
But that is my problem with these "reality checks" in general. Most often they represent nothing approaching reality, but are simply cover for the newscasters to present their own partisan arguments. Oh, sometimes they will partly debunk the claims of their own side, to keep a semi-plausible claim to objectivity, but, by and large, these reality checks could be more fairly labeled "DNC talking points".
Think about it this way. Suppose a story came out about a presidential candidate, say a Republican, claiming that he was AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. Would the reporters accept the word of a presidential spokesman, or even one from a single TANG member that he wasn't? Or would they dig and dig, trying to find any record showing he might have been AWOL?
Yet, for Obama's supposed ties to Islam, they call the claims of a single individual, who also happens to be Obama's communications director, with no direct knowledge of the truth or falsehood of the documents, that a record is incorrect as gospel truth.
So, let's see, forged documents can prove a Republican was AWOL, even after the documents are shown to be forgeries, yet a document actually saying Obama enrolled as a Moslem is false because Obama's communications director says it is. And this is a reality check by the objective media?
POSTSCRIPT
Please don't think I am buying into the theory that Obama is some stealth Moslem, some sort of Manchurian candidate. I think more likely he has always been one of those people who craves the applause of others, and so he adopted Islam to fit in and dropped it as soon as he was in a predominantly Christian nation. I also think he denied his own history, thinking it would do a lot of harm and that there were no records to show he was lying. Unfortunately there are, but he has already committed himself to a lie, so he has to keep denying the documentary evidence. I don't think this is because he still has ties to Islam, but only because he got caught in a politically expedient lie and now can see no easy way out.