The Anchoress
The article pretty much speaks for itself:
WASHINGTON:( By Jim Rutenberg) Senator John McCain’s trip to Iraq last spring was a low-key affair: With his ordinary retinue of reporters following him abroad, the NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported on his arrival in Baghdad from New York, with just two sentences tacked onto the “in other political news” portion of his newscast.
But when Obama heads for Iraq and other locations overseas this summer, Williams is planning to catch up with him in person, as are the other two evening news anchors, Charles Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, who, like Williams, are far along in discussions to interview Obama on successive nights.
And while the anchors are jockeying for interviews with Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seat mates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Obama’s first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party.
The extraordinary coverage of Obama’s trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.
But the coverage also feeds into concerns in McCain’s campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.
“It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered,” said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain. “That being said, it certainly hasn’t escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama’s trip next week.”
Yeah, no kidding. The press isn’t just acting like Obama is already president – they’re exceeding the sort of international coverage they have given the sitting president, who could barely buy a headline while in Africa and whose recent trip to Japan – which occurred during his birthday – went widely unnoted.
But that’s the honest, balanced, unbiased mediating intelligence” of the modern day mainstream media.
We don’t yet know if Couric, Gibson and Williams and the rest of the “media stars” will curtsy or bow and wait until spoken to by Obama before uttering a word. I hope they don’t slobber over their mics or cry in his presence, or I may have to reach down my gullet and vomit up a lung.
You do realize, don’t you, that if a GOP candidate with weak foreign policy was doing the same thing – making a “world tour” with dramatic backdrops – the press would be sneering about how the whole thing is a “stunt” meant to “deflect his inexperience.” I know you know it, but I had to say it, anyway.
The press is not helping Obama by over-pimping him. If they think independents don’t notice, they’re wrong. The thing is, Obama seems like a likeable enough guy. But folks are starting to say he seems to think “too well” of himself, and (aside from his lack of humor) not a little of that impression is caused by the press swooning and tingling over him and acting like he is barely mortal. When the press’ favoritism (and extreme ardor) is this overt, that has a tendency to put a bad taste in the mouths of people who were tuning in and hoping for something more substantive than “Evening Rockin’ News With How’d-He-Get- to-Be So Great Obama 24/7!”
I miss Roger Grimsby.
BREAKING NEWS: Obama has gone to the gym for exactly 188 minutes! What an outstanding role-model he is to get our youth out and exercising! When Bush worked out he was a gym-rat, but it’s OBAMA! Yes. Groupies. Or maybe whores, I can’t decide.
But be prepared – this is what the next 100 days will be like. All-Obama-all-the-time. His face will be on every channel you seek, every webpage you surf. Feel uncomfortable yet? I’m starting to.
HotAir-lanche! Thanks, Ed!
OKIE has a great photoshop
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