The Anchoress
So, apparently the New York Times, on the heels of this Rasmussen Report which suggests that the voting public is finding the press just a tad too “in the tank” for Sen. Obama, has rejected a John McCain op-ed meant to respond to Obama’s Times-featured op-ed from last week.
“People are going to start to think the press is in the tank for Obama or something. Oops, too late!”
Not only did the Op-Ed editor, David Shipley, a former Clinton staffer, reject the thing…he was a bit condescending about it:
“‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written…I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.”
Ouch! So, the press can give Obama 24/7 coverage with gushing-and resume-padding
free-publicity but they can’t give John McCain a couple of inches in their grubby little papers because…sniff…he isn’t saying anything new! Obama – it seems, according to the Times – “said something new!”
Well, of course Obama had said “something new”! When you’re a candidate with no paper trail, a scant 140 days of experience in Congress, no legislative successes and frequent flip-flops ummmm refinements to policy, you’re going to have something new to say almost every time you speak. Sometimes something really, really new. Or, sometimes, nothing much.
Poor John McCain has been steadfast in his opinions on foreign policy and war, and he actually has – you know – experience and history, so he’s not “saying anything new,” and therefore…apparently…he should not be heard until he and refines himself a bit.
I’m not even much of a McCain fan, but the Times decision strikes me as so outrageous, controlling and foreign to the concept of the free exchange of ideas in an election season. The NY Times says “revisions are often requested”, well, okay, but when Obama is getting the equivalent of millions of dollars of free and uncritical exposure, why can’t McCain just be allowed to say what the hell he wants for a few hundred words?
Thankfully, Matt Drudge has published the op-ed in its entirety on his site, and good for him for doing so! It is fair, and in doing so, Drudge lets the dead tree press and the mainstream media – those all-important “mediating intelligences and gatekeepers” to whom the alternative medias are supposed to lie prostrate – know that they’ve made a big blunder; that they truly are not the only game in town, any longer.
Of course, whether alternative media will be allowed to survive in the next few years will be very interesting to watch, but right now, Drudge’s reach is rather vast, and – even if this slight by the Times gets ignored by every network news outlet – it will be known.
Meanwhile, congratulations NY Times! In one fell swoop, you’ve created an underdog, taken attention away from your preferred candidate, given credibility to the charge that you are “in the tank” for Obama and unfair to other candidates, given satirists and Saturday Night Live, Mad TV, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report (among others) something to riff on (if they dare to) and convinced many, many more people that they cannot trust the press to allow them an honest and unfiltered look at either candidate. Quite a day’s work!
And a quiet “atta boy” to Mr. Drudge, as the NY Times would call him. I have to believe that even the most fervent Obama supporter would approve of Drudge’s promotion of free speech and open debate in an election season of great consequence. What could be more liberal than giving the other guy his say? And who would want to think that their guy got elected because the press suppressed debate? No one I know.
Well, at least this distracts from the idea that maybe Iraqis are not so overjoyed by Obama’s visit, after all.
In that spirit, I’ll post the thing, too:here.
Interesting: Jimmie Bise has a rather in-depth analysis of the Times’ choice and it’s worth reading and considering – he writes:
I don’t think I’ve seen a better example of [left-leaning media bias] than what happened with McCain’s op-ed. What’s interesting to me is that if you asked Shipley if his decision was biased, he’d be honestly flummoxed by the question. That’s because the bias wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t malicious. It came from his own unchallenged assumptions and just a little bit of innate arrogance…[] while Shipley was delighted with the newness of what Obama was saying, he never noticed that Obama is taking the old position still held by John McCain. In other words, he’s blind to the relative positions of each candidate and entirely focusing on the superficial “newness” of Obama’s new stance.
More:
Ed Morrissey
Okie on the Lam has more – good new links – and a very clever photoshop.
Hot Air
Big Lizards
Gateway Pundit notes a pro-Hamas editorial that made the NY Times’ very selective cut.
Ed Driscoll
Roger L. Simon
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