John F'n Kerry: Media Has Duty To Not Give Equal Time To Tea Party

They say this every election cycle. I believe it was Mark Halpernin (IIRC; google fails me) who pronounced in 2004 that the media could not give a "balanced" coverage of the Democratic and Republican positions, because one was obviously true and the other obviously a lie.

John Kerry now picks up that particular ball. Video at the link; here's the transcript:

"And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it's exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual."

"It doesn't deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what's real, of who's accountable, of who is not accountable, of who's real, who isn't, who's serious, who isn't?"

This is akin to that cretinous hag Froma Harrop, who is in charge of the "Civility Project" to improve political discourse, asserting that it's okay when she calls her opponents terrorists and Al Qaida bombers that it's not incivil because it's actually true.

The last resort of liberals, confronted with evidence of media bias, is always to smugly claim "The truth has a liberal bias."

Preparing the battlespace, as Instapundit often remarks. The media of course wants to cover the 2012 elections in as biased a fashion as politically effective (push it to the limits without going so far over the line that the public sees it for what it is); every presidential cycle some liberal Democrats step forward to offer some sort of a jackass intellectual defense for doing so, in case the media couldn't think of one themselves.

Of course the Tea Party did not, in the main, seek a default. What they said was that we have a very big disagreement on the size of government, and we are willing to flirt with default unless those who have grown government by 30% in just two years (!!!) agree to the mandate delivered in 2010 to cut the size of government to something more recognizably American.

Either party could have given ground on this issue to avoid a default. Note that all the liberals who whine about the Tea Party's "terrorist" tactics didn't give an inch on this point.

One side was expected to cave, as it always has done before, and when it refused to cave outright, the liberals had a temper tantrum.

posted by Ace at 01:12 PM

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