Sunday, March 29, 2009

N.Y. Post's Mushnick's silly column today

It's becoming ridiculous the extent to which critics of the President are going to indict him for anything they can latch on to. In this weekend's N.Y. Post TV WEEK Phil Mushnick berates the President and the"hard left" media once again for his "horrifying" gaffe two weeks ago on Jay Leno regarding the Special Olympics. Mushnick starts off by establishing his own liberal bona-fides:
As a registered Democrat since the age of 18 and a newspaperman since I was 20, I never wanted to believe, as I suspected, that the news media for the most part leans hard left.  
I dont know exactly what the "hard left" is. Having been on the left most of my political life (unlike Mushnick I have not been a registered Democrat,except in 1984 & '88) I have never known what the O'Reillys, Mushnicks and other hard right "journalists" mean by "hard left."

Although I think the President's remark was ignorant and unfortunate, it's hard to understand how it can be described as "horrifying." I doubt that even the Special Olympians or "an entire population of unfortunates and their loved ones" measured the media's coverage of the President in these terms. I suspect most Special Olympians and "their loved ones" are pulling for the President to succeed, unlike Phil Mushnick. When Mushnick compares how the media treats this presidential gaffe as opposed to how it would have treated it when G.W.Bush was president, he gives away his secret purpose in writing this column. He is interested in showing how the "hard left" media favors Obama over W. If Mushnick or anyone else thinks the "hard left" media needed a remark like this (careless, but hardly "frightening") to "bash [W] for "first degree insensitivity" they are forgetting all the post-Katrina "great job, Mike!" comments to think anyone would need an unfortunate, but hardly "frightening" comment by Obama. This kind of foolishness so characterizes the "hard Right" today that it becomes more-and-more foolish.

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