Why I bought the Post today

I actually purchased a copy of the print edition of the Washington Post today when I saw someone in a restaurant reading this article, or to be more specific, when I saw the large photos of Palin on the inside. I was curious what the Post was printing about Palin and how biased it would be and how early the bias would appear in the article. So, it was definitely good for a laugh.

I thank the writers for telling me Palin was picked up in a black car. Many of us have been intensely curious about that bit of information. However the writers could have researched Palin's support among conservatives a little more extensively. To say that conservatives I know were elated at McCain's choice of Palin is to indulge in necessary understatement since it would be difficult to capture the enthusiasm that she evoked then and even now.
It intrigues me that the Post demographic doesn't get it. But it chimes with the paper's little motto: "if you don't get it, you don't get it."

Let's put some numbers into the mix. At various times Rush Limbaugh's audience is estimated to be between 13 - 20 million people. The conservatives are a large segment of the population, and depending upon how the question is asked more people identify themselves as "conservative" than as "liberal" -- and this even despite the media's relentless attacks over at least 2 decades (my rememberance) of the term "conservative" which they usually link to "extremist."

Are most Americans "extremist"?

I note in another article in today's paper, in E.J. Dionne's editorial that the "birthers" have become the new faddish way to continue the slander against "the right." Even the term is supposed to conjure visions of tin foil hats. However, the question of Obama's citizenship should be easily resolved -- that there is ANY question concerning it should prick the ears of the "where there's smoke there's fire" people. But the media has so solidly ignored any deep examination of the candidate, now president, that this one item does not provoke the sorts of questions it should.

Of course if Obama were not a citizen, even now he would be occupying the White House illegally. Some debate whether it would "matter." But one assumes that some in the media are aware just how much of a real firestorm it would provoke, and that, I believe, is the reason they try to associate the question with fanatics and conspiracy theorists. The Constitution does not specify many conditions for the office of the president, but those it does cite are unambiguous. In modern times, even the reasoning behind proscribing the office from aliens is perhaps inscrutable to Democrats, but that's another story.

Conservatives that I know are still very interested in Palin (as this series tacitly acknowledges). Some, however, question whether she is ready for the White House. This readiness was not an issue in the last election because she was not running for president, and because she was manifestly more qualified than the man who afterwards won the presidency.

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Obama will fall from his own mistakes which if the first few months are any indication will be legion. I like the characterization that the Post's writers put upon Obama's vice presidential choice: "Obama had gone the safe route in his selection of Joe Biden, a do-no-harm pick that followed the classic vice presidential manual." Is it part of the "manual" that the VP should routinely put his foot into his mouth so reliably, one wonders.

I stopped reading the Post a long time ago after it became clear how incurably biased it has become. It would be more aptly named "The Washington Democrat."

I did buy the paper today, however, because I wanted to see what portrait was offered of Palin. Certainly even Democrats should be asking themselves why everyone is still talking about her. When is the last time people were so mesmerized by the candidate that lost? And who was second on the ticket too!

The question of Obama's birth certificate would be a minor point except for the Constitution. But what strikes me as more significant than even this serious Constitutional question are things like his associations. Most Democrats still know next to nothing about their candidate's personal history: his relationships to Ayers and Wright which were long and close, Wright having been his pastor for some 20 years and Ayers the probable author of the very poetic and very un-Obama-esque book about Obama's youth entitled "Dreams of My Father" should have been raised in the media a long time ago and never were.

Obama's critics know more about the man than his supporters. Big questions abound concerning Obama: such as who financed his early career? Why was Obama offered the extraordinarily large advance for his first book, back when it was a proposal by an unknown? "Follow the money" was once a dictum in journalism. But that was then. And this ... is the era when journalism is dying.

Adieu.