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Tuesday, September 15, 2015

It's not Hillary but the Beltway Press Who Has the Truth Problem

In my last post I looked at Politico's morning hit piece on Hillary that used coded, ageist language like 'nostalgic' to describe her Instagram page.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/there-they-go-again-politicos-new.html

What's funny is that they think the American people have a problem with her honesty even though that has been shown to be false when in fact it;s the Beltway insiders themselves who have the truth problem.

Listen to this dishonest attack on Hillary in Politico this morning.

"This time around, however, the campaign is all in on the nostalgic memes as it tries to humanize a candidate who has stumbled through a difficult summer, with the controversy over her emails reinforcing the most negative stereotypes of the Clintons as paranoid and secretive, playing by their own set of rules. In polls, a majority of voters think Clinton is untrustworthy, and describe her as “dishonest."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/hillary-clinton-2016-vintage-images-nostalgia-213615#ixzz3lo6dGJeS

Right she's secretive and they base this on the fact that she used private emails-like just about every government official in the country until recently. But only with her does this show she's in some undefined way 'dishonest.'

Last night Howard Fineman was on Chris Matthews and was again insisting that the average person cares deeply about her emails-even though polls show this isn't true.
Of course, the only poll he knows about his the Beltway insider poll who thinks this is a really big deal though they can't even explain why or even what the big deal is.

Meanwhile. Media Matters has a great piece this morning that shows the media obsessing over Hillary's emails and other minutiae-like her 'nostalgic picutres' on Instagram while ignoring the policy discussion of things like Jeb Bush' tax plan-which is like his brother's plan except on steroids.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/jeb-brings-back-his-brothers-tax-cuts.html

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/jeb-as-george-w-bush-times-two.html

"While Obsessing Over Hillary Clinton's Emails, Media Are Ignoring Jeb Bush's Tax Policy Fantasy,"

"Mainstream media outlets are ignoring the falsehoods and fabrications underpinning Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's recently-debuted tax reform proposal in favor of endlessly harping on the perceived and imagined flaws of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush benefited from the same kind of free ride in 2000, when media overlooked the impossible economic promises at the core of his fiscal policies."

"In a September 14 article, Vox Executive Editor Matt Yglesias took mainstream media outlets to task for glossing over glaring flaws in the tax reform proposals and economic promises offered by Jeb Bush's presidential campaign, recalling the lax vetting received by Bush's older brother during the 2000 presidential election when the press directed incessant, vapid critiques at then-Vice President Al Gore:"

"According to the conventions prevailing at the time, to offer a view on the merits of a policy controversy would violate the dictates of objective journalism. Harping on the fact that Bush was lying about the consequences of his tax plan was shrill and partisan. Commenting on style cues was okay, though, so the press could lean into various critiques of Gore's outfit."

"Today it's clear that Jeb Bush is very much his brother's successor, both in terms of a love of regressive tax cuts and in terms of a passion for making the case for them in a dishonest way. And reading mainstream political reporters characterize the Jeb tax plan as "populist" or some kind of break with conservative orthodoxy paired with endless front-page coverage of every new micro-development in the Hillary Clinton email inquiry is giving me a very uncomfortable sense of déjà vu."

"The good news is that new policy-focused verticals like the Upshot and Wonkblog at the New York Times and the Washington Post are doing a much better job of covering this round of Bush tax cuts. The bad news is that policy-focused coverage of presidential campaigns remains a specific and at times marginalized silo. There is not yet any sense that Bush's economic plans -- and his sales job of those plans -- should speak in a central way to how we understand his character, his judgment, his ethics, and his overall quest for the presidency."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/09/14/vox-blasts-media-for-repeating-mistakes-that-ha/205523

Is is heartening to see such a smart and high profile writer as Yglesias getting this. This confirms what Barney Frank said in a July piece at Politico. 

"The attack on Clinton in the fall campaign will be more on her personally than on her views. Whoever the GOP nominee ends up being, he will publicly de-emphasize his commitments to undoing financial reform, appointing Supreme Court justices who will reverse the same-sex marriage decision, and totally repealing the Affordable Care Act. Instead, the Republicans will try to impugn Clinton’s integrity by regurgitating the old accusations from the ’90s, supplemented by distorting the facts about Benghazi and greatly exaggerating the horror of her email trail. They will not be deterred by the inconvenient fact that Kenneth Starr grudgingly told the Judiciary Committee in 1998 that after spending several million dollars for three years, he was unable to point to anything she — or President Bill Clinton — had done wrong involving Whitewater, the FBI files or the Travel Office, nor by their inability after what will have been by then at least five congressional investigations to specify how she should be blamed for the murder of American officials by terrorists in Libya."


As usual Congressman Frank is right. So we Hillary supporters of the world need to Unite and call out the media every chance we get for its biased and misleading coverage of this fine woman who has done so much for our country and who will make such a great President. 

Hillary supporters: this is nothing less than a call to arms. These media hacks need to be held accountable for consistently being misleading and dishonest about her in public. 

Anywhere you see them doing it, I would urge you to highlight this and report it. On Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, if you write as I do put it on your blog, start petitions. We have already gotten a petition up for MSNBC to get rid of the Hillary bashing Republican Morning Joe-who has three hours in the morning and reportedly is going to get four soon. 

https://www.change.org/p/msnbc-comcast-phil-griffin-morning-joe-must-go/u/13323412?recruiter=206630961&utm_source=share_update&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive

I would certainly urge you to sign it and do anything you can think of to make them listen to us. It's good to talk about this among ourselves but we need the media to listen. Like Media Matters is so good at doing. 





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