The WSJ Must Be Part of McCain’s Campaign Team

[Joanne98]

You hear the GOP whine all the time that the media is liberal and is out to get them. You hear that the media gave Obama a free ride and that Palin is being scrutinized more than Obama and she’s just the Veep! They use this pretense as a reason to have an all out character assault against Obama. You can see it when they make commercials like “The One” and “Celebrity.” You can see it when they drag Obama’s reverend out to attack Obama by his “associations.” You can see it when they mock his service as a Community Organizer (a mockery that may well lead to an election victory for McCain). Then you can see it the most when you read the Wall Street Journal. Far from being an independent and unbiased observer of the political landscape, the WSJ has become a surrogate for McCain’s campaign. Not a day goes by that the WSJ doesn’t write a new Op-Ed piece to attack Obama in some way. Not a day goes by that they don’t praise Palin in some way– and of course they find time to address the “unfair” coverage of her so far.

Today the WSJ went about its usual business then when it published yet another mocking and critical Op-Ed aimed at Obama. This one is an attempt to “Swiftboat” his “Community Organizing” days, but fails miserably. Once again this is an Op-Ed piece by the ever pious and mindless James Taranto, the Michael Moore of the Wall Street Journal, and it is filled with illogical arguments and wild base-less assertions. The following is the most ridiculous of them:

As a “community organizer,” Obama toiled within a subculture of such abject dependency that even home repairs were “social services,” provided by government (or, in Obama’s Chicago, not provided). It was an utterly bizarre intersection between the cultural elite and the underclass. By Judis’s account, Obama’s Columbia degree was useless. He would have been more helpful if he’d gone to vocational school instead.

Judis quotes an Altgeld resident as telling Obama, “Ain’t nothing gonna change. . . . We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can.” Certainly no one can fault Obama for doing the same thing. But what did Obama move outta there to do? To become a politician–specifically, an “idealistic” politician who wants “to make major changes in poverty.” Guys like that created this mess in the first place.

You should note that the most ridiculous part is the last sentence. Perhaps Taranto would like to debate that some time, though I’m sure he’s never heard of this bog and has never read it. How have idealistic politicians “created” the problems of poverty? Was it when FDR brought in the New Deal with the work and Social Security that it included after the GOP ran the country into a Great Depression? No. No. I’m sure it wasn’t the GOP’s fault at all, even though they had been in office for the eight years leading up to the market crash in ‘29. Was it when Teddy busted up the Trusts? Or would you say that Teddy wasn’t an idealist because he was a Republican. Or would you dismiss him as a Liberal in GOP clothing? Was it when Clinton worked with the GOP to reform welfare? Or will all the credit for that go to Newt? If it does go to Newt, does that mean that member of Congress actually do have responsibilities? Was it when the idealistic JFK– who Obama has been most compared to– said “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?” That line seems similar to one in the Taranto Op-Ed piece (my emphasis below):

But Obama did not decide only that “community organizing” was not for him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989 symposium in which he “rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself.” Later, Obama “would begin to construct a political identity for himself that was not simply different from his identity as a community organizer–but was, in fact, its very opposite.”

So Taranto, ever the propagandist, has the goal of swiftboating Obama on Community Organizing, but he fails to achieve his goal for a very simply reason, he has no clear tactic other than mockery and inconsistent complaints. The fact that Obama worked as a Community Organizer is a plus in my book. It isn’t his only experience, as even a cursory glance at Wikipedia shows:

http://www.disillusionedwords.com/?p=636

[curious one]

1. WSJ and Fox news is owned by the same man!