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Press fact-checks everyone but Obama

Press fact-checks everyone but Obama

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 8:13 pm by Elizabeth Scalia

Press fact-checks everyone but Obama 2015-03-13T20:13:04+00:00 Elizabeth Scalia

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If you have not been paying attention, it’s time to start.

As you undoubtedly know, last week’s episode of Saturday Night Live began with an impression that dared to mock President Obama, which -in the minds of our betters in the media- is simply not done.

Tina Fey can (incorrectly) portray Sarah Palin as saying she could “see Russia from my house,” and that is considered “spot-on” by CNN (their words) but a comic cannot suggest that President Obama has actually done (or left undone) things he really has done (or left undone), without the media-elite taking umbrage and -unbelievably- running a fact check on the comedy sketch.

I posted about this yesterday, and would have forgotten about it. But on the heels of CNN’s absurd, pathetic “fact check” came a similar effort by Yahoo News.

Obviously, this grim White House, having no sense of humor, went to some friends and said, “fix that.”

If Saturday Night Life is smart, it will begin next week’s episode with a spoof of the Obama White House calling Wolf Blitzer and demanding that the upstarts at SNL be both corrected (if you have not seen the CNN report, it’s just breathtaking) and probably investigated. The only way to defeat this beast is to mock it, strongly.

Following the efforts by CNN and Yahoo, CBS has apparently been pressed into service to “correct” bloggers who dared to assert that Barack and Michelle Obama were not on the same page in their heart-rending tale of daughter Sasha’s infancy illness, which may or may not have been meningitis, depending on who is telling the story. CBS News made a sloppy job of it, by apparently seeing only what it wanted to see, and not bothering to check sources that were easily found on the blogs in question.

Why should the press actually look at facts and sources? The narrative they have built is completely independent of such things. The arrogance is staggering.

Jammie Wearing Fool lays the story out nicely and Ed Morrissey at the Hot Air blog (which was specifically targeted) writes:

Now, I didn’t go to J-school or anything, but if Sasha didn’t have meningitis and Barack Obama claimed she did, that would be untrue, wouldn’t it? Mrs. Obama told the story with a little more care, never claiming that Sasha had meningitis. . .this is just embarrassing. We specifically included the New York Times link in our blog posts. . .

Ed finishes:

“. . .let’s remember the context of these posts. Barack Obama has told a string of tall tales himself in public to push health-care reform. What does CBS do in response? Go after Obama’s critics. Yeah, that’s telling truth to power, all right.”

And see, that’s the problem. It does not really matter whether Michelle Obama said Sasha did not have meningitis and Obama says she did. Mothers remember that stuff better, to begin with, and given just how weirdly detached Obama seems to be -about everything but his public face– perhaps he really didn’t know whether his daughter had the illness or not; perhaps, like many fathers, all he registered interiorly was a worried “baby very sick.”

Normally, I would not even discuss this topic. I’d simply say “thank God the child is healthy, and let’s move on to more important lies, troubling associations, manufactured “events”, unprecedented arrogance and so forth.”

But in this case, we need to linger here a little bit and realize what has happened. The press – the so-called “guardians” and “gatekeepers”- the “mediating intelligences” who are supposed to be covering governments and power brokers with the quizzical eye, on behalf of the rest of us, have cast aside that public trust in order to place themselves at the service of a single man.

A profession that only a year ago saw itself as a bulwark against the abuse of power, against dishonest governance, against slippery associations, dubious enterprises and clear ineptness, is now a profession that investigates only those who dare question (or criticize) this one man, or his government.

The besotted American press, which apparently sees itself reflected in the glory of its Beloved, had already thrown its credibility away, in its unquestioning, reckless promotion of Barack Obama to the most powerful office in the world.

Now that he is installed in the Oval Office, they are content to throw the whole country away, in order to protect the Loved One.

Even if it means they must make utter fools of themselves, by “fact-checking” a piece of satire.

Even if it means they must expose themselves as less credible, less careful, less capable of accuracy, than a lowly blog.

Our free press is voluntarily dissolved. Our government will eventually try to muzzle free speech (working with the UN) and regulate internet content.

If you did not realize what terrible trouble we are in, this episode with Saturday Night Live – with a silly late-night comedy show – should make it clear to you.

We are being governed by a man who cannot laugh at himself and will not tolerate others doing so. And the press are become his henchmen.

Read all of this piece, but memorize this line:

A national media uncritically allied with a political establishment is a very dangerous matter in our republic, whether that alliance is liberal or conservative.

I suggest we commence mocking. Keep it up and don’t stop. It’s beneficial for us.

In more ways than one.

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