Say Hello to Captain Obvious

Bulletin:  A columnist at Newsweek has just discovered that the mainstream media are infatuated with Barack Obama!  No!  Really? You know the movie, Sleepless in Seattle?  Call this one Clueless in Manhattan.

This is how the "brilliant" piece by Robert Samuelson begins:  "The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time."  Well, yes, but ...

I wrote an entire book on the subject which came out in January -- A Slobbering Love Affair:  The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.  The book hit number two on the New York Times bestseller list. Lots of people who live between Manhattan and Malibu read the book.  Lots more know what's in it, since I was on several hundred radio and television programs talking about the book.  But when you live and work inside that comfy liberal elite media bubble - as Robert Samuelson does (along with Katie and Charlie and Brian and lots, lots more)-- you are completely unaware that someone did in fact notice the infatuation, thought it was a blight on American journalism, and wrote at some length about it.

And it's beyond ironic that Samuelson would write about the media's love affair with Barack Obama ... in Newsweek of all places, a magazine that has slobbered over Barack Obama for quite some time now.  This is like a guy in the Klan finally noticing that he's surrounded by bigots.  Okay, not a perfect analogy, but you get the point.

But I suspect that Samuelson isn't the only journalist to figure out how corrupt the mainstream media have become.  I'm pretty sure that lots of journalists know what millions of Americans have known for quite a while now:  that the media was in the tank for Barack Obama from the jump.  But journalists, given their disdain for ordinary Americans who live in "flyover country" think because they don't acknowledge the corruption no one will notice.  Wishful thinking.  At the end of the presidential campaign last year, Pew Research conducted a poll of registered voters, asking them whom they thought the mainstream media wanted to win the election.  Ninety percent of Republicans said the media was pulling for Obama.  No surprise there.  But 62 percent of Democrats, and another 62 percent of Independents said the exact same thing!   In other words, just about everybody noticed what Robert Samuelson just figured out.

But let's give Mr. Samuelson some credit.  He ends his column in Newsweek with this: "The press has become Obama's silent ally and seems in a state of denial. But the story goes untold."  As I say, yes, but ...

Not exactly untold, Mr. Samuelson.  But we'll cut you some slack because it's not easy living in a bubble.   Besides, you know what they say:  Better late than never.