Are you guys seriously claiming that Obama was given a good vetting by an adversarial media?

Yeah, the 24-hour news cycle, near infinite cable news channels and the Internets really failed us there. If only they’d reported that birth certificate story! Oh well, I’m sure hyper-intelligent Sarah Palin will save you. Heh.

wareq, I think you put the wrong vowel in that second word…

Obama was better vetted than Republican John McCain.

Seriously.

And I was something of a McCain fan right up through the beginning of 2007.

That’s when I started giving John McCain‘s record a really careful lookover.

Republican John McCain didn’t know anything about military strategy and yet his “prisoner of war” status was supposed to trump his serial failures as a military man.

Strategically, McCain didn’t know the difference between Sunni and Shia, didn’t know who was in charge of Iran, thought we could “muddle through in Afghanistan”, and was even accusing Iraq of the anthrax attacks in 2001.

Tactically, McCain should never have been a pilot, was only promoted because of his families military connections, McCain repeatedly put his fellow troops in jeopardy, and was eventually captured because his family connections had improperly kept him flying even after repeated crashes that were clearly his fault and should have grounded him.

Domestically McCain was and still is an ethical failure.

And yet the media loved McCain’s storytelling.

And boy, could McCain spin a story.

The corporate media sycophantically fluffed up his military career and glossed over how he traded in his wife and her children for a younger, richer, better looking woman.

McCain used his new wife’s daddy’s money to become a politician and then got caught doing political favors for a crook that his wife was doing business with.

After McCain was caught being crooked McCain pretended to turn a new leaf and made a lot of noise about how suddenly ethical he was. And yet his entire campaign was run by lobbyists, many of them connected with sleazy foreign countries and dictators.

Some of those sleazy lobbyists worked through McCain’s corporate front group, his “Reform Institute”. McCain’s “Reform Institute” was/is about as corrupt as you can get. The guy who was running it for McCain was simultaneously doing lobbyist favors for a purported Russian mobster, amongst other unsavory corporate characters. And the fraudulent and now bankrupt AIG was one of McCain’s “Reform Institute’s” biggest backers.

Everything about McCain is and always was a fraud.

There was a list of things that McCain conned me with. Things I mistakenly respected him for until I watched him repudiate everything that he’d suckered me into believing about him.

Republican McCain made noise about torture and then legalized torture’s use at the discretion of the President. Republican McCain made noise about religious fanatics being “agents of intolerance” and then sucked up to those same fanatical “agents of intolerance”.

Some of the most absurd moments of “media” failing was having McCain’s campaign hucksters absurdly looking straight into the TV cameras and claim that there weren’t any lobbyists on McCain’s campaign.

Republican McCain’s entire Presidential campaign was controlled and run by lobbyists, many foreign paid lobbyists, and yet the media let McCain and his spokespeople flat out lie.

McCain is a bald faced liar and yet Republican McCain got a free pass by a complacent, complicit, sycophantic media.

Obama got the equivalent of a media enema.

EVERYTHING about Obama was gone over by the media with a fine tooth comb.

In the meantime the “media” was taking flowers to McCain’s family and making special deliveries of coffee and donuts (with sprinkles!) to McCain.

Were his political positions in doubt? Unlike GWB, he had a senate voting record. Was there something insufficient written about him in the multiple biographies? Were they too hard? Would you prefer the comic book version?

Was there something in the multiple debates with Hillary that wasn’t covered? He had many more debates than McCain. In fact, he got much more media coverage than McCain, period.

Do you really believe that, if the media had found dirt on him, they would have suppressed it? Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with Gary Hart? Has it occurred to you that if a journalist broke some dirt on Obama, it would make their career, a la Woodward and Bernstein?

If you are really willing to believe that there is a Massive Media Conspiracy regarding Obama, can you prove to me that Obama, in fact, exists? Seeing as all of the information you do have about Obama comes from said media?

Fuck you all.

Strowbridge ends your “argument”, btw. All we heard on the news for what, 2 months?, was about Rev. Wright and his hatred for the white man. Why did Obama sit in the congregation of this obvious monster, Rev. Wright? Does Obama hate whites too? Is Obama a radical Black Panther covert operative? Etc., etc., etc.

You guys are just too priceless. Go sit on a parking cone.

If you are backing him up, then you know he’s wrong.

And yes, the media was harder on Obama than they were on McCain.

How many times did you hear about Rev. Wright?

How many times did you hear about Keating?

Don’t flatter yourself. You didn’t even know what “sociopath” meant.

That said – OW, you do get some classy trolls here.

I think the talking points for Edwards are: “He’s so handsome and charismatic and seduces women: that’s so gay!”

But the hubub reminds me of the panty-twisting hysteria over Limbaugh’s Donovan McNab comment.

Get over yourselves, moderates.

I didn’t get my blast fax from the listserve.

Duros62: “I thought that was Bill Clinton, no?”

Clinton? Dude, that’s so 1990s. Edwards’ the new ladies man.

Ouch.

No, I don’t think he can.

Really? That’s what you meant?

I thought that was Bill Clinton, no?

Pity?