While pondering yesterday evening how America could possibly elect a President with such a horrific record to a second term in office, I began thinking about how much the country I love so much has changed in just the last four years.
I thought back to the venom directed to actress Stacy Dash from the left when she announced she was supporting Mitt Romney, the lack of media coverage and the Administration's response to the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, the dearth of coverage about the horrible suffering in New York and New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy, the lack of context and depth in the media's coverage of economic issues facing this country, and the hate-filled responses I received on Facebook when I attempted to point out facts about the major issues facing our country.
It suddenly dawned on me. Our First Amendment Freedoms of Speech and the Press, outlined in the Bill of Rights, are slowly being eroded through attempted censorship from within our own citizenry and by a media censoring its own news to avoid appearing to be negative towards their President. Let me explain further.
When the violence in the Middle East erupted on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Obama Administration pointed to a YouTube video as the cause, calling it "despicable" and communicating that America had nothing to do with this slanderous video. The President even spoke before the U.N., essentially apologizing for and attacking this anti-Muslim video. A few weeks later, the person who made this video was jailed by the government on a probation violation charge. A clear message was sent in words and actions by the Obama Administration: No one can speak out against Muslims in America.
As this story began to unfold, Fox News was excluded from an intelligence briefing on Benghazi. The one news organization that has had the courage to probe deeper into what happened and why it happened was excluded from this briefing. (This is something that would wouldn't have even occurred in the Nixon White House.) Again, a clear message was delivered by the Obama Administration: Speak out against the government, and we will retaliate by limiting your access to news.
When Dash announced she was supporting Romney, you would have thought she had sexually abused a child. Twitter was filled with hate-filled Tweets from the left, including threats. Once more, a clear message was delivered by the left: How dare anyone in Hollywood speak out against our President.
The same type of hate-filled messaging was delivered to black conservatives who had the courage to vocalize and publicize their convictions. The same people who rightly rallied around those courageous enough to speak up for civil rights in the 60s were suddenly trying their best to keep other blacks from speaking up for their conservative views in the 2010s.
Even on Facebook, I and others were practically accosted for writing posts and posting links to articles that were less-than-flattering of the Adminstration's response to Benghazi, the facts about our economic recovery and FEMA's response to Hurricane Sandy. One poster wrote sarcastically about how apparently I and others thought the President was a "Muslim bastard," while another defended the Administration's response to Hurricane Sandy when I compared the response to Katrina. Although I didn't mention the President even once in my post about the response to Sandy, the person responded that I was just trying to make the President look bad. Interestingly, those in New York and New Jersey themselves are comparing the slow response to Hurricane Sandy to the response after Katrina. Another liberal friend on Facebook claimed that racism was the reason why people weren't supporting President Obama.
Another Facebook friend posted a picture on Election Day indicating that she "Voted for Democrats." This was the same Facebook friend who derided me in an e mail a couple of months ago for "liking" something on Facebook that she felt didn't represent the fair and reasonable person she had always found me to be. And yet, she was proud that she only voted for those who are members of one political party, not the candidate or the issues? If this isn't hypocracy at its worst, I don't know what is.
In the 1960s, it became politically correct to fight against the government. Today, it has become politically correct to attack anyone who says anything against the government.
The reason why I and others wrote posts on Facebook or posted links was to inform Americans about issues that were not being covered by the national news media fairly and thoroughly. With 23 million Americans struggling to find work, 40-some months of 8%+ unemployment and an economy that has clearly not recovered, one would think that coverage of the economy would have dominated every evening newscast in the months leading up to the election. In the past, the news media would dive deeper into these issues, helping to put them into context for the average American. Instead, as I pointed out in an earlier blog, the mainstream evening news most often focused on anti-Republican issues, while investing precious minutes of a newscast on such important topics such as Rosie O'Donnell taking an aspiran that saved her life or the death of Phyllis Diller -- instead of probing more deeply into our nation's economic or debt woes.
Has the media coverage been biased? A study from the Pew Research Center discovered that 19% of the coverage of President Obama was positive, while 30% was negative. In comparison, only 15% of the coverage of Romney was positive, while 38% was negative.
Interestingly, though, up until before the President's abysmal performance in the first debate in early October, just one month before the election, news media coverage of the President was twice as positive as it was towards Romney. Prior to that debate, 22% of the coverage of the President was positive, compared to just 11% for Romney. This means that for months on end, when the vast majority of voters were making decisions about whom they would vote for, the coverage was twice as positive for the President as it was for the challenger, even though millions were out of work, millions more were forced into poverty and in some months more Americans went on disability than actually found a job.
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2012/11/02/study-romney-obama-both-get-negative-coverage
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/study-msnbc-had-more-negative-coverage-of-romney-than-fox-had-toward-obama/
Until the news media begin covering this President, the two major parties and the issues facing Americans thoroughly and equitably, Republicans will not have any chance at retaking the White House. Until fairness returns to journalism, Americans will only be given the news the media want us to learn.
Until fairness returns, it will be up to bloggers like myself, and Americans like you, to hold this Administration accountable and to let other Americans learn the truth about what is truly going on in our country. Twitter, Facebook and our blogs will become the source of news for Americans who want to learn all the news that's fit to print, to borrow from the slogan of the New York Times that clearly no longer applies to that newpaper or to the majority of media outlets in America.
Sadly, no one else is going to do it but us. We must fight just as valiantly and tirelessly as those who fought for civil rights in the 1960s. This time, though, we'll be fighting for the soul and the future of the America we love so dearly.
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