Did we mention Brent Bozell is a clown?
April 01, 2009 2:25 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Just making sure.
But let's highlight another part of his recent column, where the tightly wound conservative writer explains that it's because of media bias that Obama enjoys sky-high job approval ratings, why very few voters blame the Obama administration for today's economic woes, and why the number of people who think America is heading in the right direction has tripled under the Democrat.
One word: media bias. (Well okay, two words.)
Bozell decided the latest WashPost poll wasn't accurate and the poll itself was part of an elaborate ruse by the media to shower Obama with good news. Or something like that.
So Bozell goes to work and does his best to show that Americans don't really support Obama. What's really going on is that the Post and the pollsters have stacked the deck. And Bozell can prove it. Like the part where the Post/pollsters asked Americans who was to blame for the downturn.
Watch Bozell in action [emphasis added]:
"How much of the blame do you think [fill in the blank] deserves for the country’s economic situation?" The choices were corporations, banks, consumers, the Bush team, and the Obama administration. There’s a built-in pro-Obama bias in there already: assigning blame to Obama for the current economy when he’s been in office for nine weeks just seems harsh to most people. But just because they (correctly) don’t blame him as the primary cause for our current woes, this doesn’t mean for a second that the public endorses his "solutions," as the Post suggests.
Bozell claims the Post read too much into the poll results because Americans never said they endorsed Obama's "solutions" the way the daily claimed. But here's the thing--the Post never claimed the public endorsed Obama's solutions. The world "solution" does not appear in the Post article and does not appear anywhere in the poll itself. Bozell just made that part up. And then put it in quotes.
In an effort to ridicule the Post's journalism, Bozell made stuff up. Ironic, don't you think?
UPDATE: If anything, the Post polling article that Bozell attacks raised doubts about whether Americans supported Obama's solutions/initiatives:
Despite the increasing optimism about the future, the nation's overall mood remains gloomy, and doubts are rising about some of the administration's prescriptions for the economic woes.
But Bozell ignores all that in order to weave his unique brand of conservative fiction.
Now that's some pretzel-twisted logic right there. I guess the only way Bozell thinks it would not have had a pro-Obama bias would have been if they simply didn't ask about Obama. Oh yeah, let me guess, that would have been biased towards Obama too.
Bozell really embodies everything that's wrong with the right-wingers and their obsession with the "liberal" media.
L. Bent Bozo the T*rd never let facts get in the way of his rant.
Why should he start now? He is one of the vast legion of otherwise unemployables living off the cottage industry of "left wing media bias." There is a fascinating account in "London Labor and the London Poor" about the scam artist who is collecting money to write a major tract against the liberal government. First he penned a brief pamphlet to get the attention of his benefactors. Now he is spending years on his magnum opus, collecting funds all the while to keep his work alive. Sound familiar?
"He does exactly for the conservatives what mediamatters does for the liberals."
You need to delete the word "exactly" there. Seriously. Political preferences aside, the MRC highlights Letterman's top 10 lists as evidence of media bias. MMfA has run some clunkers to be sure, but I can pick apart almost any day's items at MRC pretty easily.
April 1st, 2009, for instance:
Item 1:Matthews fawned over Bush, McCain and Romney as well. He's an equal-opportunity adulator.
Item 2:Is Obama's cited popularity among Europeans not accurate? Is it not relevant to his visit there? Is the dramatic difference between Obama's and Bush's popularity not a factor in how Obama is going to be evaluated? It's ludicrous to pretend that this has no bearing on his visit.
Item 3:Have there been any notable foreign visit missteps from Democratic presidents that ABC should have shown? I also note the qualifier of "unlucky" misstep, which places no real blame on the victim (and this despite Bush's shoulder-rub incident being anything but accidental, as opposed to trying to open a locked door or vomiting at an inopportune moment). And they made it clear that there was plenty of pressure on the Obamas, that sentiment could turn against them even though they're popular at the moment. That seems fair.
Item 4:I haven't watched the clip, but the song might be a bit over the top. Fluff pieces about first ladies are pretty consistent in this manner, though, and it's not like Laura Bush or Nancy Reagan didn't get similar treatment.
Item 5:Another fluff piece. After eight years of Bush, people are excited about the change. How does that demonstrate bias? Should there be a sudden end to fluff pieces now, to convince the MRC that there isn't any bias going on, or what?
Item 6:They don't comment on the comments from "others" as listed in the headline, only from Limbaugh. Whether Limbaugh was referencing the dropping of the "war on terror" phrase or not, it still comes off as a pretty transparent excuse to make a lesbian reference. This item may contain the only valid point of the day, that Schuster was off-base in claiming that the comment was about Democratic women politicians.
Item 7:An interview on "The Daily Show" is supposed to prove bias...how? It's a comedy show. It's not supposed to be straight reporting, so what does "bias" even mean here? Like I said about Letterman above, anyone making jokes about Republicans supposedly indicates bias in the media. Utter, absolute absurdity.
This isn't to say that they don't ever highlight liberal bias. But you simply can't compare the legitimacy of the two sites. Validity of complaints seems to be merely a luxury to Bozell, while forwarding the notion of a liberal bias by any means necessary appears to be the main goal. It's also important to note that MMfA spends more effort on misinformation, which is more objective and doesn't require any conclusions to be made about the intent of the offender.
Brab, you're confusing the pan-flute guy with facts again. The only valid criticism these days is to make everything up out of whole cloth (or, with the economy the way it is now, three-quarter cloth).
The right wingnuts only trust those who create their arguments from fancy. Those grounded in reality are biased toward reality, and, as we all know, reality has a liberal bias.