Thought for Food

McCain Watch

On last Friday’s Democracy Now, I heard an interview with Salon.com writer Glenn Greenwald in which he spoke about what he has called “the media’s special relationship with John McCain.”

Basically, they love ‘em like a grandpappy. They’ve created a story about him in which he is the war hero, the yuk-a-minute straight-shooter, and “a Serious, Knowledgeable Foreign Policy Expert,” as Greenwald writes. He continues:

Evidence that reflects poorly on McCain’s foreign policy seriousness or character is actually suppressed or concealed because they think it can’t be newsworthy, because such evidence just can’t be true, by definition.

Case in point: his repeated “slips of the tongue” in the past couple months in which he said (four times!) that Iran is training Al Qaeda fighters — a wholly irresponsible statement for which he has no evidence.

But the media gives him the benefit of doubt: he meant to say Iraq, and therefore there’s nothing newsworthy there. They are not even considering the possibility that he is doing what got us into the Iraq fiasco in the first place: equating a terrorist group (a serious threat) with a sovereign nation (not a threat).

So I have decided to start recording evidence of McCain adulation in the mainstream media — because this stuff matters. Words matter. The MSM did not do Al Gore any favors in 2000; they fed into the theatre of the Wooden Wonk vs. the Former Alcoholic Who I’d Like To Have A Beer With, and it may have cost us a decent 21st century (to date).

And if you see some of this gushy (but sometimes subtle) pro-McCain langugage, please post it or email it me.

Then if he gets elected and the MSM wrings their hands and asks But Why? we will say, tumbl that, bitches!