I think it will be very hard for any scandal to stick. The media and the rest of the left have been throwing too much BS at Bush for 5 years.
They've tried to make everything into a Bush scandal so their credibility is gone.
Bush could probably be caught with a dead boy in his bed and nobody would believe it.
After 'Fake but Accurate' there's really no place left to go.
Given the now small and ever-shrinking credibility of the MSM, will they ever be able to make anything really stick again?
It used to be that you'd assume what was in the press was true until you had very good reason to belive otherwise. For me, and I think for many other folks, 2004 has turned that on its head. I now assume whatever I hear in the MSM about anything is a lie, or at best a half-truth, until I have a good reason to believe otherwise. This goes triple for anything negative said about the environment, the USA, Christians, Republicans, or President Bush.
I don't say that because I'm some sort of partisan zealot. I voted Dem or independent most of my life, and I'm not a Christian. It's just my observation and experience. I suspect I'm not alone.
Very good analyses. I will only say this for now: Watergate showed that the mass media can bring down a President. "Rathergate" showed that somebody else, e.g., a blogger, can bring down the mass media.
I must mention also that it was under Nixon and Agnew that the Left-Wing bias of the media first began to be a major issue. E.g., a book was written at the time, "The Left-Leaning Antenna". (The _style_ of that!) It has just now occured to me that the Watergate imbroglio was the media's way of derailing such criticism. But it's coming back, in force. And the more the media try to cook up another Watergate, the more their bias is revealed. Trying to undermine the President during a War for our survival throws their patriotism into question as well.
Maor: Moderately supportive, yeah... but then again, there's a small but loud number of Senators who are out to 'prove' that they 'don't take orders from the White House' (paraphrases, both), at least if their attitudes remain similar to the ones I saw in 2001-2002.
They've tried to make everything into a Bush scandal so their credibility is gone.
Bush could probably be caught with a dead boy in his bed and nobody would believe it.
After 'Fake but Accurate' there's really no place left to go.
It used to be that you'd assume what was in the press was true until you had very good reason to belive otherwise. For me, and I think for many other folks, 2004 has turned that on its head. I now assume whatever I hear in the MSM about anything is a lie, or at best a half-truth, until I have a good reason to believe otherwise. This goes triple for anything negative said about the environment, the USA, Christians, Republicans, or President Bush.
I don't say that because I'm some sort of partisan zealot. I voted Dem or independent most of my life, and I'm not a Christian. It's just my observation and experience. I suspect I'm not alone.
Very good analyses. I will only say this for now: Watergate showed that the mass media can bring down a President. "Rathergate" showed that somebody else, e.g., a blogger, can bring down the mass media.
I must mention also that it was under Nixon and Agnew that the Left-Wing bias of the media first began to be a major issue. E.g., a book was written at the time, "The Left-Leaning Antenna". (The _style_ of that!) It has just now occured to me that the Watergate imbroglio was the media's way of derailing such criticism. But it's coming back, in force. And the more the media try to cook up another Watergate, the more their bias is revealed. Trying to undermine the President during a War for our survival throws their patriotism into question as well.
Maor: Moderately supportive, yeah... but then again, there's a small but loud number of Senators who are out to 'prove' that they 'don't take orders from the White House' (paraphrases, both), at least if their attitudes remain similar to the ones I saw in 2001-2002.