
 |
|
July 2, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person
Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya
July 1, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken
The Kosher Gourmet
by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts
June 30, 2009
Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?
Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief
June 29, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'
Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas
June 26, 2009
Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain
Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law
June 25, 2009
Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip:
Everything's Relative
June 24, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity
The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun
June 23, 2009
Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin
Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect
June 22, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm
N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?
June 19, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect
Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity
June 18, 2009
Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip:
Everything's Relative
June 17, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …
June 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel
Richard Z. Chesnoff: Palestinians: Never Missing an Opportunity …
June 15, 2009
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'
Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed
June 12, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big
Caroline B. Glick:
Obama's High Commissioner
June 11, 2009
Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President
Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers
Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos
June 10, 2009
Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world
The Kosher Gourmet
by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste
June 9, 2009
Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?
June 8, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?
Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past
Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?
June 5, 2009
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams
Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth
June 4, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock
The Kosher Gourmet
by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette
June 3, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?
Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action
June 2, 2009
Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Sept. 5, 2008
/ 5 Elul 5768
Media sharks out for amniotic fluid
By
Diana West
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Alas, we have just passed another marker on the way down. That's "we" as in "We, the people," and that's "down" as in "glug, glug."
This marker will stand as a testament to the savage zeal with which our mainstream media gentlemen (hah) and gentlewomen (double hah) of the Fourth Estate, cosseted darlings of the Free World standing ever-vigilant to ensure that truth will out (hah hah hah) have sunk their teeth into the Palin family.
What started on or about Labor Day and has continued ever since, is what's known as a media "feeding frenzy," a condition of non-abating bloodlust for political prey (usually conservative political prey) that is strikingly similar to the agitated state of piranhas in a tank at feeding time. Top McCain strategist Steve Schmidt recently told Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz that this was the worst feeding frenzy he'd ever seen. I agree and if I might flash some old-timer credentials I covered the GOP convention in 1988 when Dan Quayle was the bait and Don Kowet, then-media critic for the Washington Times, typed out the phrase "feeding frenzy," giving it a new and enduring currency. In Schmidt's interview with Kurtz, which Kurtz described as "extraordinary" and "emotional," Schmidt explained what it was like to be on the receiving end such an attack.
"The campaign has been inundated by hundreds and hundreds of calls from some of the most respected reporters and news organizations," Schmidt said. "Many reporters have called the campaign and have apologized for asking the questions and said, `Our editors are making us do this, and I am ashamed.'"
What Schmidt went on to relate explains why. The questions have come in, wave after wave, asking, as Kurtz wrote, "whether (Sarah) Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid has been tested, and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage."
More questions: Is Sarah Palin the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old born with Downs syndrome, and is her 17-year-old daughter Bristol the mother? Will Trig Palin's birth certificate be made available to the media? Exactly when last April did Sarah Palin go into labor, and did her contractions increase or decrease as she traveled home from Texas to an Alaskan hospital to give birth? And about eldest son, Track Palin, who serves in the Army and is about to deploy to Iraq: Is he a drug addict?
But just think: It was only last week that Barack Obama not typing up his acceptance speech on a computer but instead, as one big league paper put it, "crafting it by hand on a yellow legal pad" passed as news. So what happened to jolt the media from its Obama-PR snooze? The answer is Sarah Palin, rising like Venus on a King Crab Shell, her shiny political luster suddenly casting shadows over the Election Day apotheosis of media deity Barack Obama. In other words, last week's media torpor and this week's journalistic wilding are part of the same phenomenon: the media's uncontainable passion to elect Barack Obama.
I say this having mentally stacked the questions the media have already asked Palin in two days intrusive and pointless questions against the glaringly obvious questions the media have never asked Obama in two years. Schmidt noted that "the media is asking more questions about Palin's pregnant daughter" than about Tony Rezko, the Chicago fixer and Obama patron recently convicted on corruption charges, but that's just the first item on a long list of passes the media have given Obama, passes on vital matters of character, judgment and political belief.
These range from the media's protective hesitation on his long-term relationship with former Weather Underground leader William Ayers, to their near-total absence of interest in his recent campaign choice for Muslim outreach, a young man with affiliations to not one, but four organizations with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
(The man, Mazen Asbahi, resigned in early August after one article about him appeared in the Wall Street Journal. A national security source of mine is still shaking his head in disbelief over ensuing media disinterest in this shocking story.)
More recently, Daniel Pipes put together a must-read survey of attitudes toward Obama throughout the Islamic world there is a widespread assumption that Obama would make a pro-Islamic president despite equally widespread confusion over his official status in Islam which would provide any Obama campaign reporter with plenty of material on which to base a discerning interview on the long-term strategic implications of this reality.
But no one, and I mean no one, is taking the bait. And certainly not now. Not when a conservative Republican woman's amniotic fluid is in the water.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
| BUY DIANA'S JUST RELEASED BOOK ... |
| at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.) by clicking HERE. |
|
JWR contributor is a columnist for The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Archives
© 2008, Diana West
|