It can be a powerful drug. I’ve seen many of my media friends swept off their feet by its incredible power and influence. Hopeium. Oh, the mere sight or sound of the junk can cause the most callous and caustic reporter to wither and melt like Nancy Pelosi during a free Botox party.

The first time the media heard Barack Obama use the phrase “Hope”, they were hooked.

It explains what caused NBC’s Chris Matthews to get the “thrill up going up my leg”, as Barack Obama spoke. It explains why ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and his wife cried on Inauguration Day. Maybe it explains what Evan Thomas of Newsweek was thinking when he proclaimed Obama is, “sort of god.” Here’s the full quote so you have the context:

I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.

Timothy Leary would love this. That’s some powerful stuff. High on hopeium.

The first step towards rehab is recognition. If you don’t KNOW you have a problem, how can you begin to solve it? This is where Scott Brown comes in. The new Senator from Massachusetts might have caused a few media people to drop the needle, flush the pills, or at least think about it. Paul Krugman, lib writer at the New York Times even said the other day, “I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama.” Wooooah! Calm down Paul, don’t go cold turkey on us! (more…)

The mainstream media’s headlong and heady descent into denigrating George W. Bush over the last decade signaled a dark moment in media history that has surely damaged American consciousness. Caught up in “Bush-bashing,” the MSM reached a critical turning point, and likely one of no return.

At times consciously and even triumphally, the media increasingly abused the traditional journalistic standards of independence and neutrality in favor of functioning as a virtual arm of the liberal Democratic Party. They took on, in effect, a new and disturbing identity.

So consumed by politics, power and status did the MSM become during this period that bashing the former president became standard media fare. This death by a thousand cuts proceeded unabashedly, unabatedly, and largely without challenge by Bush and his staff during his presidencies.

Jim A. Kuypers concluded as much in his study, Bush’s War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age, in which he meticulously documents how the agenda-driven and “anti-democratic” media not long after the 9/11 terror attacks began pervasively distorting the former president’s statements, failing to report critical parts of his speeches, and even “framing” (manipulating stories) to portray the president as an enemy.

Among countless examples: (more…)