15 Minutes

Last week a radio host I listen to on the weekends got his 15 minutes (actually much more) of national fame. James T. Harris was on just about every cable news talk show around, having to explain himself for two things. One, begging; a word he wishes he had replaced; John McCain to "take it to Obama", two, for the offense of being black and not supporting Barack Obama.

How bad did it get for him? Death threats, thousands of angry e-mails, some rather disgusting cartoons. Follow the link to the comments on his National Conversation Blog and see how he was treated.

Or, watch some of the YouTube video's of him on CNN.

Now comes Joe the Plumber's turn "in the barrel". Joe's crime was that he asked a question that Barack Obama gave the wrong answer to. Now, Joe's getting his tax records looked at, his license (or lack of) checked out by the media.

Everyone is focusing on Joe. There are rumors that some remenant of the Keating 5 planted him at the Obama walk around, or that Fox News had him there as a plant.

The conspiracy theories from the left are laughable. It doesn't matter if "Joe the Plumber" was planted by Keating left-overs, coached by Karl Rove, paid by Fox News, and was the love child of Rush Limbaugh, it was OBAMA who answered the question. Barack was the one who said he wanted to "spread the wealth"; through higher taxes.

No matter what Joe did or asked, he couldn't force "The One" to give that answer, unless of course there is some right wing thought machine out there that can plant those answers in Obama's head. If they had that technology, I'm sure Obama would have been on the debate claiming that Karl Marx was his idol, and that socialism is good for America.

Read The Full Post!

Taking Aim At Obama?

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post spent a good chunk of today's "Media Notes" column looking at the treatment of the press towards Barrack Obama, and found that for the most part he's been given a pass by them until recently. He also points out that many stories about Obama failed to gain traction the first time around, or got little coverage for weeks.

While Obama's folks claim this just isn't true, the Center for Media and Public Affairs studied newscasts from ABC, NBC and CBS and found that 83% of the stories about Obama from December 16th-January 27th were "positive" stories, while only 53% about Hillary Clinton fell into that category.

The same study found that; and this has to bug liberals; Fox News has been the most balanced outlet for news about candidates. It has also had the best coverage of actual positions, instead of the beauty pagent aspect of the election.

The previous study by CMPA (link is a PDF file) found similar results in the period from October 1st through December 15th, with Fox being the "fair and balanced" news outlet, having a 50/50 split on positive and negative stories on all candidates, and the most substance on issues.

The CMPA study doesn't look into newspapers, but with the exception of the Chicago papers little coverage nationwide has been given to the Tony Rezko trial that starts today. And even in the Chicago papers much more attention is being paid to Rezko's dealings with Governor Blagojevich than connections to Obama. This though, should be expected, since the focus of the trial is on the "Pay for Play" system that appeared to be in effect at the Governors office.

That could start changing as the Rezko trial gets underway, as it's widely thought that a number of witnesses will mention Obama in their testimony. It will be interesting to see the next CMPA study of positives and negatives and if the trial affects the newscasts.

Read The Full Post!