A Tale of Two Campaigns

This interview is becoming a legendary piece of viral. It is also a great microcosm of the way in which the media treats the two campaigns. In it, Senator Biden is visibly rude, condescending and dismissive. The audience can decide if the questions were fair or appropriate however they were no less appropriate than many of the things asked of Governor Palin by the likes of Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson and more recently Drew Griffin.

Now, imagine if Governor Palin had become this visibly rude during an interview. The MSM would have spent the next week analyzing whether she had the temperament to be on the ticket. The Obama campaign has frozen this station out as a result. Now, imagine all the news organizations that the McCain campaign would have frozen out if they had frozen out each one they thought was unfair to them. We would have a freeze out of the New York Times, NBC, and CNN (which sandbagged Governor Palin with a question taken totally out of context from a Byron York piece) just to get started. If the standard were simply tough questions they didn't like (which is apparently the Obama standard) then ABC and CBS would also be frozen out. In fact, if the criteria is something on the level of this interview, it's likely the McCain campaign would only talk to fawning bloggers.

This isn't the first time the Obama campaign has used thuggish and heavy handed tactics against its critics. On more than occasion, his campaign has coordinated efforts to silence his critics on Chicago radio stations. There have been other occasions of less dramatic heavy handed behavior. During the Kentucky primary, the campaign blamed their loss on Foxnews and cryptic and nefarious emails. In fact, the Obama campaign has proclaimed that without Fox News, they would have another three points. No one in the media has bothered to ask where the campaign would be without the rest of the fawning media. Can you imagine the media firestorm if the McCain campaign had proclaimed that they would be tied if only the media coverage were fairer?

Everytime the McCain campaign makes a spectacle of their distaste for the media, that is front page news. Both after the hit piece about John McCain and a lobbyist and after the hit piece on his wife, there was a media firestorm not only over the pieces themselves, but the McCain campaign's reaction. When the McCain campaign cut off the New York Times, that was the talk of the media for about a day. Yet, the MSM barely mentioned that the Obama campaign coordinated two separate efforts so that their supporters would disrupt an interview with Stanley Kurtz. Not only will the media not mention that the Obama campaign has cut off this television station, the media won't even discuss the interview that lead to the station being cut off.

Now, another media outlet has been frozen out for daring to ask questions that made the Vice Presidential candidate uncomfortable. Can you imagine the media firestorm if the McCain campaign pulled a similar move? That would be all they would be talking about. In fact, while this latest episode of thugocracy continues to go unnoticed, the MSM continues to have a field day with the amount of money that Governor Palin spent on clothes. The interview, the aftermath from it, and the media's lack of coverage is yet another microcosm into a media campaign in which the media has decided to stop being a watchdog and decided to become an advocate for one of the two candidates.