Media's guilt plays well for Obama and McCain

By John Kass
Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
July 23, 2008

Palestinian artist Walid Ayyub makes the final touches on a portrait for US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at his shop in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama flew into Jordan on Tuesday, stepping into the minefield of Middle Eastern politics to launch the public leg of his high-risk international campaign tour.(AFP/Abbas Momani)

The Drudge Report ran a juicy item about the fact that only one reporter showed up to cover Republican John McCain at a campaign stop in New Hampshire the other day.

Just one.

The lonely print reporter from the Manchester Union Leader stood on the tarmac, waiting for McCain's plane to land. McCain, obviously upset at being dissed by yet another meager media throng, didn't stop to chat.

"Did you ever notice that when John McCain is on TV he's always grumpy?" asked a colleague in the cafeteria who whispered, lest others denounce him for Barackian Thought Crimes.

"McCain's always made to look old and angry, a curmudgeon. And Barack Obama? He's always seen as presidential, cool, smiling, shaking hands," whispered the guy.

I believe this phenomenon is called liberal bias. And the country has caught on.

Since I mentioned it a few days ago, newspapers, Web sites, radio and TV news have been full of stories about media bias and outraged denials, recrimination and guilt. Always the guilt. Obama's people know we're guilty.

Guilt is what McCain is playing on, too, trying to shame journalists with a new video with dueling sound tracks about the Media Love that Dares Speak Barack, featuring MSNBC host Chris Matthews shrieking that when he hears Obama talk, a tingle runs down his leg.

Predictably, McCain blew it by selecting lame songs for his video. He should have used "Barry Angel" sung to the old dusty "Johnny Angel" or my personal favorite, "Oh-Bama" sung to the 1958 hit, "Oh, Donna," back in the Route 66 days when McCain was young and not so old.

Yet has anyone noticed McCain's complaining? No.

Because Obama might again work out three times in one day—the recent subject of a story explaining how he stays so skinny and young—and we'd cover all aspects of his beauty, again, if there is tape. And jealous old John McCain tromps alone on tarmacs in the night.

McCain is now cast as the crabby uncle who visits and shrieks there's no gin in your house. He grabs the TV remote control, turns off the cartoons and forces the kids to watch the ancient Mesopotamia special on The History Channel.

Just hope the kids don't dare tell uncle that Iraq doesn't border Pakistan. He'll nuke them.

Meanwhile, the Democrat Obama is treated quite differently. He's the Mr. Tumnus of American politics, the gentle forest faun of Narnia, with throngs of reporters trembling to sit with him at tea and cakes, like the little girl in the C.S. Lewis story, as he plays the flute, chanting "We Are The Change We've Been Waiting For." And nobody laughs.

You don't laugh because you can't make fun of Obama. The ground would swallow you whole.

He's still busy fighting off throngs of reporters, a cast of thousands as urgent and impassioned as in those old Hollywood biblical epics. This situation continues on his overseas campaign trip. TV anchors were all but ululating (which has nothing to do with sex) at his approach, desperate for interviews after he sank that three-point shot in front of American troops and hit nothing but net.

Who needs foreign policy expertise when you're so cool, you risk a three-point shot and make it on camera?

And when reporters weren't arguing about getting access to his fact-finding-tour-campaign-commercial this week, they were tossing rose petals before him, so that his feet wouldn't touch the ground.

OK, I'm exaggerating about the roses. There are no rose petals left, because the media used them all up on Obama during his battle with the Clintons. I guess they'll have to use palm fronds now.

I hesitated to suggest this is because of liberal media bias, because the last time I said so, I was frightened and intimidated by the angry left blog Daily Kos, which has discovered that I'm not liberal. One Kos reader suggested that he'd read my column in the Tribune only "if the headline read 'Tribune Columnist Beaten to a Pulp.' "

How nice.

I didn't know Chicago Machine Democrats and their pals in the Illinois Republican Party were such devoted Kosmaniacs. Happily, one poster didn't want me dead. Just half dead and pulpy and ready to listen to reason.

Though we disagree, you've got to admire the Hard Left's restraint and tolerance for different views, as long as those views don't compel them to fantasize you've been beaten to a pulpy mass.

Yet pulpy or not, the thing is, reporters are generally biased toward Obama. The denials are getting old. Old as McCain. According to a Rasmussen poll, half of all Americans believe the media will favor Obama in their news coverage leading up to the November presidential election.

Sadly, that half of Americans is wrong once again.

Because the election is over, isn't it? Obama is president, all we're waiting for is the transcending, when a beam of light shines on Chris Matthews' face, carrying him to the heavens, smiling, that tingle running down his leg.

jskass@tribune.com