Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Birther Explosion: If the Media Covers It, It’s News

For media watchers, the dramatic escalation of the ‘birther’ story is a fascinating study in the continued capacity of the traditional media to steer the national discourse…

We’ll know we’ve reached a tipping point (still far off) when the media hypes something, the online commentariat hypes something else, and the latter becomes the center of national attention.

Topics: media, obama, birther, birth-certificate

Friday, July 24, 2009

White Cop, Black Professor, Bi-Racial President: An Explosive Media Combination

Questioning the media’s priorities is a full time occupation for online denizens - and an undeniably important one, as media coverage shapes our views. The complex tensions between the press and online commentariat, the symbiosis between content producers and consumers, newsmakers and opinion-makers, the gradual morphing of one into the other, these are the defining characteristics of the modern political era. In that vein, it’s worth looking at the story of the moment, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr…

Topics: obama, race, gates, matt-lauer, racial-profiling

FNC News Break: Prez Blames Media for Cops Remark Dustup

Fox News Channel’s Mike Emanuel has a significant new development in the Obama vs. Cambridge Police story. Evidently White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told him that President Obama regrets they way the media has reacted to his pronouncement that the police acted “stupidly,” despite also claiming he doesn’t know all the facts behind the Henry Louis Gates incident.

Topics: obama, gates

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Predictably, Obama’s One Answer on Race Is Getting More Attention than Health Reform

Summed up on Twitter by Howard Kurtz: GMA and Today both led with Obama slamming Gates arrest. Health care? Zzzz

Topics: media, obama, health-care, race, profiling, health-reform

Chuck Todd: Obama Knows Too Much about Health Care

Good God, people. The curtain has been pulled back on President Obama.  Love him or hate him most people now realize he is not a prophet or a messiah.  Chuck Todd’s comments on Morning Joe this AM regarding Obama’s Wednesday night health care presser are sooooooooo February or March.

Topics: obama, health-care

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Is Afghanistan Getting Sufficient Coverage?

Is Afghanistan getting the appropriate level of coverage, considering the rapidly deteriorating situation there?

Topics: obama, iraq, bush, afghanistan

Monday, July 20, 2009

I Really Don’t Know What to Say about This

Did the President of the United States really say that many African-Americans are more fundamentally rooted in the American experience?  He did.  And evidently Anderson Cooper from CNN, the person who conducted the interview, seemed to be pretty okay with it.  I find it insulting, myself:

Topics: obama, anderson-cooper, african

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Palin-Mania: How Goldman Sachs Robbed Us While We Obsessed About Sarah Palin

I don’t post with the aim of being contrarian, but lately I’ve found myself swimming against the tide of Democratic/progressive conventional wisdom. I questioned the strategy of elevating Rush Limbaugh’s profile and engaging him from the White House podium; I criticized President Obama’s Cairo speech for being tepid on women’s rights; and I argued that two decades of unmitigated attacks against Hillary Clinton - some clearly sexist - should compel us to treat Sarah Palin like a human being, not a human piñata. Not surprisingly, I’ve encountered resistance to those posts in some quarters, ranging from well-reasoned arguments to the typical quota of mindless insults from online trolls. But the reaction to my Clinton/Palin piece was the most heated I’ve seen since early 2008, when I represented Hillary Clinton online and defended her on pro-Obama sites…

Topics: obama, palin, goldman-sachs, clinton

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Obama Rules Out Bailout for National League: “We’re Out of Money”

Unforced error.  The laughter seems misplaced:

Topics: obama, of, money, out

Monday, July 13, 2009

Was Obama’s Africa Visit ‘Unprecedented’?

Topics: obama, cnn, africa