Sigh. To the exasperation of reasonable people everywhere, the mainstream media are engaging in a sort of reverse-meta-swiftboating of General Wesley Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO forces now-turned-Obama-supporter.
It appears that in an interview on, um, "Face the Carnage"-or-some-other show, the Good General calmly, respectfully, and quite reasonably stated that the fact that, yes, John McCain was shot down, imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam 40 years ago, it's true, but get this (and try to keep up with me here) -- that very unfortunate set of facts does not necessarily qualify him to be the Leader of the Free World.
I'm including the video below (~6 minutes or so) so you can hear the context and understand that, unlike me, General Clark is not being snarky at all, but is simply responding to a very silly line of questioning from his interviewer, Bob Schieffer, who is simply aghast that Clark would be so presumptuous as to criticize Saint McCain's ability to lead the nation from anything other than a cockpit (!!!).
Seriously, though, speaking of General Clark:
the man's words speak for themselves. For my money, he is about the most
clear-thinking,
well-spoken person in politics today, and
his reasoning is perfectly, even empirically, sound: McCain is obviously a war hero who has made great sacrifices for his country, but it's disingenuous to pretend he has skills that
all other evidence indicates he doesn't.
Then watch Bob Schieffer get his back up over that one:
For Pete's sake, Bob, he ain't the baby Jesus!
And then watch CNN's Rick Sanchez raise the alarm as if Clark had been caught extorting funds from the local Cub Scout's Association:
This kind of inane, unprofessional, drama-queen nonsense is why I can't stand watching even the regular news any more - let alone the kind of cardinal journalistic transgressions that Fox News makes on an hourly basis.
I think the only real piece of information a reasonable person will take home from this story is about the ethics of the MSM as a whole:
In their world, if someone of stature says something that can sound inflammatory when taken out of context, then by God, they are going to take it out of context. And then milk the ensuing cacophany for all it's worth -- the substance of the story be damned.
Am I just being naive here? Aren't the people in the media supposed to be the grownups?
