If you go to Google.com's news section and put in the search words "McCain Hagee" you will get 483 hits as of 4:00 am on 3.4.2008. If you put in the words "Obama Farrakhan" you will get 1869 hits as of the same time. Now, of course, the McCain-Hagee story has not been around as long, but the fact that the story is not getting the play that the other story is getting is interesting.
There are a lot of reasons, but one reason may be that the media is scared to point out the extremism of some "Christian" ministers because of backlash from the right-wing noise machine. After all, such ministers support the neo-con's idea of a war with Iran; they have often come out in favor of extending Bush's tax cuts; and they are help stoke up the base on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. Consequently, attacks on nut-jobs like Hagee for his anti-Catholic remarks and bigotry carry more risk of backlash from readers and viewers as the noise machine revs up in support of such characters.
Attacking Farrakhan, however, doesn't carry the same risk. There is no one on the left that is going to defend Louis Farrakhan and his attacks on the Jewish faith, or at least, not very many. Thus, no one is going to be out there telling readers and viewers that media stories on Farrakhan are somehow unfair.
The book The Way to Win talks about the "Freak Show." The Freak Show is the way the media covers politics and how it favors the right. The Freak Show helped elect George Bush and almost brought down the Clinton Presidency. The Freak Show focuses on personality, not policy, and magnifies every supposed "character" flaw of Democrats while ignoring such "character" flaws of Republicans.
The difference in coverage so far of the Hagee endorsement of McCain, which McCain sought out, compared to the endorsement of Obama by Farrakhan, which he Obama didn't seek out and didn't want, is an example of the Freak Show in action.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment