Sean Hannity marks 2008 as the year of the death of journalism. But this could very well have been the year that journalism felt the thrill. Chris Matthews’s statement in February that Barack Obama’s speech made him feel a little ecstatic reflected the everyday view of the “mainstream” media. This election year, reporters weren’t reporting “news” so much as trying to sell something. Every story seemed to say, “You know you want Obama.”
Chris Matthews was named “Quote of the Year” for 2008 in the Media Research Center’s annual “Best of Notable Quotes” list of the year’s worst stories. The only quote that came close to Matthews in summing up a year of liberal sentiment was a bizarre post-election headline from Reuters: “Media Bias Largely Invisible in US Presidential Race.”
The “Obamagasm Award” went to Nancy Gibbs, Time’s senior writer responsible for obsequious pandering, for using her post-election cover story to compare Obama to Jesus Christ, only better: “Some princes are born in palaces . Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, from scraps of history and hope.”
An Obama critic withholding the Kool-Aid might see this line as a reference to Obama’s memoir being a combination of biographical fact and self-serving literary invention, as revealed by authors ranging from David Freddoso to Jerome Corsi. But no, Gibbs celebrated Obama’s victory as a mighty crusade to save America: “He won because, at a very dangerous time in the life of a still young country, more people than ever before rallied to try to save it.”
Even the presenters couldn’t resist the temptation to “save the country” by selling out Obama. NBC’s Brian Williams won the “Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award” for soft-spoken interviews for trying to support Michelle Obama identify the worst Republican lie about her husband: “What about these attacks got to you?” What angers you most about John McCain, Republicans? What is said about your husband, what you want to shout from the mountaintops, is it not true?”
Remember when Cindi McCain was asked this nonsense?
Hillary Clinton has also been vilified, most egregiously when she ended her long-spoiled campaign in June. The day after last grade, ABC’s Diane Sawyer won the “Media Hero Award” by linking Hillary’s presidential campaign to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ: “This woman, as we said, has developed a lifetime of determination and purpose. As someone said, “No thorns, no throne, no gall, no glory, no cross, no crown.” (The “someone” quoted was William Penn, who in 1669 wrote a book on Christianity and Quakerism titled “No Cross, No Crown”).
Liberal journalists, meanwhile, hated Gov. Sarah Palin from the moment she took the stage in Dayton, Ohio, as John McCain’s running mate. Chris Matthews won the “Half-Baked Alaska Award” for bashing Palin for insisting in October that comparing Palin to Hillary Clinton “is a comparison between an igloo and the Empire State Building!” Liberal reporters often assumed that anyone criticizing these saintly Democrats must be making things up sober. The New York Times’ Deborah Solomon won the “Damn These Conservatives Award” by trying to shame T. Boone Pickens for supporting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry in 2004. She asked if he regretted funding them , and when he replied “Why would I do that?” Solomon shot back, “Because it’s such an ugly chapter in American political history.” Boone protested, “Everything in those ads was true.” Solomon replied, “Really? I thought it was all made up.” So says a writer from that bastion of objective news, The New York Times.
But Solomon was no Bill Maher, who falls into his own category of cruelty. On his little HBO show in February, Maher won the “Crush Rush Award for Limbaugh Disgust,” delighting in PJ O’Rourke’s mockery of Rush Limbaugh’s former OxyContin addiction. Asked Maher: “Why couldn’t he have been the one yelling about it instead of Heath Ledger?” Maher’s HBO tirades also won the “Barbara Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Stupidity” as he criticized the Catholic Church as both a “child-abusing religious sect” and the “Stearns Bear of organized pedophilia.”
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann ran away with the “King George’s Madness” award for yelling at President Bush to “shut the fuck up” in May and attacking him for his “final outburst of self-indulgent nonsense.” (That pretty much describes the entirety of Keith’s not-so-special Bush-era comments). Olbermann also insisted that Bush was a “fascist” who “urinated on the Constitution.”
Until the convention season ended, MSNBC believed comments like these qualified Olbermann for “objective” anchor duties sitting next to a delighted Chris Matthews. It is also a summary of the past year for the media.
