Dan

Calabrese

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April 27, 2009

NBC Won’t Criticize Obama, and Don’t You Try It, Either!

Guess who will now go into a full apoplectic seizure if you criticize the president of the United States. The mainstream media, that’s who! What a bizarre world we’re living in these days.

Yet to be determined is whether such absurd realities should scare us or merely amuse us. Always the optimist, I’m hoping for the latter, but when a major national media outlet is openly and shamelessly chastising people for daring to criticize the president, we’ve either got a serious problem on our hands or a tragic comedy unfolding.

In an astounding interview last week on MSNBC, Norah O’Donnell of NBC News went at Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will all guns blazing. The first part of the interview was the usual what-did-he-know-and-when-did-he-know-it idiocy about “torture.” But then the conversation shifted to Dick Cheney’s mere expressions of criticism of the Obama presidency. After playing a clip of Dick Cheney, discussing what foreign foes might do if they perceive America’s president to be weak, O’Donnell asked Liz Cheney:

“Did the (former) vice president just call the president a weak president?”

Liz Cheney explained, with remarkable patience, that her father is concerned about incidents like the one that saw Obama sit and listen to a 50-minute anti-American screed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega without saying a word to defend the U.S.

“Is that really appropriate, to call the current sitting president weak?” O’Donnell then asked.

When Liz Cheney tried again to explain that her father is expressing his concerns about, and disagreements with, Obama’s policies, O’Donnell pressed all the more:

“So Liz, what are you doing here? What’s the (former) vice president doing?”

Uh, expressing his opinion? Or as Liz Cheney put it: “When you see the current administration really making decisions that do have the potential to make us less safe, the vice president feels you do have an obligation not to be silent.”

At this point, O’Donnell trots out Dick Cheney’s approval ratings, which show that 21 percent of the country approves of him and 58 percent do not, and then asks:

“Is it possible that the American people have already made a judgment about who’s right on this issue? They voted for change. They don’t agree with the point of view of your father.”

So, according to Norah O’Donnell, if you’re not popular, it’s a scandal if you say what you think in public. Besides, O’Donnell explains, Cheney’s wrong! And really mean to Obama:

“The former vice president is now calling the sitting president a weak president. He essentially said he’s concerned that we’re no longer going to ask terrorists tough questions, which I’m sure our people are going to ask terrorists tough questions.”

Liz Cheney hit that one out of the park, asking in response: “But will the terrorists answer the questions?”

But even then, O’Donnell wasn’t finished trying to get to the bottom of this scandal, demanding to know: “Did former Vice President Cheney get permission from President Bush to speak out like this?”

“He doesn’t need permission,” Liz Cheney replied.

“But do they talk regularly?” O’Donnell asked, as if their being in communication would prove something nefarious.

“They do,” Liz Cheney replied, surely wondering at this point, What the hell is this idiot talking about?

Granted, this is MSNBC, which has become quite the Obama cheerleading squad. But Norah O’Donnell is not one of MSNBC’s left-wing squawk show hosts. She is supposedly a serious correspondent with NBC News – a major outlet of the mainstream media.

You’ve heard of them? The media? The people who are always telling us how it’s their job to hold public officials “accountable”? So when, in their eyes, did it become a condemnable scandal when a citizen of the United States criticizes the policies of the president?

Oh, right. January 20, 2009, right around noon.

One way to view this is that media’s shameless descent into shilling for the president represents an imminent danger to the republic, as you can’t feel all that secure under the First Amendment when the media themselves – who are supposed to be its primary beneficiaries – attack you for exercising the rights it supposedly ensures.

My view, at this point at least, is that this is a hilarious and pathetic joke. Media that employ the likes of Norah O’Donnell are merely turning themselves into laughingstocks and forfeiting what little credibility they have left. Others will step forward, operating through new media outlets that are not compromised and are not afraid, to do the job that NBC News is no longer willing to do.

I hope I’m right about that. Even if you are a supporter of President Obama, you should hope so too.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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