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The press in 2013 is so much worse than in 2008

The press in 2013 is so much worse than in 2008

A reader forwarded me the link to this Michael Barone article from October 11, 2008 (the day before the first post at Legal Insurrection), The Coming Obama Thugocracy:

I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your  neighbors,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “I want you to talk to them  whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue  with them and get in their face.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot  more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up.

Read the full article, it was prescient, and it brings back forgotten events, like this one:

That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign emails, did when  conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program in  Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama’s relationship with unrepentant  Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge  papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago — papers that were closed off  to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.

Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest  emails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example. We  will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.

Kathleen Parker demonstrates that nothing has changed since Barone’s article,  Why the ‘threat’ on Bob Woodward matters:

This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger…

And, as has become customary, officials are using the Woodward spat to distract attention. As Woodward put it: “This is the old trick  . . . of making the press . . .  the issue, rather than what the White House has done here.”

One difference between 2008 and 2013 is that in 2008 the press was merely cheerleading for Obama.

Today, the press is Obama’s enforcer, swiftly turning against a legendary journalist like Bob Woodward who dug out facts which endangered, in ever so slight a way, Obama’s power.

The press itself has become the greatest threat to freedom of the press.

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Comments

…and a compliant media could ensure that this might not be just a fantasy http://www.theagedp.com/?p=7134

casualobserver | March 2, 2013 at 8:15 pm

Worse than the behavior of “fellow” journalists to immediately jump to the defense of the WH by trashing the man who they envision themselves as being (Woodward)is the shallowness of their supportive words. Without any knowledge of the 30 minute verbal tirade, they’ve concluded why happened and how Woodward received it by a few words in an email. Nevermind that other journalist and advisors (Lanny Davis) with much more experience are stepping forward to offer similar experiences. They still are hell bent on trashing.

MSM journalists have become Hopium addicts. They need to write less and attend more meetings. For about 18 years, apparently.

Okay. Okay. We all know it. Now, WT… are we going to do about it? How do we fight it? How do we change it? What’s our plan? I feel like we’re running in circles. Frustrated. So. Very. Frustrated.

Time for an LI convention. Put our heads together. Find answers.

    Count me in. If you make in Palm Springs I can also see my other grandkids.

    x 1000

    We know it’s a problem. How do we solve the problem? A major change is needed now, what do we need to do to get there? I’m at a loss. Are conservatives always destined to have this problem with the press in perpetuity?

    It’s going to be someone, or a group of someones, more clever than I!

    LI convention: I’d attend. How about Ohio before the 2014 election? before 2016? I’ll bring some ammo to share.

The press is not just a threat to their own freedom, but to that of every American. The key question is – how can you effect change without posing a threat to the freedom of the press?

    How? Come up with a new business plan based on new business realities.
    Their old plan has failed. They know it and don’t care because it still gives them the voice they need to keep low information voters (sheep) in the dhimicrat fold. They don’t mind spending their fortunes to continue dog-paddling for Teh Won because they don’t care anymore about their personal futures. It’s a belief system, ironically, for statist secularists.

      Once an effective business plan is prepared, put it into effect – either by purchasing the guts of something rundown but restorable, or building anew. If it were a city, rebuild it if it were Indianapolis but tear it down and salvage it for parts if it were Detroit.

It’s consistent with the trend of concentration and centralization of power.

Consider, for example, the persecution of Aaron Swartz and the firing of Derek Khanna; the imposition of regulations that favor large businesses via economies of scale; the revolving door between Big Government and Big Business; crony-capitalist sweetheart deals to partisan bundlers; etc.

A lapdog media fits right into that framework.

The press itself has become the greatest threat to freedom of the press.

As capitalists are the greatest threat to capitalism, those on top try to stabilize their position and punish those who rock the boat. Today’s largest companies, media included, prefer stability to freedom.

Obama’s e-mail to supporters about WGN-AM’s airing of Stanley Kurtz on-air forum

http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2008/08/obamas_email_to.php

This is a much worse situation than most of us even here realize.

Many of us now only foresaw in 2008 exactly what is happening now, but took Obama’s “citizen security force” at it’s words. This is not mere intolerance for dissent. It is part of a very deliberate, broad plan to destroy our way of life. It is called the Cloward-Pevin plan, and it is being executed as a follow-up to the Alinsky plan that has worked so well. We are in a world of hurt, and Obama will prove to be the nightmare so many of us knew he would be.

Our biggest problem is the “Boehner-Cantor Dumbsh-t” plan, which is operates to a level of such stupidity as to actually work for Obama.

Our only hope is rabid push back: both to the fake news media and to the GOP. Massive boycotts must take effect, both of the news and entertainment media, and especially of General Electric (NBC, MSNBC). If the boycotts don’t occur, prepare yourselves for a very horrible change in your way of life. In other words, imagine the TSA experience everyday, except not at the airport. And if anyone really believes this blog — or any other — will have Internet access so as to exist within a year or two, on behalf of our country, I urge you to pull your head out of your rear end.

Kathleen Parker’s most worrisome point (in her view) was this: That in today’s internet and new media environment, the White house can simply bypass the Press and go straight to the people.

Isn’t that what Ronald Reagan did?

In her worldview, the gatekeepers are needed to vette and disseminate the Government message, so that the government itself did not control the message. Does this make any sense at all? Why not let the message go directly to the people who can then vette it for themselves.

Oh wait, that is what the new media does. I see now. How silly of me to think that a Main Stream media commentator would understand or believe that we could vette the White House messages ourselves; The unwashed, unthinking, and ignorant masses. /sarc

“This too, shall pass.”

Sooner or later another Republican will occupy the White House. When that happens the media will suddenly remember they like to “speak truth to power” and expose government corruption.

Laura Castellano | March 3, 2013 at 1:37 am

Jim Jones’ followers used to use the same tactics. I’m telling you, these guys were separated at birth.

The difference between 2008 and now is that now they know what they can get away with.

In 2008, being idealistic leftist ideologues, the press truly believed in “hope ‘n’ change” and that Obama could self-correct and learn on the job despite his complete lack of experience, accomplishment, or ever having to work with others cooperatively.

Today, after four years of covering for him constantly, they understand they can ignore even huge blunders like Benghazi, and no one with a big enough megaphone calls them on it. Fox is marginalized in the pop culture and no one else has anywhere near the audience.

They are unrestrained in their mendacity now, and practiced in the mechanics of it.

The Antonio Gramsci school of gradualism, that Saul Alinsky followed is working people. That gradualsim is also know as “transformational Marxism”.

“So subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes”, as was stated. It works!

As Professor J, so rightfully pointed out, The press in 2013 is so much worse than in 2008, just wait until 2014 through 2016.

“You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”..

The pile on in remarks of the Parker piece was straight out of the Alinsky playbook from the bowels of Chicago. When this mob first started operating in 2008 I thought it was about ideology and the punk journalists chasing Obama’s huckster show were part and parcel of the true belief. Then I thought it was money that the journo-listers were chasing for scoops and jobs with big media to be commentators and talking heads. Now I think it is fear. They are afraid of these goons in the White House. Newspapers and big media are dying off because they lie and kiss the floor Obama walks on. In trying to please they have killed off their own industry because no one wants their slavering content with the “Kick Me” sign on their back. Time and Newsweek have bit the dust not because of technology but because of their idiotic content.

Obama is the product of radical anti-noetic radicalism – basically, he has a lot of unresolved anger. When facts come out about the state of the nation they are waylaid by an emotional MSM. Emotion is key. Stir up – campaign – the people into the same rage felt by Obama, Holder and the Progressive left. Facts, like Ambassadors, are often left to fend for themselves.

If it wasn’t for the internet and sites like LI, it would be much, much worse.

[…] Legal Insurrection says today’s press is worse than 2008 […]