During a CNN weekly gathering of Washington-based television pundits in July 2004, Evan Thomas candidly noted in referring to biased reporting that the mainstream media wanted Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president, to win.
Thomas discussed how the media would portray Kerry and his running-mate, John Edwards, as “young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them … maybe 15 points.”
Thomas was the assistant managing editor for Newsweek magazine, owned by the Washington Post Co., and he was speaking as an epitome of a major media insider.
Less than eight weeks before the November vote, with the mainstream media firmly in Kerry’s corner, Dan Rather—then the news anchor for CBS evening news—dished out the fraudulent story on President George W. Bush shirking his duties while serving in the Texas Air National Guard.
Despite all that, Americans gave a second-term to the sitting president.
President Bush’s 2004 victory came with a three-point margin over Kerry. It should have been double digit since Kerry’s numbers reflected the glow of the media cheering for him, as Thomas had explained.
It is worth recalling the above as the same media, short of painting a halo around all the pictures of Barack Hussein Obama they print, have now gone The Full Monty—the 1997 British comedy with the cast of would-be male strippers—for their newest, favourite candidate.
It also merits remembering—since the mainstream media possesses a very selective memory in keeping with their liberal-left tilt—that Kerry, like Obama, was Europe’s preferred candidate.
The French particularly loved him for speaking in their tongue quite effortlessly, while the multilingual Teresa Heinz Kerry was pleasantly at home among worldly-wise Europeans.
But if the mainstream media pandering to Obama, as they did to Kerry in 2004, fails to deliver an election victory for the Democrats in November, no one should be surprised.
Though it is still summer, the average of daily tracking poll numbers show—even after the fawning coverage of Obama’s recent “world tour”—that the Democratic nominee and his Republican counterpart, John McCain, are separated by the margin of statistical error. In other words, virtually tied.
Folks in Middle America are realists. Middle America, besides geography, also refers to the American character—irrespective of ethnic origin—of being proud of a country built by the love and sacrifice of previous generations into the greatest power in history.
Middle Americans uncomplainingly run the daily routines of keeping America free, prosperous and strong. Theirs is a story of unfailing optimism, generosity, courage and romance.
They cheer for the underdog, and might lend their ears for a while when an unknown fake like Harold Hill from the musical favourite, The Music Man, comes along. But it is not long before they see through the likes of Hill in their midst.
They are grounded on values supported by common sense.
Their politics are well represented in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, on Fox television, and by conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh, as much as liberals may despise him.
Middle Americans, as such, will not long tolerate any Harold Hill-type fake, irrespective of how the mainstream media does the packaging, for their president.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
- Israel: Decades-old conflict not about to cease - Saturday November 24, 2012 at 1:56 pm
- The better man lost the U.S. election - Saturday November 10, 2012 at 9:16 am
- The puzzle in U.S. presidential elections - Saturday November 3, 2012 at 8:43 am
