While the political press finally begins to reconsider its approach of being "fair" to candidates rather than illuminating the truth, the right has begun to dismiss fact as an inevitable casualty of politics, the easier to excuse McCain's outright lying. Without mentioning any of his most consistent and outrageous lies, regarding say, Obama's tax plan or Palin's role in telling Congress absolutely nothing about the Bridge To Nowhere, Rich Lowry embraces the culture of conservative victimhood and argues that McCain's base just doesn't want him to win.
The press turned on McCain with a vengeance as soon as he mocked Barack Obama as a celebrity. Its mood grew still more foul when the McCain campaign took offense at Obama's “lipstick on a pig” jab. “The media are getting mad,” according to Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz. “Stop the madness,” urged Time’s Mark Halperin, exhorting his fellow journalists to fight back against the McCain campaign’s manufactured outrage.
The lipstick controversy indeed represented a silly bit of grievance-mongering. But had the Obama camp's tendentious interpretation of Bill Clinton's “fairy tale” put-down as a racial slight generated similar push-back from the media? Had Obama's ridiculous depiction of Geraldine Ferraro as a quasi-racist? Had Obama's repeated contention — with no evidence — that Republicans were attacking him for looking different? ...
Whatever affection they still have for McCain is now expressed in self-interested yearning: Where is the McCain of old, the one who could be reliably counted on to lose?
This is ridiculous.Obama didn't "depict" Geraldine Ferraro as "quasi racist"; Geraldine Ferraro decided to tell the whole world she was a racist by claiming white women were the primary victims of racism. The Obama campaign had the most to lose by making race the central issue of the primaries, and deliberately downplayed any racial dimension to the comments the Clintons and their surrogates made. Obama never once used the word racist to describe his critics, even when they were blatantly so. Lowry fails to distinguish between Obama's supporters and the campaign itself, because it undercuts his argument. And cable news loved the celebrity ad; for about a week the McCain campaign turned MSNBC, CNN, and FOX News into TRL, with the Britney ad on heavy rotation.
Lowry's newfound moral relativism contrasts poorly with the criticisms he made of the Clintons during the primaries, back when he was afraid Hillary might win the nomination. Back then, Lowry complained that Bill Clinton "has distorted nearly everything he's commented on lately," before sympathizing with Obama's effort to run a high-minded campaign. Lowry wrote, "It's hard to be hopeful at the same time you're in a war of words with an ex-president who is willing to use any cheap and dishonest argument at hand." Or a "maverick" who just won't stop making stuff up.
Lowry conflates distortion with dishonesty, the better to confuse the two. A certain amount of distortion is expected in argument; an outright lie like Alaska being responsible for 20 percent of America's energy supply is not.
--A. Serwer
