11/16/2000 Clarion News Service.
Al Gore was right about one thing. Republicans are getting a little
snippy lately. That tends to happen when you try to steal a presidential
election from us. I'll admit it. I personally have been extremely snippy
for the last week, especially at the national news media.
It was bad enough that they made at least three bad projections on election
night (New Mexico once and Florida twice), but their conduct ever since
has been even more disgraceful. Here are a few of my pet peeves:
First, calling Al Gore the popular vote victor as often as possible. This
may ultimately turn out to be as accurate as some of their other projections.
As of Tuesday, Gore had a less than 200,000 vote lead out of over 100
million counted. That's about 48.9% to 48.7% and there were still about
a million absentee ballots uncounted in California alone! If the networks
were truly honest about this they would put that contest in the 'too close
to call' category as well.
But secondly, who cares? That's not the game we're playing! It's like
looking at a baseball box score and awarding the victory to the team with
the most hits. It's nice to have a lot of hits, but it's better to score
runs!
This is just one example of the network talking head's seeming total inability
to recognize Democratic spin when they are being hand-fed it. Are they
really that stupid or is something else going on here? A look at the electoral
map shows that Gore dominated in the big cities and especially on the
two coasts with the major media centers. Bush, on the contrary, won big
in Middle America, known to liberal sophisticates as 'flyover country.'
Frequent surveys have shown that, as a group, national media types are
among the most solidly Democratic voting blocks in the country. Almost
90 per cent of them voted for Clinton, and probably an equal percentage
went for Gore. Isn't it only natural to assume that, being human, they
sometimes let their personal preferences color their objectivity?
This is particularly true of the many cable news hosts and commentators
who are nothing more than thinly disguised cheerleaders and political
spinmeisters for mainly the Democrat side. A steady diet of their lies,
half-truths and distortions would give anybody indigestion!
Now, I am not saying that all Democrats are liars and thieves. I certainly
don't believe that, but it is clear that Al Gore and the people at the
highest levels of his campaign are willing to say and do anything in order
to win this contest and that they have no regard for the damage that
conduct is causing the country and our position in the world.
I suspect that the ultimate strategy here is like a game of chicken similar
to what we see from terrorists. Give me what I want or I will hurt innocent
people. They are counting on the opposition's love of country to prevent
them from playing out this vicious game of brinksmanship to the end.
Listen here Mr. Gore. When you start playing fast and loose with the future
of our country, that makes a lot of us damn snippy!
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