A rather interesting story broke yesterday concerning the moderator of the vice presidential debate tonight between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, Gwen Ifill from PBS.
As it turns out, Ms. Ifill isn't exactly a neutral party. She has a dog in this fight, and a fairly lucrative one for her personally.
You see, Gwen Ifill wrote a book scheduled to debut on inauguration day 2009 entitled 'The Age of Obama' a lovely little volume explaining how the Chosen One is going to change America. And that book's sales are obviously very dependent on whether Barack Obama and Joe Biden capture the White House in November.
Can you say 'conflict of interest'?
It turns out that when Gwen Ifill was first approached by the Commission on Presidential Debates about moderating the debate, she neglected to disclose this very interesting piece of information.
There's a great deal being made by the dinosaur media of Ifill's reputation and integrity, but it seems to me that a journalist with actual integrity and ethics would have recused themselves from monitoring this debate.
Not only that, but Ifill's ethical lapse is obvious since she deliberatelyfailed to disclose the fact that she was writing this book to the Committee. If she had, the onus would have been on the Committee and the McCain campaign for not paying attention.
Having your political preferences is one thing, but being in a position where you're supposedly neutral but you can influence an event that puts some of that mean green in your pockets is another thing entirely.
For her part Ifill is going to pick not only what questions are asked but which candidates get to answer them. Expect Ifill to do her very best to torpedo Sarah Palin tonight without appearing to be too overtly obvious about it.
Unfortunately, this particular issue is a done deal, simply because John McCain refused to make an issue out of it. I think he should have.
As he put it, life isn't fair, and we'll have to see what develops.
1st
ReplyDeletethe more i see articles like this the more i think dole '96 redux.
the media is so heavily invested in electing hussein they are going to simply torpedo jmac.
2nd
life isn't fair
is jmac practicing his concession speech?
3rd
sometimes i think jmac is running the sorriest campaign i've seen. i mean who does this guy want to be president? ff pointed out numerous items jmac just let slide in the debate. is he supposed to get elected because he's a nice guy?
4th
a common item ff and i disagree on. the american public is as dumb as a sack of hair. ff always tells me that america will always come through when it matters.
what is this election, for class president??????????
this guy makes mcgovern look like limbaugh and he is leading by 6-8 points and the nat'l media says don't bother having the election, jmac can't win.
what the hell happened?
how did this country go so far left so fast?
so what if hussein is marxist. what is he doing with almost 50% of the vote?
you know what, it doesn't matter if he's marxist.
5th or 6th or whatever
i am almost to the point of feeling sorry for sarah palin. she comes from a region of the nation that still requires self reliance and independence. she will not fit in in washington. and if jmac doesn't have the balls to reach down hussein's throat and pull out his balls, what in the hell is he doing on the ticket. what palin should do tonight is when ifull or biden patronizes her bitch slap the both of them.
finally
ff wrote an essay a week or so ago about how jmac suspending his campaign was going to show the american public just what leadership is and the difference between jmac and the rest of washington.
you know what?
the american public doesn't care!!!
vote away our great-grand-childrens livelihoods.
they don't care!!!
did it make a difference?
sure it did.
hussein went up in the polls and jmac went down.
please see previous comment in previous paragraph regarding degree of intelligence contained in sack.