If they had any honor or credibility left, much of our press has sacrificed it with their coverage of Governor Romney's foreign trip.
Today's headlines on the Governor's trip to Poland are a superb example. There's no headlines or even much mention about Governor Romney's superb and well received speech to the Polish people, or his endorsement by Polish icon Lechs Walesa.
No, today's screaming headlines concern one campaign aide who told an intrusive and rude press pool exactly what they deserved to hear.
Governor Romney was visiting Poland's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw along with a delegation of Poland's veterans. As he paid his respects, instead of respecting the solemn moment, the media jackals began baying questions at Romney. At which point, traveling press secretary Rick Gorka lost it:
CNN: "Governor Romney are you concerned about some of the mishaps of your trip?
NYT: "Governor Romney do you have a statement for the Palestinians?
Washington Post: "What about your gaffes?
NYT: "Governor Romney do you feel that your gaffes have overshadowed your foreign trip?"
CNN: "Governor Romney just a few questions sir, you haven't taken but three questions on this trip from the press!
Gorka: "Show some respect"
NYT: "We haven't had another chance to ask a question..."
Gorka: "Kiss my ass. This is a Holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect."
Yes, that's the headline. Not the fact that Governor Romney was incredibly well received by one of our most loyal allies in Europe.
As I mentioned previously, the same thing happened in Britain ( with the connivance of a large contingent of the British press and a number of British politicians), where soundbites were literally invented based on something Governor Romney never even said. And of course, the Obama Media here was full of Governor Romney's 'gaffes' which actually weren't really gaffes at all.
And it happened in Israel where Governor Romney's trip and an amazing speech were again received as overwhelmingly favorable by the people he came to speak to.
The press headlines about Governor Romney's Israel trip? Hysterical allegations of 'racism' by a corrupt Arafat-era PLO hack which were demonstrably false, but again, that was the headline.
According to CNN, Mr. Gorka later called the press to apologize. As far as I'm concerned, he needn't have. As this point, many of them are simply behaving like hostile entities who deserve no consideration whatsoever.
It's important to look at one aspect of this...what exactly was the purpose of this trip? If it was designed to have Governor Romney meet with foreign leaders and let the citizens of some of our most important allies know where he stood on matters that concern them, he succeeded quite well in two out of three countries. And even in Britain, we have no idea about how the British public actually felt, since the antics of the UK's politicians and press pretty much precluded any serious discussions.
But you'd never know it to read the dinosaur media.
Not only did we see partisan screeds on the Governor's actual trip, but we saw the press co-operate enthusiastically when the Obama Administration released stories like the one on the supposedly never returned Churchill bust, timed specifically to embarrass Mitt Romney when he was in the UK.
When that story,peddled on the official White House site proved to be an outright falsehood, the story was quickly buried. Can you imagine the coverage if Mitt Romney had done something even remotely similar?
Ditto with Nancy Pelosi's gaffe on how President Obama has 'been to Israel over and over again'. Buried in the memory hole.
And after all this, the Obama Media is attacking Romney for 'blaming the media'! Tres le chutzpah, if you'll allow a linguistically mixed observation.
If Governor Romney had any illusions that he was going to be treated with even an iota of fairness or even basic decency, I'm sure he now understands things differently.
If I were Governor Romney, I would seriously consider retaliating by taking away from these people the one thing they value most...access. Creating a press pool that feeds them exactly what you want them to have is the proper way to deal with them. They won't like it,but as I said, at this point you're essentially dealing with hostile entities that might as well be on the payroll of the Obama Campaign.
And I would insist on someone I considered fair and balanced to moderate the coming debates.
UPDATE: Just listen to these reporters screech at Romney in Poland, courtesy of Bill Kristol:
You could almost feel like they need to be hosed down just to approach human standards. Not only was Gorka's response totally appropriate, he ought to be commended for his patience and self control.
I echo Bill Kristol's sentiments. Here's hoping the Romney campaign doesn't become defensive and apologetic, but hangs tough and calls this for what it is.
3 comments:
The only real gaffe I'm aware of is one that does not seem to be getting much attention. As for Mr. Romney's remarks that London may not be ready for the olympics, his initial instincts may have been spot on. So far we have someone marching with the Indian team at the opening ceremonies who was unauthorized to be in the area. We've had the South Korean flag displayed where the North Korean flag should have been displayed and, as I recall, someone almost was able to steal the olympic torch. If the olympics were in America and our people had screwed up in this manner, the howls of rage from world capitols and the news media would be deafening. As such, Mr. Romney's inital assertion may have been spot on.
Perhaps not. Maybe the media is so large and intrusive that we simply hear about things we might not have in years or decades past and it may be much out of minor issues.
Now for the potential gaffe we are not hearing much about. Mr. Romney may have met with the head of British intellegence and one of his staffers leaked this. This is a problem on so many levels its hard to know where to begin. As the British point out, it is unusual for a candidate for public office of another nation to get a briefing with British intellegence. Now other candidates with other nations may start expecting the same treatment.
A bigger problem though is America's intellegence services are staffed and managed by incompetent boobs. As I've said before, if America expects to survive let alone thrive in the coming years we are going to have to address this. To do so will take time. As such, we are going to have lean heavily on the intellegence services of allied ountries. To compound this problem, our officials leak information like busted water pipes leak water!! In this environment, whose going to trust us enough to share with us information we desparately need and lack the skills to obtain independently. Not a good situation. American officals and want to be American officials need to do some serious soul searching.
No matter how good our military may be, if we don't have good intellegence, they might as well be blind, deaf, and dumb!! Actions such as this are not helpful to say the least.
The video helps add some perspective. The various members of the Obama Media group (I liked that OMG!) made it sound like the guy had screamed "kiss my a---" at the top of his lungs to the reporters. It's clear it was done more sotto voce--and out of complete frustration with the reporters, which makes it make a lot more sense. And also clearly NOTHING. Romney should apologize for.
I think we can pretty much figure out that our 'news' media is anything but.
What a bunch of tools! Yuck!
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