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Friday, August 03, 2012

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week's Watchers Council Results



Alea iacta est!

The Council has spoken, the votes tallied, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

Even taking into consideration the normal high level of quality in both the Council and Non-Council entries, this was a tough call with some exceptional pieces to choose from, and the close vote tallies reflect it.



Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney took a trip overseas to Britain, Israel and Poland and according to our media made an absolute fool out of himself. It was an absolute fiasco - well, wasn't it? Didn't the news media report it?

This week's winner by a nose,Joshuapundit for The Obama Media And The Unbelievably Negative Coverage Of Mitt Romney's Trip takes a look at that very question.

I have to confess, I have rarely seen such a biased misreporting of facts, such a distortion of emphasis, or such a blatant disregard for even basic journalistic ethics in order to favor one candidate in a presidential election over another. Here's a slice:

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.

You have to read the whole thing, including the links, and view the accompanying video to realize exactly how biased, inaccurate and partisan the media was on this trip. Simply disgraceful.



In our non-Council category, we had a tie between two excellent entries.

Perennial Council Favorite Daniel Greenfield, AKA Sultan Knish wrote a wonderful piece entitled Invaders from Outer Space submitted by The Noisy Room. The Sultan looked at the new Batman movie and made the astute point that while there's no problem portraying faux invaders of New York City almost every Summer dropping from the skies and committing mayhem, there's never a portrayal of the people who actually did so on 9/11, Muslims.And that says a lot about the current state of things.

Tied with the Sultan was an interesting young man named Guri Weinberg, who wrote a piece entitled Why the IOC Will Never Memorialize The '72 Munich Massacre , submitted by Joshuapundit.

In the piece he tells why the IOC, as it's presently composed, has so callously refused to allow a memorial for the Israeli athletes murdered in Munich, even so much as a minute of silence in their memory forty years later...including his moving personal account of a meeting with an IOC official. Weinberg's perspective on the matter is a special one, since he is the son of Moshe Weinberg, the wrestling coach murdered at the 1972 Olympics.

In these situations as Watcher, I have the responsibility of being the tie breaker. And I was torn by this one.

The visceral and justified anger of Guri Weinberg, struck a deep chord within..as you might remember, I had a few things to say on this subject as well.

And Sultan Knish's well written piece also echoes a theme I've explored numerous times, our failure to win the current war we're engaged in because our ruling class has its own vested interests in seeing to it that they're not properly identified.

After thinking it over, I decided to go with The Sultan for a number of reasons, even though I personally found Guri Weinberg's piece uniquely compelling.

The Sultan has much larger and more clearly stated message than Weinberg, although they're actually the same message if you think about it, the effect of our seemingly self-enforced dhimmi status in western society. Another factor was that the Sultan's opus was a blog piece and Weinberg's was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and I usually like to give an edge to bloggers in these matters, right?

But as far as I'm concerned,both pieces are winners and need to be read. Actually, that applies to everything listed on this board in all categories. There's not a piece here that won't reward your attention. In fact, that's almost always true. Trust me on that.


OK, OK, enough yakking. Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners



Non-Council Winners




See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day and with short takes and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.....'cause we're cool like that!
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