Fairgoers catch toddler hanging from fair ride

And liberals get to violate the TOS!

What does that even mean?

What does Sarah Palin's appearance on SNL or her suitability to be vice-president have to do with the title of the topic?

As you said in the thread on the pile of wood @ CP, Jeff, "Bring it back to amusement parks, please."

This election may just be slightly more important than football, no?

When you write the checks to pay the expenses for a site, you can moderate it any way you'd like. But here, I'd appreciate it if you'd get off my case and not tell me how to do so here.

Read back through the discussion and you can see how a discussion about "the media" ensued. If you don't care, stop wasting bits.

OMG Jeff you totally got me! I surrender! The media is great again!

~Rob Willi

Edit: It should be noted that there is a huge amount of sarcasm in my post. Jeff feels that OMG the libs on SNL let a neocon on the show suddenly makes the show and thus "the media," "fair and balanced."

This is where Jeff shows how hypocritical he is: I'm not allowed to generalize the media despite the multiple examples I can find about their reporting being crappy and one sided. However, he can use one show and one example to make the media great again. But its cool, because he pays the bills and can do that :).

Jeff, you are making this too easy.

If I cut through the sarcasm in your post, you didn't say anything.

I'm not making generalizations or making any sweeping statements on the validity of anything. You accused SNL/NBC Universal/GE of being biased, and I'm showing you a concrete example of how you were wrong. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want to make concrete points, expect concrete rebuttals.

Of course, I already did that when I explained GE's lobbying efforts in the first place, but this is a little more definitive.

Can I just pull a "mea culpa" for taking the Palin thing too far, and thus get Jeff and all the "liberal media" off the hook? Seriously, the media taken as a whole IS pretty fair and balanced, even when there are individuals who may have biases or otherwise be less-than-absolutely-diligent. Olbermann and Maddow, O'Reilly and Hannity, are OBVIOUSLY "the fringe element" on both sides. If the media is SO liberal-biased, someone please explain to me how come the American public is so smart that they've seen right thru it ever since the Reagan Revolution...

As only one example of the media's NON-bias for the left, notice that there have been very few mainstream reports about Todd Palin's up-until-recent membership in the Alaska Independence Party -- a secessionist party. I don't know about you, but in my book there really isn't much more traitorous than advocating secession from the USA.

If there were some huge, liberal bias in the media, don't you think they'd have been all over that little tidbit? After all, they haven't exactly been reticent about Obama's (ridiculously minor) Ayers connection. And nobody this side of David Letterman mentions McCain's relationship with G. Gordon Liddy -- a man who committed felonies in his trashing of the U.S. Constitution, and who remains unrepentant aobut his actions.

Don't think Mr. Palin's involvement in the Alaska Independence Party was such a horrible thing? Click on the link to the party's very own web page and take a look around:

http://www.akip.org/

So don't b*tch to me about liberal bias in the media.

You guys are right, there's no bias in the media.

Opps! Sounds like someone slipped up.

~Rob Willi

Want my take as someone who feels he identifies more often with Republican thinking than Democrat?

There's not a liberal bias in the media.

However, I think the very nature of people who get into the various media businesses are more likely to be liberal in belief and action. It manifests itself in very subtle, but noticable, ways.

I don't think there's a conscious effort at a liberal bias in today's media. But I think that more people in 'the media' are liberal than not and that shows through even if that's not the intent.

...And to build on Gonchar's comment, I'd say if there is any particular bias of media management, it will tend to skew conservative. So you have a bunch of liberal reporters and anchors working for a bunch of conservative companies, and that tends to apply a little bit of a "checks and balances" sort of balance.

An even more interesting balancing act is what you see over at NPR. NPR is operated and staffed by a pretty politically-liberal bunch. But the bills get paid by the member stations, and the member stations are largely funded by their donors, who as listeners tend to have the highest median income of their respective markets. And that often translates into a politically conservative constituency.

Yes, when Bill Clinton clinched the '96 election, a cheer went up in the WBUR newsroom that was heard all across the network. But knowing who pays the bills can often help to force a bit of balance in reporting, because you know that if you err in either direction, you're gonna hear about it.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I don't think you can convince Rob because he sees everything as black and white. I'm still scratching my head how this Biden comment matters, or how it expanded into what might happen if Palin made the same comments. Of course they'd be all over her, because her experience compared to Biden's isn't even remotely in the same ballpark. It's certainly not a bias issue.

I heard McCain make a comment the other day about how the media was already counting him out, and I'm sorry, but he counted himself out when he picked a VP with zero national experience and limited governing experience overall. When he stopped talking about issues and started playing the hangs-out-with-terrorists card, he further alienated the swing voters by insulting their intelligence. I still think to this day that if McCain would've stuck to his 2000 m.o., instead of pandering to the right and going on and on about liberals and Democrats, which all but his base (like Rob) are tired of hearing, the dude would be on top of the polls to this day.

I think one of McCain's main problems was that he faced a much more right-leaning GOP during the primary campaign than he did back in 2000. The Republican party is so much more polarized, and has weaned so many moderates from its base, that McCain had to run much further to the right than eight years ago. (This is also in contrast to the Democrats, who -- even though the far left wing of the party has been much more vocal and feeling its muscle this year -- still have a large moderate base.)

This made for a much harder swivel for McCain back to the center once the nomination was secured. That kind of maneuver is hard to pull off, and now he has the continuing problem of trying to placate the hard right base of the party while not turning off independents. I think that he thought the choice of Palin for V.P. would be a grand slam in that he had a working mother who would appeal to Hilary moms and independents, but with a firm conservative perspective to make the base happy. And even though the choice ended up being (to many folks, anyway) somewhat of a dud, it was a close miss. If Palin had had a little more experience and had been capable of displaying real knowledge of policy and governance, we might be looking at a five point McCain lead right now.

So now McCain has a problem not unlike trying to thread the same needle over and over. Energize the base while not alienating independents. It's a tough balancing act, which explains the constant retooling of the campaign and its message.

I love McCain, and I agree with Jeff that if he had just stuck with the things he said in 2000, he'd have this election. He used to be so very inspiring, but now it seems to me that he is losing on purpose.

All this negative mud slinging between the two is making me sick and tired of politics. We are screwed either way.

See, I can't be that cynical. Presidents and Congresscritters are only a part of the equation. Not all of the things they do can "screw" us, though things like starting bull**** wars and eroding liberties wrapped in imaginary safety issues certainly ranks up there as Very Bad Things. The rest is taken on by a great many forces both economic and cultural.

The next president has to be a figurehead more than anything. Someone who can inspire Americans and foreign entities alike. We had a discussion on my blog about transformational leaders, spawned out of Powell's comments about Obama. Eric is doing a dissertation on the topic, and I think I understand what Powell is getting at. You have to get the right people to take on certain tasks, and hold them accountable while trusting them to do the job. Journalists have commented how Obama treats even low-level campaign people this way, and I respect that a great deal. Those are good people to work with.

My take - going to school with international students, I can only say that their impression on the whole seems to be that they'll appreciate America no longer being of the 50's mindset. WWII was a long time ago, and America no longer has the authority (moral or otherwise) to declare itself THE world leader. We will either play nice with the rest of the world, or we will suffer some dire consequences. GLOBAL economy is the way of the 21st century, and there's NO going backwards....if we fail to act as though we care what others think (like we did in Iraq), then we may find ourselves in the same financial distress that Russia saw ever-so-briefly after the invasion of Georgia. No one wants to do business with a nation perceived as a bully. Barack gives us an opportunity to show the rest of the civilized world that we're mopre than John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, that we can work cooperatively.

You mean more than a maverick, right? :)

Yeah, I went to school with the freakin' United Nations, which certainly opened my eyes. Had a Japanese roommate one summer as well, which was interesting enough. And of course, in my line of work, I'm one of only a handful of "white boys" in a lot of environments, which in and of itself says a lot about having to play in a global economy, not to mention our apparent reluctance to do so.

^It's pronounced Mehverick... ;) :)

But there's no disconnnect between a candidate who on one hand is saying "we want to the rest of the world to love us again" and on the other is saying "damn those companies that are doing business with other countries and taking American jobs?"

So we can be isolationist when we want and launch into "We Are the World" when it suits us?