Teleprompter to Obama Like Steroids to Athletes
If you recall use of the phrase ‘Manchurian candidate’ in current American politics you may be old enough to remember watching the 1962 film. But you may be a little foggy on the details after many years if you actually went to a theatre to view it in the sixties.
That was the initial reason for this post along with its current use in politics and the search began. After one pass in the Google main search engine page the phrase was entered in the news search. The first result featured an LA Times review of the movie apparently being shown at a local venue. The paper mentions Richard Condon as author of the book by of course the same name and its 1959 debut. Since the phrase is getting some attention it seems only fair to give credit to the book’s author.
It was no big surprise that the second result put the phrase into current political context. An excerpt from a HuffPo item titled ‘Irresponsible Vitriol in the Media’ from April 1, 2009 indicates Bloomberg ‘asserting’ Obama is ‘giving us a war on business’ and ‘legislat[ing] like a Manchurian Candidate.’
That led to actually clicking on a result that read like a common liberal rant expressing discontent with ‘deranged comments on their blogs’ and ‘Manchurian candidate.’
TPM
my TPM BLOG
March 25, 2009, 2:46PM
acanuck
Two things to be said about the item above. The minor distraction of referring to someone’s actions as ’stupider’ rather than ‘more stupid’ as a superior grammatical choice albeit no improvement in style. And including Politico in a set of sources described as right wing media and blogosphere. Fox, Townhall and Drudge could be rated as probably, certainly and perhaps, respectively and respectfully. But AP and Politico being right wing?
The TPM blog item led to the following.
Critics say Obama relies too heavily on his teleprompter. As Politico notes:
This HuffPo piece offers a video along with their apparent agreement with the other item suggesting disdain over Politico. The video uses David Letterman and one of his comedy vids to support their argument to accept Obama’s dependence on a teleprompter as a good thing.
Nothing against Letterman but is that really the source you want to select to make a serious point? BTW, the vid is funny as it presents a ’serious’ Obama speaking in front of the camera versus a speaking gaffe by former President George W Bush. It’s also funny, but not in the humorous meaning, they don’t present a serious vid of Bush giving a prepared speech versus a speaking gaffe by Obama like dissin’ special olympics on a late night talk show when he was not likely using his favorite teleprompter. (and to liberals who will contest this, yes, Bush 43 gave plenty of serious speeches without gaffes)
Another contrast to offer is George Bush (43) even made self-deprecating remarks about his lack of public speaking prowess while the media, politicians and other observers have elevated Obama’s communication skills to the level of JFK. CBS News has a headline ‘Obama’s oratory grabbing the spotlight.’ The LA Times has ‘the power of Obama’s oratory.’ Two examples of the abundance of media love for everything Obama. So the left should understand if you are going to make a claim there will be challenges. You could equate Obama oratory by teleprompter to athletes using performance enhancing drugs to artificially improve their results.
This post was initially intended to present various arguments for the media being left wing or right wing and examples of how some draw their conclusions. While a bit of that was suggested the rest must wait for another post as the Obama yeah and Bush naw items along with silly responses to Manchurian candidates and teleprompters dominated this ’search’ journey.
But perhaps the central point to a left/right media analysis is suggested in results from a search engine inquiry using each of the following: ‘left wing politico’ and ‘right wing politico.’ On just one pass there are plenty of results to lean toward a conclusion that regardless of the political stripe of readers their reaction to whether a source is left or right is influenced by whether they agree or disagree with the source.
Stanford Matthews
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