Fussillade Of Stand-Alone Stories Slammed Obama For "Gaffe." So What About McCain?
March 1, 2007 -- 5:22 PM EST // //
Okay, so here's the question. The media pummeled Barack Obama for a "gaffe" and a "stumble" when he said American lives were "wasted" in Iraq. So how about McCain? How about it?
Yesterday, during his Presidential announcement on David Letterman, McCain described American lives lost in Iraq as "wasted." He has just issued a statement saying he screwed up and instead should have used the word "sacrificed." This is exactly the same mistake, of course, that Obama committed back in mid-February.
A number of bloggers today have pointed out that the conservative outrage machine has been silent about this -- even as it went into overdrive in response to Obama.
But here's another thing to look at. How many stand-alone stories by the big news orgs will we see about McCain's screw-up? How many times do you suppose mainstream media commentators will refer to McCain's fumble as a "mistake," a "gaffe," or any similar such term?
Thus far crack TPM reporter-researcher Eric Kleefeld and I have been able to find exactly zero such descriptions. We've found a grand total of two -- yes, only two thus far -- stand-alone stories about McCain's foul-up, and neither used any such language. One was by ABC News, the other by the Associated Press. USA Today, meanwhile, used the AP story but actually described the incident positively in a subhed, saying that McCain moved "swiftly to calm the waters."
By contrast, when Obama committed this error, he was greeted with a fusillade of stand-alone stories, many of them hammering him for his political screw-up. "His first stumble," said the Chicago Sun Times. "Stumbling out of the gate," said political wise man Ron Fournier in a piece carried by MSNBC. Matt Lauer of NBC wondered: "How big a fallout will there be over this?" There was plenty of other babbling about it on cable, too.
And on McCain? Nutin'. As of yet, anyway. Again, it's early days. Maybe we'll see a bunch of stand-alone stories on this tomorrow. Maybe we'll hear lots of similar denunciations of McCain's blunder in the next 12 to 24 hours. Or maybe not. Maybe instead we'll be reminded yet again of the media's default setting: On military matters, Dems are presumed to be politically vulnerable, while Republicans -- particularly McCain -- are presumed to be politically infallible.
Meanwhile, have a look at these and get pissed off...
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