Two Elections and a Letter
"There is No Media Bias"
By Chuck Hyde, Editor of StandBesideHer.com
With apologies to the producers of the popular movie, Two Weddings and a Funeral, this weeks installment of "There is No Media Bias" comes in two installments.
First is the elections of Niki Tsongas and Bobby Jindal.
Niki Tsongas, the late wife of U.S. Rep Paul Tsongas, won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state of Massachusetts. This was trumpeted by the main stream media as clear evidence that the Democrats are going to sweep through the country in 2008 controlling the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Presidency. You could almost hear them humming “Happy Days Are Here Again” at their desks. Let me put this in perspective for you: Ms Tsongas was a Democrat running in a very Democratic leaning state in a district held by her late husband, a popular former representative for the district, at a time when Democrats are supposedly widely favored over Republicans by the electorate, and she had several prominent Democrats come to campaign for her. Further, the Democrats made this a referendum on the Iraq war and President Bush’s veto of the SCHIP legislation. Sounds like the making of a slaughter, right? Wrong, Ms Tsongas won by the whopping landslide of 51% to 45%. I live in a district that leans Republican but has a city of 200,000 that leans heavily Democratic. My congressman still wins with 60 – 70% of the vote. The real story here is the narrow margin of the election. This should concern Democrats, they may not be as popular as they think.
From Massachusetts we go to Louisiana and the Governors election. Bobby Jindal, Republican, won the election for the Governor of Louisiana with 51% of the vote, same as Ms Tsongas. The 51% is relevant in Louisiana because of the way they do elections for statewide office. First they have a primary election in which everyone on the ballot is running for themselves - not one Democrat, one Republican, etc. but several of each party running in the same election. If one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, they win outright. If no one gets more than 50% of the vote, then the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advance to a runoff election in November. This is what typically happens. So, for someone to win outright, of any party, is an accomplishment. It is even more of an accomplishment in a toss-up state like Louisiana where one would think, if listening to the media that is, that a Republican would not be very popular after hurricane Katrina. Did the media treat Mr. Jindal’s victory as a watershed moment? Did they report it as a harbinger of Republican success in 2008? No, they barely reported it. It was practically relegated to a footnote.
So we have dancing in the streets with a narrow Democratic Congressional victory and a yawn with a respectable Republican gubernatorial victory. We have coverage of Ms Tsongas’ first day at work but then the guy writing the Jindal story has to be shaken awake at his computer. Say it with me “there is no media bias”.
Finally, there is the letter. Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh made a remark one day on his show about “phony soldiers”. This remark, according to Mr. Limbaugh, was supposed to be about a particular soldier that was using fabricated accounts of the Iraq war to protest against the war. As it turns out, this soldier had not been in the Iraq war and was discharged after six months in the military. Most of us would call this lying, the liberal anti-war movement calls it courageous and makes him the poster boy of their movement. The Democrats were outraged by Mr. Limbaugh’s comments and howled with indignity. The hope was that if they howled loud and long enough, the public would forget the disgraceful attack against General Petraeus by MoveOn.org and their equally disgraceful refusal to disavow the attack.
There is a little “he said, he said” here with Mr. Limbaugh going back later and clarifying his remarks. Mr. Limbaugh, though, has a twenty year history of tireless support for the troops and sits on the board of a charitable organization that helps the families of troops. With this said, it seems reasonable to chalk this up to a misunderstanding. Not to Senator Harry Reid (D, NV), U.S. Senate majority leader. Sen. Reid sent a letter signed by 40 of his fellow Democratic Senators (including Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama) to Clear Channel Communications, the corporation Mr. Limbaugh works for, condemning Mr. Limbaugh’s remarks and demanding he retract them. Mr. Limbaugh then proceeded to put the letter on E-Bay were it got a winning bid of 2.1 million dollars of which Mr. Limbaugh matched, all proceeds to go to The Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, an organization that helps children of Marines and law officers killed in the line of duty. Did the media report this as an embarrassment for Senator Reid? No, the reporting ranged from “the Democratic letter fetched 2.1 million dollars” to ABC going as far as crediting Reid for the money earned.
All together for one more chorus of “there is no media bias”. That’s what’s on my mind.
About The Author: Chuck Hyde is editor of StandBesideHer.com. He is also a husband and father of two teenage boys and a younger daughter. His family lives in the northern Midwestern rural United States, where they enjoy camping, fishing, and other outdoor activities together. Chuck is a Registered Nurse in an inner city emergency room and has had a lifelong addiction to politics.
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