The Anchoress

There is simply so much Bushhate oozing out of every orifice of every media outlet that it is beyond ignoring or even joking about, anymore. The seething, foot-stomping and table-pounding has reached such an unprecedented, remarkable level that one can only imagine that entire news organizations, from coast-to-coast, must soon suffer one massive and forever-debilitating stroke, and I think they’re on the verge of it. This much hate is self-consumptive; it cannot sustain healthy living. Maybe all Bush has to do is keep on doing what he’s doing and let them kill themselves.

And what is Bush doing? Well…if you’re taking a broad view of the thing, he’s winning in France as - against all memes - the West follows his lead.

So today we’ll look at the press and their out-of-control contempt for a president who refuses to do their bidding, and for his new cowboy pal in France! (Jules Crittenden has a field day trying to towke Texin). The press is all of a doo-dah because - quite aside from initial reports suggesting that it was all the old-fogeys who voted for him - France’s new, ‘merica lovin’-president (and his ‘merica lovin’ voters - another meme bites the dust) got the babes, and the women and blue-collars.

(Can we finally end the long-lived but incorrect narrative that socialists and democrats are for “the working guy?” That hasn’t been true in a dog’s age.) If they were for the little guy, they wouldn’t be burning his cars in a temper tantrum.

Pajamas Media has the running Sarko round-up you need. The press seems like they’re quite ready to give him the Bush treatment, which is basically, “we define you badly and accuse you of much, now you must prove us wrong.” The prevailing journalistic standard, I’m afraid. There are a few rare exceptions. I personally think this quote succinctly explains it all, but the press and the left won’t listen to it:

“It is the fault of the left collectively. Ever since their [parliamentary election] defeat in 1983 they have never questioned their fundamental ideology, only thinking they needed to change tactics,” says Dominique Reynié, professor at Sciences Po university.

Um…yes. Here in the US, too.

Siggy notes that the NY Times is troubled, deeply troubled by Sarko’s personal life and wonders why the Times never wonders about Hillary’s troubled personal life.

Meanwhile pay no attention to that losing woman in France, she and Hillary have nothing in common, you hear? Nothing!

Back to Bush and the press:

Villainous Kate has a gem of a post up, with graphs and everything, wherein she examines Bush-hate at the NY Times.

Ah, but a rising tide lifts all boats while the Bush presidency is awash in a sea of gloomy imagery. Each new day brings a new miserable failure alert: time is running out, the tide has turned, an increasingly embattled president at odds with an ever more impatient nation stubbornly refuses to admit defeat.[...]Whatever could be driving those negative poll numbers?

Go read it all, and note the graphics - the whole post is a thing of beauty.

Jules Crittenden - as prolific a blogger as I have ever seen - notes that US News and World Report seems to want Bush to “sink faster, please”:

“A Sinking Presidency” brushes quickly over the fact that Bush just won the veto fight, and instead of noting the Democrats have little choice but to fund the war, dives for cover in the “no Plan B” crater. It also ignores the fact that there have been major successes in Iraq — reduction of sectarian killings in Baghdad, the turning of Sunni tribes in Anbar and now in Diyala, something other news outlets can’t ignore but generally prefer to bury under the al-Qaeda carbomb counteroffensive roundup…”

except…

But this one ends in a strangely insightful manner that seems to undermine the three and a half previous pages of doom and gloom. It’s like Walsh is buying into the Bush-Lincoln thing:

Yet Bush presses on. Legislators, journalists, and friends come away from private meetings with him with new respect for his command of the issues dear to him-especially Iraq and the Middle East. At one recent meeting, the president spent more than an hour describing, country by country, in impressive detail, the dire consequences of a quick withdrawal. He was compellingly persuasive, at least to the small group of allies who were listening. The problem may be that many other Americans are tuning him out.

Interesting. So if you shut up and listen, Bush is persuasive. Knows what he’s talking about.

If Americans are tuning him out, perhaps it’s because the press has been telling them to for the past 6 years, and giving them every reason to believe they should and a multitude of diversionary stories. And…it must be said, the Bush White House is a marketers nightmare - they never get in front of a story or push good news. Say what you will about the Clintons, every day was a pageant of positive news, real, imagined or glommed. Of course, the press was happy to throw the confetti, but still…you get what I mean.

Ace has a long exposition on media double standards. What applies to Bush does not apply to Clinton, of course, and - it seems - what applies to Dennis Hastert does not apply to Madam Pelosi, too. Or anyone he or she call friends.

And of course, any Bushian faux pas gets all sorts of notice while the protected class gets…well…protected.

You know what? I could go all around the web and find you more and more and more of this incessant hate…but I’m not going to bother. You know where to find it - basically at any available media outlet online.

In reading it all, though and my email, I’m getting the sense that - as ever - they’ve overplayed their hand. The press and the Dems have piled on to excess (remember when “piling on” was bad? Oh, that was the other president, sorry) and I think some people have realized it. It’s just a little thing…but I’m seeing it here and there, little mentions that “the president has stood fast through it all,” bits of grudging respect as some start to realize that telling our enemies when we’ll depart so they can mark it on their calendars and wait it out is a really, really stupid idea. Maybe, finally, Bush hatred is actually close to jumping the shark.

A while back, during the first Afghanistan and Iraqi elections, Jon Stewart (who is still capable of intellectual honesty, or was back then) had a near existential meltdown wondering if President Bush might have been right all along. He got over it and made sure to never, never, never wonder about that again - at least not publicly.

It is the unthinkable nightmare of the left. But the truth is, if they had no fear of it - if they did not suspect somewhere, deep down, that Bush has indeed been the grown-up and the truthiest in a truthy world (c’mon now, how can Bush say exactly the same things Clinton, Kerry, Kennedy, Albright and the rest said, and be the only one lying?) - they wouldn’t be working so hard, in such seemingly co-ordinated fashion, to take him down.

Everywhere I look this week, I see President Bush being slammed. I suspect things are going much better than we are being led to believe, these days, in Iraq.

If only the press would ask some of these questions.

» Is a timetable for withdrawal intended to hasten victory — or defeat?

» If victory, how will withdrawal help?

» If defeat, how will that help national interests?

» How will abandoning Iraq’s burgeoning government affect America’s reputation in the region?

» A Taliban spokesman recently stated Osama bin Laden is coordinating insurgent attacks in Iraq. If true, how is it possible to simultaneously fight the war on terrorism but not insurgents in Iraq?

Another question: Do you still think it’s not a war on terror?.

Related: For Popes and Presidents, it feels like 1981 out there.

WMD intl pre-dated Bush