The news media’s un-American failures

The news media’s un-American failures

Charles Hurt
Washington Times
Tuesday, May 22, 2012

When the national media isn’t consumed with “exposes” revealing that Mitt Romney was once a teenager and attended high school with other teenagers, they are busy ignoring persistent evidence causing alarming numbers of Americans to believe President Obama was not born in the U.S.

Or, they are busy “investigating” Ann Romney’s shocking hobby of training and - readers, remain calm - actually riding horses.

The Los Angeles Times really did run such a report Tuesday focusing on a lawsuit pertaining to one of her horses. Mrs. Romney was completely exonerated, but not before she grew irritated with lawyers during a marathon deposition.

So, not only does Mrs. Romney love horses, but she doesn’t like lawyers? And she wants to be first lady? Why … this American voters simply will not stand!

Nothing is so un-American as riding horses and being a teenager.

But wait … did you hear about the latest crazy “Birther” claim from right-wing crazies placing Mr. Obama’s birth in his father’s homeland of Kenya?

These right-wing “Birthers” over at the Breitbart news empire actually published a promotional booklet written by Mr. Obama’s literary agent touting the young author as having been “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

Problem is that the folks over at Breitbart are not and never have been so-called “Birthers” who believe Mr. Obama was born outside the U.S. But they are news people, and they know news when they see it and they run it.

This revelation printed in hundreds, if not thousands, of distributed booklets was completely missed by the so-called “mainstream media” over nearly a decade of fawning coverage of Mr. Obama.

This is the same media that also missed and later glossed over the shocking news from Mr. Obama’s autobiography that his white girlfriend from New York who made provocative comments about race was made up.

This is, of course, all a grave injustice to the American political system and to voters and, really, to anyone who actually believes that the press has a duty to shine light on every corner of the public realm.

It is also a grave injustice to Mr. Obama himself. If the media were not so preoccupied with covering for him and ignoring stories unfavorable to him, maybe voters would not be so suspicious of him and his birth papers.

Mr. Obama himself could help clear the air by explaining how, exactly, how it is possible that his literary agent could have been so misinformed as to believe Mr. Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya.

Is it, perhaps, because Mr. Obama has spent so much of his life playing up his ties to Kenya and Indonesia? And that he plays down his ties to America so much that the closest he gets is the last state added, which sits 2,000 miles from the mainland?

Why, that’s almost as un-American as horseback riding and being a teenager in high school.