By now, you've probably seen the video in which Obama directly confronts McCain and Palin's verifiable lies about the Bridge to Nowhere, lobbyists, and earmarks. I'd like to use it to discuss a larger issue.
Predictably, almost all the TV media coverage of this issue today has been in the infuriating form of our overpaid talking heads simply remarking that McCain and Palin claim opposition to these wastes of taxpayer money, and that Obama says they are not telling the truth, so... you decide! This, even though these claims have been objectively, demonstrably proven false and require absolutely no controversial "opinion" to be shown as such.
I know it's a waste of time to wish for things that are unlikely ever to happen on their own, but for some reason I don't think I will ever stop being completely stunned with rage by the absolute refusal of the media - especially the widely watched TV media - to ever call a proven falsehood exactly what it is. Literally, until Obama started confronting these blatant, brazenly repeated lies (which I admit he did not start doing soon enough), the media, with the verifiable facts right in front of their faces, simply parlayed both the fraudulent soundbites and their substance as presumed fact. What's worse, the media did so while superficially celebrating - as they always do - the performance and appearance aspects of the delivery of the lies. This therefore only compounded the intense damage inflicted upon the public, by smoothing the passage of the psychological poison down the throat of the popular consciousness with a spoonful of adoring sugar.
Really, I'm not sure the lying has ever been as blatant as this - perhaps with the exception of the Swift Boat smears, which at least were not overtly peddled by Bush or Cheney - regarding themes so vital to the campaign spewing them. When an unvetted, unknown, plainly underqualified VP nominee bases so much of her appeal as a candidate on complete and utter fabrications, to have a media that simply refuses to call these extremely consequential lies what they actually are - even when the opposing campaign expressly makes the case and the facts are known to all - is the deepest, most pernicious, and most inexcusable affront to each and every voting citizen, and to the country itself.
It is beyond reproach, and although I still expect Obama to win, if McCain and his marionette actually were to succeed in kidnapping this election in a getaway car of blatant deception, the blame for that catastrophe would fall squarely on our chirping, trivial, and worse than useless establishment media.
You should be pissed. You should be so pissed that you devote everything you can to stamping out this vileness and sending it back - even if only temporarily - to the fetid crevice from which it crawled.
ADDENDUM:
David "Stretch" Gregory, smirking puppet of inanely shrugging punditry, just followed a tease of Obama's response to the lies with the following: "But why is Obama picking on number two [Palin]?"
Holy hopscotching, flare-shooting, tap-dancing Moses, now he is focusing the discussion on how Obama's response shows that Palin is "effective."