It's Tim Russert. The moment he said to Dennis Kucinich at a "debate" among Democratic presidential candidates, "This is a serious question," you knew it wouldn't be. A responsible journalist might have asked, "Why do think that Dick Cheney should be impeached rather than George Bush?" But Russert wanted to further marginalize Kucinich--to ridicule him in a flying saucer kind of way--and, like a trial lawyer who already knows what a defendant's answer will be--his "serious question" was "Did you see a UFO?"
Kucinich tried to explain that the U in UFO means "unidentified" flying object. He joked, "I'm moving my campaign office to Roswell, New Mexico and Exeter, New Hampshire." He pointed out that Jimmy Carter had seen a UFO, and that "More people--" Russert interrupted him with a statistic: 14% of Americans have seen UFOs. Kucinich asked him to repeat that number, as if to thank him for inadvertently providing him with the UFO sighters vote. Russert repeated the number and, with the smug satisfaction of having generated a guaranteed sound bite, he said, "I want to ask Senator Obama..."
There was a predictable trickle-down effect. Even Bill Maher mocked Kucinich, though Maher's real target should've been Russert. A few days later, I met a woman who asked me who my ideal candidate is. "Dennis Kucinich," I said. She responded, "Isn't he the one who said he saw some Martians?" Of course, there's a video of that encounter in the secret government's implied-blackmail lock-box, along with the video of a threesome--Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and a billy goat--and the video of Rudy Guliani performing an abortion on Pat Robertson's mistress.
Ironically, Russert's co-moderator, Brian Williams--in his capacity as a host on Saturday Night Live--referred to the mainstream media's proactive assumption that Hillary Clinton will win in the primaries and then in the general election. Fundraising is the name of that particular political game, because the candidates with the most money will buy the most TV commercials and print ads. Tim Russert has given a claymation face to that open conspiracy. And, in the process, that old saying and song, "There's no business like show business," has landed in the outdated metaphors graveyard. There is indeed a business like show business. It's the news.
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Regardless of Kucinich's odds of being the Democratic to go against the Republican candidate for President of the United States, he nevertheless is dangerous to the MSN deciders: because his presence on the debate stages strips bare the posturing and hypocracy of the other candidates.
MSN needed to get rid of Gravel, thus the bankruptcy thing.
MSN needs to get rid of Kucinich, thus the quote from Shirley McClain's book and the suble additional marginalization by noting he is the Godfather of a kooky actress's grandchild.
"The scream heard round the world", a fumbled answer to the unanticipated bankruptcy question; finally scrapping the bottom with the UFO question.
Russert has no shame.
When the media plays into the publics expectations in such a childish and idiotic manner they are no longer journalists, but entertainers. And that is all the mainstream media has become. News entertainment.
If they truly wanted to be journalists they would challenge the publics' views and force them to see issues from another perspective. But of course the general public can't think for themselves to make decisions, they can only find things entertaining.
That should have made the goal of the whole operation clear: Get the anti-war candidates out of the way, have the "major candidates" pledge to nuke Iran if it looks like they are coming close to getting nuclear weapons (Russert demanded such a pledge. Who the fuck is he to demand that?), get an embarrassing sound bite from Hillary so that the horse race isn't over too soon.
But God forbid calling the Reps on their constant lying during their debates.
We need more like him.