A Message From The 'Mainstream Media'
Peter Robinson 10.31.08, 12:00 AM ET
Hi. My name is Anonymous, and I'm a reporter in the mainstream media. Like a lot of my colleagues, I'm nervous
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You see, we in the mainstream media know the very term is a misnomer. "Mainstream?" Us? When Slate, the e-zine owned by the Washington Post Co. (nyse: WPO - news - people ), published a survey this week revealing that its staff favored Barack Obama over John McCain by 55-to-1, every "mainstream" reporter I know shared the same reaction. It wasn't surprise. It was irritation.
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McCain has found a message. After watching their home values fall and their savings shrink, Americans want economic reassurance. Obama was giving it to them--until he told a working man named Joe Wurzelbacher, now known as Joe the Plumber, that he intended to "spread the wealth around." For "Barack the Redistributor," McCain has been telling crowds ever since, change "means taking your money and giving it to someone else." We in the "mainstream media" have been doing all we can to help Obama recover, of course, attacking Joe for his failure to get a plumber's license while throwing up distractions like the cost of Sarah Palin's campaign clothes. But for the first time in this campaign, McCain has a message--a simple, compelling message.
The old guy looks pretty good out there. The McCain campaign has finally figured it out: When McCain appears with Palin, we're forced to cover him. (Nobody attracts newspaper readers like Palin--not even The One--and our editors know it.) And in their joint appearances over the last few days, McCain has appeared relaxed, energetic, buoyant. There's really no other way to put it. McCain looks like a winner. Did I just write that?
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One last thing. If this weekend the polls start breaking for McCain, don't expect us to keep up with the story. We're slow to see what we don't want to see. And if we had to admit that McCain was doing better than we expected, we'd have to offer some reasons. Just look at what Howard Fineman found himself writing for Newsweek a couple of days ago. "Why hasn't Obama run away with this? Because McCain has succeeded … in raising the hoary specter of 'tax-and-spend' liberals."
Read the whole thing.
linkyA great, tongue-in-cheek, column.
