Hey, NYT and WaPo, Are You Protecting Obaby, Too?

After months of dogged reporting by America's premier investigative news outlet, The National Enquirer, the truth has come out about John Edwards. I wish I were joking about NE being our best source but I'm not.

It turns out that the major national media players have been sitting on the Edwards affair story for, oh, almost a year. Yeah, not a few days to give the former senator and his family time to regroup and formulate a strategy. No, 9 FREAKING MONTHS. That must be a helluva strategy there, Johnny.

See, the MSM didn't think it was a major story - even though Edwards had been heavily touted to be a VP contender, Attorney General possibility, or Supreme Court candidate - and they didn't want to hurt Elizabeth's feelings - like she hadn't been hurt by the affair while she waits to die from stage 4 cancer - and they doubted the veracity of the source - which is fair, considering Edwards paramour was the inspiration for an unhinged coke head in a novel written by an ex-boyfriend. Still, two things bother me. One, if NE could find the dirt, surely our best journalists could have unearthed a few spadefuls. Second, even after finding the truth, our most trusted news sources sat on the story. For months.

Tragic.

And I don't mean the affair.

Here's the important question: are the MSM going to make amends by investigating The One?

You know the drill, Rezko, Wright, Ayers, his campaign tactics in Chicago, the birth certificate questions, etc. I'm looking forward to some kick-ass articles about all of this, now that the MSM has decided not to protect its Democratic favorites. (By the way, it was pretty clear to anyone with more than two brain cells that HRC was not an MSM fave. Can you imagine the uproar if she'd lied about speaking a foreign language? Yeah, exactly.)

Now, there are some gold stars to be handed out. The Boston Globe did an excellent series on The One's district. The Weekly Standard had an superb piece examining His Loftiness' writings for his local paper. There was a so-so article in The New Yorker about Chicago's influence on The Community Obamanizer by a reporter who has since been banned from The CO's sight. And the blogosphere has been on these stories from day one.

I understand being cautious. I understand checking sources. I even understand protecting friends or respected members of the community, especially if a story is highly personal and innocent bystanders, like spouses and children, will be hurt. But, I don't understand protecting candidates when the nation's interests are at stake.

I think it's time we stopped calling the New York Times our paper of record when it seems to have a pattern of keeping important stories off the record. And The Washington Post sure has fallen since it's heyday during the Watergate scandal. But the worst offenders are our major networks. Surely between updates on Britney's custody drama and the latest on the Brangelina twins' photo saga they could have squeezed in this little tidbit.

Because the nation cares.

Because Americans want to know who our politicians are as people and what their true values are. And, nothing exposes your true values like trotting out your family at campaign stops while you're betraying your dying wife.

But here's what has really stuck in my craw. Many of these same "journalists" who sat on the Edwards story were Bill Clinton's loudest critics. They tried their damnedest to bury the Clintons over Bill's one-night indiscretion (as opposed to an affair and yes there is a difference!). Yet, they held tight to their keyboards when the Edwards story was burning up cyberspace - likewise with many Obama stories.

So, let's see if we have this straight.

• Bill Clinton - fair game
• Hillary Clinton - fair game
• John Edwards - golden boy
• Barack Obama - The One They Desperately Want to Elect

We need the Fourth Estate. It's vital to our democracy, what's left of it. Isn't it about time the MSM reported on the story and stopped being the story?

Obama and the Mirror of Erised

Barack Obama brags about being a blank screen onto which people can project their beliefs. He claims he can be anything to anyone. Since when is being a human Rorschach test some kind of virtue?

I have another theory. Perhaps, the senator is more like a human Mirror of Erised (my deepest apologies to JK Rowling). In the first Harry Potter novel, Harry discovers a wondrous mirror that reflects one’s heart’s desire. Reflected in the magical looking glass is the You Oprah Dreamed You’d Be.

Howard Dean might have envisioned his 50 State Strategy.
Nancy Pelosi could have seen her Northern California liberal policies.
Harry Reid might have glimpsed a political leader.

Could it be that this election hasn’t been about “the change we’ve been waiting for” but the petty ambitions of a few self-centered leaders? Is it possible that Democratic officials didn’t just project their values onto their rising star, but their dearest dreams?

It gets worse. Now, Obama is playing his shtick on desperate Afghans. According to John Nichols at The Nation, Obama has been meeting with tribal lords and promising them roses and sunshine:

Unfortunately, Obama is busy making promises.

After meeting with the Democratic presidential candidate inside the US base in Jalalabad, Afghan warlord turned provincial governor Gul Agha Sherzai told reporters, "Obama promised us that if he becomes a president in the future, he will support and help Afghanistan not only in its security sector but also in
reconstruction, development and economic sector."

Translation: Obama is not listening. He is making commitments.

Specific commitments.

Despite the fact that there are more foreign troops in Afghanistan today than at any time since the 2001 invasion -- roughly 60,000 total, including 36,000 Americans – Obama is proposing to dispatch two more US combat divisions (comprising more than 7,000 soldiers) to Afghanistan. That will give the United States even greater responsibility for a technically NATO-led occupation.

Apparently, The One is running around countries harboring suicidal terrorists and telling them he'll give them anything they want. IS HE OUT OF HIS MIND? There are consequences if his alleged promises never come to fruition - PEOPLE WILL DIE.

Afghanistan has been crippled by centuries of war. Its people desperately need necessities like food and running water. It would be honorable and commendable if we could bring that to them. But, Obama is not in a position to do that. Heck, even the real President can't.

Maybe Obama really believes he can do this. He seems to have drunk a lot of Kool-Aid on the trail. Or, maybe he's using these poor people as campaign props and he'll do as much for them as he did for the people in his district (the ones living in the rat-infested, uninsulated, unheated buildings his bud Tony Rezko built on the Illinois taxpayers' dimes).

Here’s what I know. Confidence men succeed by promising their victims what they desire. They’re “blank screens.” They’re Mirrors of Erised. Democratic leaders, influential left-wing commentators, and desperate voters have spent this primary dreaming of their deepest desires. But, inevitably, confidence men have to deliver what they’ve promised – like filibuster a bad FISA bill or take public financing. When they don’t, which they inevitably won’t, the jig is up. At least, it should be.

Unless electing a flip-flopping, pandering pseudo-liberal, wannabe right-wing Evangelical driving a large careening Blunderbuss is their fondest dream, the Superdelegates need a new mirror.