WHY BE BITTER? HILLARY & McCAIN HAVE SHOWN THE COUNTRY WHAT DIVISIVE HYPOCRITES THEY ARE

Two bitter insiders sing from the same desperate prayer book

All day yesterday I was trying to keep myself from noting how remarkably similar the rotten vicious Clinton campaign was to the rotten vicious McCain campaign-- or at least how remarkably similar the two vile Insider campaigns sound in regard to Barack Obama's stumble. The corporate media, of course, is beside itself with joy. This is, after all, what sells their product. So they're taking great delight in blowing it all out of proportion. To them it's almost as big as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I used to live in one of those small Pennsylvania town-- in Monroe County. Obama's description was extremely polite and understated and Clinton's and McCain's reactions, if nothing else, point out their own shared, smug hypocrisy. And the media-- half clueless and half venal. Right now I'm in the middle of reading the rather extraordinary new book by former Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Against The Tide-- How A Compliant Congress Empowered A Reckless President. I expect that I'll be writing more about Mr. Chafee's book in the coming days. But there were a few pages I read a few days ago that made me think about the role the media plays in these kinds of verbal gaffes candidates make. But I don't want to talk how the media is piling on the Obama "bitter" comment but instead compare a story by Chafee with how the media has pummeled Clinton mercilessly over her whopper of a lie regarding her dangerous mission to Bosnia. I never heard this story before; I don't think the media covered it. And if they did, they sure didn't cover it the way they covered Clinton's Bosnia lie, even though her tall tale seems more innocent than the Cheney episode that Chafee relates early in his book:

I thought back to the Republican convention in Philadelphia just six months earlier, in August, when I applauded Mr. Cheney’s speech. It was uplifting and emotionally charged, but that was before I knew the Bush administration would be so willing to use words dishonestly.

Mr. Cheney recalled for the convention his days as secretary of defense, describing his frequent helicopter flights over Washington and how he looked down on the city with thoughts that were solemn, patriotic, and reverent.

“When you make that trip from Andrews to the Pentagon, and you look down on the city of Washington, one of the first things you see is the Capitol, where all the great debates that have shaped two hundred years of American history have taken place.

“You fly down along the Mall and see the monument to George Washington, a structure as grand as the man himself. To the north is the White House, where John Adams once prayed ‘that none but honest and wise men [may] ever rule under this roof.’

“Next you see the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, the third president and the author of our Declaration of Independence. And then you fly over the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, this greatest of presidents, the man who saved the Union.

“Then you cross the Potomac, on approach to the Pentagon. But just before you settle down on the landing pad, you look upon Arlington National Cemetery, its gentle slopes and crosses row on row.

“I never once made that trip without being reminded how enormously fortunate we all are to be Americans, and what a terrible price thousands have paid so that all of us, and millions more around the world might live in freedom.”

A day later, I was jolted to read that the staff at Arlington National Cemetery had put out a statement correcting something our candidate for vice president had said in the most inspiring part of his address.

The cemetery staff took note of the reference to “gentle slopes and crosses, row on row,” and noted: “There are no crosses in Arlington National Cemetery.”

They suggested that Mr. Cheney had lifted the image from “In Flanders Field,” a moving poem by Canadian John McCrae, in 1915.

In Arlington National Cemetery the American war dead of all faiths lie under tombstones with rounded tops.

Richard Cheney, who avoided military service as a young man, may never have looked out the helicopter window as secretary of defense to reflect solemnly on the sacrifice of the fallen.

Did he think it was all right to push that emotional button for political gain? To use America’s war dead as a campaign prop?

The cemetery staff stood up for the truth and held Mr. Cheney to account. This was no partisan press release; it came from the professionals who see our war dead to their final resting places, and who work under the motto “Where Valor Proudly Sleeps.” They resented that Richard Cheney had made up a tender story about the hallowed grounds they tend, or had allowed a Republican National Committee speechwriter to make one up for him.

If he was willing to speak falsely about Arlington National Cemetery, what else in his speech would prove inaccurate?

Cheney's lies predicted the next 7 years. Later in the speech at the Republican Convention he claimed that George W. Bush had “the courage, and the vision, and the goodness, to be a great president.” He promptly proved himself a coward with no vision except self-serving greed and the short-term outlook of someone who comes along and wrecks a company. Except he wrecked a whole country. The media doesn't see their own complicity. They can't even see their complicity in how they have created an absurd myth around John McCain. In fact, Big Tent Democrat points out a very telling comparison between Obama's statement about the feelings of people in small town Pennsylvania with what McCain said-- which went largely unreported-- about how people feel in small town Iowa.


UPDATE: ANOTHER PENNSYLVANIA OBAMA ENDORSEMENT

Although Fox and CNN are rolling in their own shit, encouraging Hillary to destroy Obama and the Democratic prospects in November, one newspaper you might expect to have taken seriously the purposeful misinterpretation of Obama's remarks, the Allentown Call, hasn't fallen for the Clinton-McCain trope nor it's hysterical amplification by a disgraceful national media. They endorsed Obama today.

In fact, while both candidates are members of the same U.S. Senate, Sen. Obama is the one who has distinguished himself as the better agent for changing Washington. Remember, on the issues, the differences between the Obama and Clinton platforms are thin or nonexistent. He has set himself apart by enunciating a vision of a different America, one that people recognize as resting on the nation's founding principles. His vision calls upon ''the better angels of our nature'' just as Abraham Lincoln did in 1861.

Obama was also endored by the Scranton Times-Tribune this morning. I guess these guys aren't as concerned with brie as the pathetic hacks in the mainstream media trying to drum up some business for their dying dead tree operations.