September 19, 2012

It's a mystery!

Paul J. Shlichta

Yesterday, while perusing the Google News website, I noticed the headingNeb. senator pleads guilty to 2 misdemeanors, and under it," State Sen. Brenda Council pleaded guilty Tuesday to filing false campaign finance reports that prosecutors say concealed her misuse ...."

On a hunch, I clicked on the link and searched the article for State SenatorCouncil's party affiliation. None was given. So I typed in "Brenda Council," started a Google News search, and (in 0.13 seconds) got over 7,000 hits. Searching through the first dozen, I could find no trace of a party affiliation. So I tried googling "Brenda Council Democrat" and got 2,300 hits, starting with one from the Huffington Post. But the first dozen of these were accidental conjunctions (two separate articles on the same website) and Sen. Council's party affiliation was still a mystery. I kept searching and finally found a Nebraska newspaper article that mentioned, in the twenty-fifth paragraph, that "Council is a Democrat."  By now, fifteen minutes had elapsed and when I went back toGoogle News, the original entry had disappeared.

Now I don't want to mock State Senator Council* in the midst of her difficulties. She appears to be a decent woman with a gambling problem she's trying to control. Moreover, her political record looks rather good. But -- if you will excuse my paranoia -- I contend that, if she had happened to be of a different party affiliation, the word "Republican" would have been prominent in the Google News heading (and in all the articles) and that the entry would have remained on their webpage for several days.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem we are facing: the media's facile cover-up of anything that might hurt the Democrats in general and Obama in particular. I oncewrote

 that one way to lose an election is to let the Democrats set the agenda. Our central theme is that Obama has failed to do what he promise and has repeatedly lied about his failure. We must not allow the media to divert us from loudly proclaiming that failure, from now until Election Day.

*  I feel compelled to use that title to prevent Senator Barbara Boxer from rebuking me.

__._,_.___

.

__,_._,___