A-Riva-derci, proper context.

The first thing that struck me when KCRA weekend evening news anchor Chris Riva began a story with, “Three scandals in one week” was the predictably knee-jerk, “Wow! I can’t believe mainstream media is covering Left Wing scandals” reaction one would expect from a Right Wing conspiracy theorist such as myself.

A second or two later, video of the President rolled as we saw the graphic overlay, “Tough Week”.

Then, I went in a different direction. This was basically an attempt to diminish the scandals as much as possible. In other words, sometimes there is so much reporting of a Left Wing scandal among alternate sources that mainstream media simply can’t ignore it altogether. In that regard, the best they hope to do is diminish the impact on their cronies and chums within their Democratic Party.

Let’s think about the impact of the phrase, “Tough week for President Obama.”

So, here you had a Benghazi cover up that went on for weeks after the event, with whistleblower hearings occurring six months later. On the IRS front, the un-American scrutiny of Conservative and pro-Christian, pro-Israel, pro-Jewish 501c applicants went on for several years. Presumably, the DOJ wiretapping also went on for a prolonged period.

All of this occurred on the President’s watch over a protracted period of time.

So mainstream media encapsulates the emergence of the three scandals as a “tough week”.

Does that not diminish the overall impact?

Consider this. Last week was the 225^th week (yes I added it in my head) of the Obama presidency. One tough week out of 225 doesn’t sound so bad, does it? In mathematical terms, that’s 0.4% of his presidency that’s been defined as “tough”. Hence, we are to infer that 99.6% of his time as President has not been tough.

You think they covered the emergence of Watergate as a “tough week” for President Nixon?

“Tough week” not only diminishes the time-significance of the scandals themselves, but it also seems to whitewash any other measurable aspects of the President’s job performance, such as the Unemployment statistics, the soaring National Debt, relatively low job approval ratings and more. Heck, his narrow re-election aside, it’s been a tough 225 weeks – almost 4.5 years – for this President.

So many Americans have been forced to withstand the impacts of his policies, both foreign and domestic. Surely for them it’s been more than a tough week, as the out-of-touch media deemed it.

Good day sunshine

Because I have noted many times before that Fox News Sunday with the outstanding Chris Wallace and his fair and balanced interviews is a star of Sunday morning television – and yesterday’s broadcast was especially strong as it garnered the “irrelevant” comment from a White House spokesperson that set the Twitter world on fire – I instead want to focus on an apolitical Sunday show that always seems worth watching.

CBS Sunday Morning not only is a respite from the political talking head shows or religious programming that dominate Sunday mornings, it also seems – though I could definitely be wrong – devoid of the “corporate shilling” phenomenon seen on other magazine-style shows like Today, Good Morning America and 60 Minutes. By corporate shilling I mean stories presented as objectively-determined news that are really promos for another product owned by the father company of the network. The only overt promotion I found was when one of the reporters of a story was introduced as, “Erin Moriarity of 48 Hours“.

This week’s show featured stories on the history and future of office furniture, i.e., the cubical, to gardens grown on Manhattan high-rise buildings to J-Lo’s success in the fashion business. I could mostly do without the celebrity incorporation as one would hope there’d be a show that doesn’t engage in the celebrity worship of every other program. Nevertheless, it was compelling “reality” TV – the likes of which are seldom seen nowadays.

Check it out if you’re ever in the mood for something a little different to start your Sundays.

When it comes to faking news, call me a Hader.

Saturday’s KCRA morning newscast featured a major news story: which Saturday Night Live characters were winding up their respective runs on the show, whose season finale was later that night.

Huge story!

It was such a big story that all the networks covered it, right?

Of course not. Such local “newscasts” are now regularly hijacked with non-news stories simply meant to promote something else affiliated with the network. It’s old news – albeit not news.

My favorite part is when the live local news anchor turns it over to the national HQ reporter who delivers the story – as if this guy is a part of the KCRA broadcast team.

In addition to noting Bill Hader’s final SNL show, they worked in a plug for Seth Myers taking over Late Night, which doesn’t occur until next season – on NBC, of course. Had Myers been moving to another network this would not have been noted. That’s how it works.

As I always say: Thank you, KCRA. You could’ve given us news, but you’ve given us so much more.

Mitt-managed?

This is a question with no definitive answer, yet one worth pondering.

We can’t build a time machine and go back to September 12, 2012 and ensure that Benghazi was given the proper coverage – both in terms of accuracy and attention – and then relive the election two months later. Hence, we’ll never know.

In addition, we have to ask how much more could’ve been reported in those two months leading up to the election – given it took all this time to finally hear from the courageous whistleblowers within the State Department. We do know that the topic did come up during the election campaign. Most infamously, Romney was ambushed by Candy Crowley in the second debate, making the average viewer who hadn’t paid attention to the story believe that Obama was right and Romney was wrong. (Of course, fact-checking proved the opposite, but the damage had inevitably been done.) Additionally, much of the pre-election coverage – as is done in any NY or LA Times story – was about the politicization of Benghazi by the Romney campaign. Take that plus the debate debacle and Benghazi may have actually been a net loss for Romney, which is almost unfathomable today as we look back.

I have already drawn the analogy, as have others, to Iran-Contra and the massive amounts of coverage it generated during the Reagan presidency. Hence, I have to throw in this huge caveat to my rhetorical question: all that negative coverage did not hurt Reagan or Bush, that is unless you count that “October surprise” story that surfaced the Friday before the 1992 re-election bid of Bush, who was gaining momentum in the polls, that was Iran-Contra-related (and entirely fabricated and run by a media in bed with Clinton even before Lewinsky was in bed with Clinton).

Also, even before the election I do recall John Stewart lambasting the obvious cover up about the “video” by the entire administration, meaning the Joe Cool voter who watches The Daily Show did at least hear that angle leading up to their voting decision, though not with the scope and level of detail we heard from the three whistleblowers, including the stand-down order and the no call back from the Secretary of State.

My overarching analysis of the 2012 Presidential election concluded that it was mostly a popularity contest and hence Obama connected with more Joe-average voters who like cool people such as celebrities, the hip Obama had the leg up on stuff-shirt, Richie-Rich Romney no matter what first term scandals his administration covered up. I also bought into the Andrew Wilkow assessment that “free stuff won” – i.e., Romney was right about the 47% who paid no income tax, that it would be difficult to persuade them with a message that wasn’t more giveaways for them. Given this premise, I lean toward an answer of no – that Benghazi, properly reported wouldn’t have cost Obama the election, though I do think daily negative coverage even over two months would’ve taken some toll.

Now, none of this means that the recent revelations from the Benghazi whistleblowers render these acts as impeachable, however. Not only have the whisteblowers’ testimony blown the lid off everything this Administration told us directly for weeks after the attack, but when you coupled them with the revelations about the inappropriate use of the IRS in harassing and enemy list-gathering of Conservative and pro Israeli organizations seeking 501c nonprofit status (Nixon’s articles of impeachment included inappropriate use of the IRS, remember), you have quite a case building. I’ve heard it argued that the stalling and bullying tactics applied toward these groups in strategic locations relative to the election, i.e., battleground states, might’ve impacted the ability of Conservative groups, both those unable to mobilize while awaiting 501c status approval and others who heard of the red tape and privacy infringements imposed on applicants and subsequently didn’t bother to try to form their own organizations.

Nevertheless, we’ll never know if what we now know were known prior to the 2012 election, whether the outcome would’ve been different.

One prediction I Tweeted earlier: now that the “I-word”, “impeachment” has been mentioned – most notably by a sitting U.S. Senator (Inhofe, Oklahoma), I believe that, in addition to the predictable media objections that will include, “partisan witch hunt” and “racist Republicans” and “can the country go through this again?” we will hear another anti-impeachment argument from mainstream media pundits that will go, “Do we really want President Joe Biden?”

If that happens, you read it here first.

Anyway, the point is: whether it would’ve meant we’d have President Romney, we deserved the story to be given the scandal classification and associated attention it deserved in the time period prior to the election. In that regard, we were robbed. Ultimately, Romney may not have been robbed of the presidency, but we the people were robbed of the news coverage we deserved.

What difference does party make?

You can’t seem to get 20 seconds into a news report about the Benghazi hearings before party identification occurs.

I recently saw a local network news broadcast recap of the hearings, which should a clip of Hillary Clinton, followed by fellow Democrat Diane Feinstein, followed by the news anchor saying, “Republicans are saying….”

Ugh!!!! That’s when I tuned it out.

The Senate investigation of the Benghazi cover-up should have absolutely nothing to do with political party. This isn’t Republicans versus Democrats. This is people elected to the U.S. Senate by the American people who should be hell bent on finding out the truth about Benghazi.

Party affiliation? To quote the former Secretary of State, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

It should not matter one iota which political party a Senator on the hearing committee represents. Each should be equally determined to get to the bottom of what happened, why Americans were deliberately lied to  and what could have been done differently, if anything, to have saved the lives of four Americans. That is their obligation.

The Democrats on or off the committee who are trying to politicize this into an anti-Republican, “nothing to see here; this is a politically-motivated witch hunt” partisan issue – and the media, who administers regular reports that go, “Republicans say X, but Democrats say Y” – are doing all Americans an enormous disservice.

The knee-jerk, default, auto response in any political news report is “Republicans say X, but Democrats say Y” – i.e., somehow every political news story seems to come down to political party affiliation – oh, except when a Democrat like Gary Condit is an alleged murder, then the “D” affiliation is dropped from all news reports.

When it comes to incidents like Benghazi, political party should be completely irrelevant. It should not matter which political party is in power, or which has the majority in either house. It doesn’t matter. Truth is truth – and wanting to get to the bottom of it is irrespective of the R and D attached to the elected official bound by the rest of us to work toward ensuring freedom of opportunity for all Americans.

The point is, “Republicans versus Democrats” should be a position only offered during election campaigns. During the rest of the time, including a time when Americans deserve answers on how and why four lives were lost, the construct should be US Senators, US Representatives, US State Department officials, etc. – because, when it comes to finding answers on Benghazi and any other national security-related affairs, we aren’t Republicans or Democrats; we are Americans.