I’m as outraged as the next guy over a politically motivated traffic jam. Everything I read about TrafficGate or Bridgegate or whatever it is disgusts me, and I am glad that there have been firings over the craven abuse of power by those in Governor Christie’s administration. Whether or not Christie’s apology and humility are authentic, he most certainly faced the music, and said what needed to be said.
The media is now obsessively focused on what did he know and when did he know it: Did the decision to shut down traffic originate in his office?
My guess is we’ll know the answer to that far sooner than we’ll know the details of what happened in the Oval Office during the attack on our mission in Benghazi. Or who ordered the stand-down for providing assistance to Ambassador Stevens. Or where the policy to target conservative and other dissenting groups (such as Christian and pro-Israel) originated. And so on. Heads have already, as they say “rolled” because of the 4-day traffic jam, and not one person in the President’s administration has felt the slightest frisson of consequence from any of the travesties they’ve perpetrated.
A fun aspect is the impeachment chatter over this.
Writing for Newsmax, Dershowitz explained: “Under legal theories of causation, a person who sets in motion a chain of events that result in harm may be responsible for causing that harm, even if he or she did not intend to do so.” The question would depend on two factors: first, whether the lane closures caused foreseeable harm, and second, whether Christie himself was directly involved in ordering the closures or failing to prevent them. read more from Breitbart.com here
Because this had much greater impact than the White House scandals. Of course.
Much has been written and analyzed about the media’s coverage being, shall we say, weighted against Christie. According to MRC,
In less than 48 hours, ABC, CBS and NBC deluged viewers with coverage of Chris Christie’s traffic jam scandal, devoting a staggering 88 minutes to the story. In comparison, these same news outlets over the last six months have allowed a scant two minutes for the latest on Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service scandal. The disparity in less than two days is 44-to-one. read more
and
The MRC already counted 17 times more network coverage of Christie’s controversy than of Obama’s IRS scandal in the past six months. That same double standard was evident in the treatment given the Christie administration versus the non-coverage of any Obama administration wrongdoing during the shutdown. read more…
From Newsbusted, we have this from Brent Bozell
And who can complain when MediaMatters helps spread the word about Obama’s scandals!
And from Mitch Behna via Wayne Dupree’s News Ninja we have this:
It is clear that if the roles were reversed, where Christie was a Democrat and Obama was a Republican, the media would be all over Benghazi, IRS, NSA, and the Fast And Furious scandals. We need to speak up and let the mainstream media know that this double standard has gone on long enough and is not acceptable. read more…
And so we come to RATM. As Mitch Behna suggests, indeed, we need to speak up and let the media know this is not acceptable. And at RATM, we are.
On Friday, RATM started “Facebook Flashmobbing” the various mainstream media Facebook pages, making exactly these points. About 30 of us spent a few hours Friday, then continued over the weekend. Thirty isn’t a huge number, but it’s a lot bigger than zero which is what the media expects.
The over-the-top obviousness of the coverage imbalance made our forays into these dens of liberalism a cathartic, exhilarating and yet profoundly frustrating exercise. There is no doubt that the ludicrousness must be countered – really? all this over a traffic jam? – and we are glad to do it. But wallowing in the ignorance on display on these pages – of course, Huffington is the worst – is a reminder of how deeply mired in kool-aid our media and our fellow Americans are.
The problem, as we see it, is less the “low-information” voters than the “deliberately misinformed” voters. The Facebook activities allow us to break the narrative monopoly by pounding the threads that their readers visit, vociferously complaining about the double standard and demanding equal attention be paid by the media to those scandals originating out of the White House as to the one out of the office of the Republican governor of New Jersey over a 4-day lane closures.
Passing around articles and outrage among ourselves won’t change a thing. Go on over to the networks, and share your outrage with them. We know this stuff already – they’re the ones who need to hear it.
Join us on Facebook and help with our flashmobs.
Be heard. Help grow that 30 into 300, 3000. Help make a difference. Help fight back.