Some Citizens Get It.

I normally post on editorials or news stories in the media but today I want to post on an excellent letter to the editor in the Nov 1st Detroit News titled "blame the media" by Walter Konarzevski. It's in response to an editorial by News editor Nolan Finley criticizing the White House press core's way overdue ability to criticize the President. Mr. Konarzevski writes in part:

"You did not cover Sen. Barack Obama objectively; if you did he very well would not have become president. You cheered his campaign, smeared his opposition, hid who he was and what he believed. You in fact support him in his falsehoods.

Now you are reporting on things that should have been reported on years ago. Too late, you should have told the truth to start with. You should have been reporters, not political operatives."

So true. If I knew Obama was a collectivist back in 2008 the News could have known it too. Mr. Obama was sworn in on Jan 20th 2009 and on that day the Detroit News editorial said in part:

"We have serious doubts about and major philosophical differences with many of the new president's idea for meeting those challenges, but debating those differences is for another day.

Today we join the nation in celebrating Obama's historic rise to the White House and are heartily encouraged by the tremendous faith and hope such a large portion of the nation has in him. We can't recall anything in modern politics to match the jubilation over Obama's ignauguration."

Yes there were a lot of high hopes that day. But I didn't have any. I could see jubilation over the first black man as president but skin color and ideas are two different things and I didn't like any of his ideas. The title of the editorial was "Bold leadership will make Obama presidency historic." Why would the editor believe Obama capable of bold leadership when it was common knowledge he had never managed anything?

Above the headline was a picture of Obama speaking that previous Sunday which was captioned:

Barack Obama has promised to try to build a broad consensus for America's revival. The theme at the Lincoln Memorial pre-inaugural event in Washington that Obama spoke at Sunday was "We are one.""

It wasn't long afterward that "We are one" became "We won." So much for unity. But while the press was all agog over Obama at least some citizens like Mr. Konarzevski and myself could see behind the curtain.