Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

I read the Wall Street Journal every day. Most of the paper is great, although not as good as the New York Times. But then there’s the editorial page. It is an extraordinary collection of anti-regulation screeds, Republican political opinions, and anti-liberal opinions. What is important is to recognize the inherent dishonesty of everything put out there by these leading conservative pundits. Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Karl Rove are not interested in the long term health of the Democratic Party or frankly anything that we Democrats care about. It is important then to parse every word to see what their true agenda is. I understand that this is a wildly cynical interpretation, but it has been proven out far too many times for me to doubt this method of media examination.

This provides context for Karl Rove’s opinion piece here. It was almost poetic in how beautifully Rove said nothing while at the same time trying to spread pro-Republican themes. It is basically a collection of inspiring anecdotes that make John McCain look really good. How Rove does this is instructive.

First of all, he talks about what a “private” person McCain is, implying that this is only a small portion of the many amazingly awesome things John McCain has ever done. This has the goal of keeping McCain seperate from all of his surrogates out there, so that they can say great things about him and insult Barack Obama without being connected to him. He can appear above the fray and a modern chivalric knight, as humble yet strong. Next, it also implies that no matter how many great stories you may hear during the campaign, this is only a small portion of the total stories out there, puffing up McCain’s image more than actually deserved.

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