Monkeywrenching the political process

[unixronin]

With the popular vote in the just-past election so close, one could be forgiven for wondering how much the election may have been influenced by what amounts to an elaborate practical joke.

Of course, the article points out that the perpetrators observed that the news media could easily have exposed their hoax had they put the least effort into checking their facts.  But in this last election, by all appearances the media didn't WANT to check their facts, as long as the report involved something damaging to the McCain-Palin campaign.  Can you imagine the witch-hunt had Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish chosen Barack Obama as their target?  Ah, but wait, we don't have to imagine — we have the persecution of Joe the Plumber as an example.

When I consider how one-sided the reporting of this past election campaign was, and yet how close the popular vote was, I find it hard to avoid speculating that in this Presidential election, the people of the United States did not elect Barack Obama; the news media did.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The fact that we now have [...] an apostate Muslim as the lead Executive may well have large implications to foreign policy and dealing with Muslim radicals.

Oh hell, yeah. I hadn't put that together. If there's one thing the radical/fundamentalist Muslims hate worse than infidels, it's apostates.

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I was making it about 18 months ago to the "early adopters", as they talked about how "tone deaf" Bush was to the "international community".

"So, you're supporting a guy who all of the radial Islamic states we're dealing with will have a problem with."

"Whaaa?"

"Even if he's never been a Muslim, if they think he is, then he's an apostate. So they can "deal with the apostate", and deal with the fallout at home, or... Yeah, it can get complicated.

"He's not Muslim!" "But what if they THINK he is, or was?" "That's just a right wing lie!" "Uh, I'm asking, what their PERCEPTION might be." "But he's NOT!"

And usually about there I gave up.