Why is John McCain still competitive? Bob Cesca hits the nail on the head with this post:
In scientific terms, the left has been tagged by the corporate media as the “experimental group” while the right is the “control group.” The Republicans are the Awesome Republicans no matter what. They’re constant. They set the tone of the debate. The corporate media accepts their terms, their rules and their frames as a given and the Democrats are expected to jump and dash and explain themselves based upon those givens, irrespective of how ludicrous they happen to be.
Prove to us that you’re one of us. Prove to us that you support the troops. Prove to us that you’re patriotic. Prove to us that you’re not an effete snob. Prove to us that you can talk to a gathering of bumpkins in a diner like a plainspoken Republican can. Prove to us that you’re not the enemy. Prove to us that you’re not presumptuous.
Although Cesca doesn’t describe the problem in legal terms, I would. The media has assigned the burden of proof to Barack Obama, just like they’ve assigned this burden to the Democrats for decades. Who wins if the People can’t decide? The corporate media has decided that it is the “normal” party, the Republicans. Republicans actually stand up and use the military. They avoid those icky homosexuals. They encourage the production of babies naturally and in abundance, without those gizmos that prevent or “destroy” babies. Republicans are the “natural” party. They are the ones that your grandparents would be more comfortable with. As long as you don’t think too much, the Republicans give you a warm cozy glow. As long as you don’t think of your Constitutional protections or the need to sustain the environment as “natural,” you’ll be inclined to vote Republican.
The “burden of proof” is thus on those newfangled democrats to show that they aren’t going to screw things up, even though the Republicans have been screwing things up for decades . The tie goes to the Republicans, even though they’ve wrecked the economy now, to cap off a long string of failures during the past 7 years. Because the media has bought into Republicans being “natural” and “normal,” Obama starts out behind whenever the media doesn’t aggressively and consciously challenge this well-honed frame developed by conservatives.
How “normal” is McCain? Incredibly not normal. He’s not really the guy next door, but you wouldn’t know it. Cesca comments on McCain’s “regular fellow” media image:
Senator McCain couldn’t possibly be an elitist and out of touch with most Americans (even though he wears $520 shoes and his wife is the heiress to an Anheuser-Busch distributorship fortune) because it just doesn’t fit their scientific experiment dynamic — the script, the narrative. He’s just not. Senator McCain couldn’t possibly be a “celebrity” even though he’s hosted SNL and had a movie-of-the-week made about his Vietnam experiences. He’s just not. Senator McCain couldn’t possibly be in favor of torture even though he voted against banning it. He’s just not. Senator McCain couldn’t possibly be out of his depth on foreign policy even though his lies and errors in this arena far outnumber any similar gaffes by Senator Obama. He’s just not.
