Two Networks In One: Just NBC the Hypocrisy!

What a difference three and a half years makes:

There’s some good news behind the discouraging headlines on the economy: Gas is getting cheaper. At least two states had stations selling gas for $2.99 on Friday and it could fall below $3 in more areas over the weekend.

A plunge in oil prices has knocked more than 30 cents off the price of a gallon of gas in most parts of the U.S. since early April. The national average is now $3.61. Experts predict further decline in the next few weeks.

If Americans spend less filling their tanks, they’ll have more money for discretionary purchases. The downside? Lower oil and gas prices are symptoms of weakening economic conditions in the U.S. and around the globe.

— MSNBC, “Gas prices are silver lining as economy weakens,” June 2nd, 2012.

But how can it be “good news” that “gas is getting cheaper, when the senior anchor for MSNBC’s parent network said only a few years ago:

Let’s talk for a moment about consumer responsibility when it comes to the auto industries. As soon as gas prices dropped, consumers moved back to the larger cars once again. The SUVs are the big gas consumers. Why not take this opportunity to put a tax on gasoline, bump it back up to $4 a gallon where people were prepared to pay for that, and use that revenue for alternative energy and as a signal to the consumers: “Those days are gone. We’re not going to have gasoline that you could just fill up your tank for 20 bucks anymore.”

— Tom Brokaw of NBC, interviewing then-President Elect Obama on Meet the Press, December of 2008. The New York Times and the Washington Post would quickly agree with the NBC spokesman. At the risk of sounding cynical, it’s almost as if The Office of the President Elect and its “Non-Official Campaign” staff were handing out pre-written talking points to a wide swatch of the “unexpectedly” supine media.

For the MSM and Obama, high gas prices made for a weird, twisted Bizarro World logic in 2008. But as Victor Davis Hanson wrote earlier this year, “Now What? The Obama administration’s real problem is existential: What if it gets what it wants, but then finds that either it or the country really is uncomfortable with what it got?”