They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us

“They hate us. They really hate us,” NRO’s Jay Nordlinger noted, along with numerous examples left wing hate speech, immediately after the 2004 election. Certainly, each of the big three networks drops the mask sooner or later.

Let’s start with the newest example, first: “CBS News’ Political Director: Obama Must ‘Destroy’ Republican Party,” as spotted by John Nolte of Big Journalism:

The author of this outrageous left-wing fever dream is John Dickerson, whom Slate describes as “Slate’s chief political correspondent”. What Slate leaves out of its little bio, though, is that Dickerson is also the political director at CBS News.

Dickerson is merely being Dickerson, and  there’s no doubt he speaks for legions upon legions of those in the media today.

What is worthy of note, though, is that a CBS News’ political director is now comfortable openly calling for the destruction of the Republican Party. He obviously fears no admonitions from his colleagues or his employer. And why should he? Earlier this week, Bob Schieffer, a CBS News “living legend,” was perfectly comfortable publicly comparing the NRA to Nazis.

You lump all of this with CNN chief Jeff Zucker applauding Piers Morgan’s shameless feasting off the dead children of Sandy Hook for ratings and attention, and what you have is a media that’s finally … coming out.

In the fall of 2004, Mark Halperin, then ABC’s political director (now with Time magazine) ordered his network not to treat both parties equally, which I imagine didn’t require much arm-twisting inside the House of  Stephanopoulos:

An internal memo written by ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin admonishes ABC staff: During coverage of Democrat Kerry and Republican Bush not to “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable.”

The controversial internal memo obtained by DRUDGE, captures Halperin stating how “Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.”

But Halperin claims that Bush is hoping to “win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.”

“The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done,” Halperin writes.

Halperin’s claim that ABCNEWS will not “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable” set off sparks in St. Louis where media players gathered to cover the second presidential debate.

Halperin states the responsibilities of the ABCNEWS staff have “become quite grave.”

In August, Halperin declared online: “This is now John Kerry’s contest to lose.”

– The Drudge Report, “ABC News Political Director Memo Sparks Controversy: Both Sides Not ‘Equally Accountable,’” October 8th, 2004.

And of course, to get a sense of what NBC thinks of the GOP, simply turn on MSNBC, a cable network that exists so that the newsreaders on its parent channel have a place where they can drop the mask and really let it all hang out.

As for the competition to all of this, Steven Hayward of Power Line asks “Is Fox Actually a Hedgehog?”

One of the wonderful things about Fox News is how it drives the Left out of their minds.  Talk about having no sense of proportion: even though Fox kills CNN and MSNBC in the ratings, Fox News’s viewership is still just a fraction of audience for the nightly news broadcasts of the Big Three legacy networks, which I confess I still watch for the pure schadenfreude of seeing the unstoppable decay of these self-important media institutions.  The Left openly pines for a revival of the “fairness doctrine,” initially to clamp down on Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, but now the big target is clearly Fox News.  It’s another great example of William F Buckley’s remark that while the Left says it is open to other points of view, it always shocks them to discover that there are other points of view.

By the way, remember when journalists informed us that violent rhetoric was the equivalent of racist hate speech, and as such, as Dickerson himself wrote at the time, was something to be eschewed, lest it cause another horrific violent act?

Dickerson’s piece at Slate is titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.”

Fortunately though, no clip art was used in the making of Dickerson’s screed, so I guess that alone gives him a pass.

Update: “Every GOP guest on Face The Nation should ask Bob Schieffer if he agrees with his political director that the GOP needs to be destroyed.” I’d settle for one GOP guest asking Schieffer tomorrow. Bueller?… Anyone?… Bueller?