Mean Mister Mustard

Stacy McCain offers “Congratulations to Professor Jacobson”:

Traffic at his Legal Insurrection blog, which was about 37,000 visits in February, surged to more than 107,000 in just two days Thursday and Friday, because he dared to point out how dishonest news coverage has become.

The point was not that Obama likes Dijon mustard — I do, too, as does the man who named it “DijonGate” — but rather that MSNBC and other major media are no longer in the news business. They’re doing public relations for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.

What was the purpose of Obama and Joe Biden going to Ray’s Hell-Burger in Arlington, Va.? It was a photo-op, to show O and Joe bein’ Regular Guys, standin’ in line, eatin’ some burgers.

Obviously, reporters didn’t think “Dijon mustard” fit the narrative the White House wanted, and so they fudged the quote — and NBC even edited its own video — to omit the offensive French phrase. Jacobson pointed this out, and it was like showing a Rorshach inkblot to Charles Manson.

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Jacobson’s posts, however, pointed out how news organizations were actively involved in the image-shaping function of the Obama P.R. machine. It would be like learning that Fox News provided the “Mission Accomplished” banner at Bush’s famous 2003 aircraft-carrier event.

Exposure of the media role in the Obama phenomenon is what the Left fears most because, at some level, they understand that if the press were ever to report honestly on what the Democrats are doing, the game would change. So the Obama cultists, accustomed to only fawning coverage of their Leader, react with fury when the fawning coverage is demonstrated to be dishonest.

Obama and Biden’s trip to Ray’s Hell-Burger in Arlington is remarkably reminiscent of Kerry and Edwards’ campaign photo-op at an New York State Wendy’s. Mark Steyn’s August 2004 Telegraph article is the definitive take on that classic faux-populist debacle. Much like the dangers of being photographed while wearing silly hats on the campaign trail, perhaps elitist politicians might want to think twice before slumming it at the local fast-food joint. Millionare politicians who are Good Ole Boys at heart like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush can get away with this approach; the more European of our bourgeois bohemian politicians, such as Kerry and Barry, simply can’t — and shouldn’t even bother.