We've been waiting for the media attacks on Ben Carson to begin. To this point he'd been (relatively) untouched: He wasn't viewed as a credible threat. But his numbers aren't receding. They're growing. So he's now in the crosshairs.
The "news" networks have spent several days manufacturing outrage over Carson, saying that if he were in a mass-shooting situation, he would want to fight back. "I would not just stand there and let him shoot me."
It didn't matter how many millions of sensible Americans -- especially males -- would have that same thought. Experts insist distracting the shooter by taking action, like throwing things, can help save lives. Indeed, shortly after 9/11 we were visiting with an airline security expert who stated, emphatically, that in a similar situation the impulse must be to attack the attacker, no matter how hopeless it might appear.
Instead, the networks seized on how Carson was insulting shooting victims as being too passive -- an aggressively biased take.
On NBC's "Today," news anchor Natalie Morales had the vapors: "It's beyond insensitive. It's hard to hear that." Co-host Willie Geist huffed, "But my goodness, who would ever second-guess people in that situation?"
Meanwhile, the 70-something politicians running on the Democrat side can apparently say all kinds of hypernegative things and expect the "objective" media to ignore them. After all, isn't it just scientifically verifiable that conservatives are evil?
For example, at a surprise appearance at a Latino PAC's fundraiser on Oct. 6, Vice President Joe Biden uncorked on Donald Trump and the other GOP hopefuls. Latinos were hanging their heads, he said. "People walked in like literally down because of the beating, the beating Hispanics are taking at the hands of the Republican caucus -- I mean the Republican presidential race." The American people, Biden said, are "so, so, so much different than these guys who are appealing to everything from homophobia to this notion of the ... Know-Nothing Party of the late 1800s."
Network TV coverage? Nothing. (The Know-Nothing Party only flourished in the 1840s and 1850s, but who expected Biden to get an A in History -- or even pass?)
On the very same day, Hillary Clinton smeared the National Rifle Association at an Iowa town hall. "You know, the NRA's position reminds me of negotiating with the Iranians or the communists," she said. "The NRA tries to keep gun owners -- the ones who are members -- really upset all the time so they can keep collecting their money, because they tell them they're the only thing that's going to stop the black helicopters from landing in the front yard and people's guns being seized."
James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal quipped: "If the NRA is like 'the Iranians or the communists,' does she recommend the same negotiating strategy the administration has employed with them -- i.e., make concession after concession, then declare a diplomatic triumph?"
Again, the network coverage: zero.
On Oct. 10, President Obama spoke to donors in Hollywood about the Republicans in the House and in the presidential race that the "politics of fear ... can express itself in anti-immigration rhetoric. It can express itself in hunkering back on the need to take care of folks who are vulnerable ... It can express itself in sort of cheap jingoism and militarism and nationalism that's not grounded in our national security interests. But it's a dangerous path."
This is apparently dime-a-dozen liberal arrogance from Obama. So it's not news. Our media distort the picture so only the Republicans are ideological and refuse to compromise, which completely avoids Obama's second-term "executive action" trench warfare.
As usual, one of the media's most obvious demonstrations of favoritism is defining what is a damaging, disgraceful gaffe. Liberals -- even Joe Biden! -- just can't seem to be guilty of one.