Michael Shear and Anne Kornblut have been leading the Washington Post’s charge against John McCain recently. But let’s not forget about Matthew Mosk, who rarely misses an opportunity to attack the Republican ticket or to cheerlead for Obama. Today he contributed a piece called “McCain Campaign Brags About Endorsement by Wealthy Socialite.” The individual in question was a Hillary Clinton supporter and a member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, so it seems appropriate that the McCain campaign would note her defection.
But Mosk fixates on the fact that the individual also happens to be a rich socialite named Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild. And he can barely contain his glee that Obama countered with the endorsement of Lilly Ledbetter, reverentially described by Mosk as “the Alabama woman whose fight for equal pay led her to the United States Supreme Court and inspired. . .fair pay legislation.” (A better description would be “the Alabama woman who failed to assert her right to equal pay under existing legislation for years, until her claim was too stale properly to litigate”).
The real irony here is that Mosk’s silly piece comes almost immediately after Obama, in the words of ABC News, “rubbed shoulders with Hollywood A-listers at a big-money Beverly Hills fundraiser featuring mega-star Barbra Streisand.” The price of admission was $28,500 and, as far as I can tell, Lilly Ledbetter wasn’t there.
Mosk, whose piece goes under the heading “The Rich and Famous,” declines to mention the Streisand fundraiser even though the liberal singer is famous and the pro-McCain socialite is not. This is called covering for your candidate.
The Post did run a piece yesterday about the Hollywood event. But it too tries to cover for Obama by switching the focus to McCain. The story, by Robert Barnes yet another Post reporter who seems to be in the tank for Obama, is called “McCain Mocks Obama’s Fundraiser with Streisand.” It’s a snarky report that ridicules McCain for mentioning Obama’s event after himself appearing at a fundraiser “at a swank Miami hotel.” Barnes also informs us that “McCain recited a speech he had given earlier in the day about the need to reform Wall Street” and that “a slow but steady trickle of supporters began to file out after Palin’s speech introducing McCain.” And Barnes does not neglect to take some shots at Sarah Palin. He condescendingly describes her as “bubbly” and notes that she made the same statement twice during a campaign event.
Most of the charges of sexism against those who have criticized Palin are complete rubbish, but Barnes may actually deserve such criticism. In any case, I’m sure that feminists would have no hesitation about lodging it if the term “bubbly” were applied to a liberal female candidate.
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