Perhaps the most popular — and accurate — oxymoron of our current times is "journalistic integrity." The Washington Post once again reminds us that the double-standard with respect conservative and liberal politicians is alive and well.
To frame the Post's malfeasance correctly, it is first necessary to point out that journalistic bias isn't always about what gets printed or broadcast. Just as often, it's about what is not made available for public consumption. Newsworthiness is in the eye of the editorial beholder, so to speak.
In the Virginia Governor's race, GOP candidate Robert McDonnell has been the subject of an ongoing Post campaign to discredit his candidacy based on a graduate student thesis he wrote in 1989. The twenty-year-old thesis expresses what many consider an overly-religious, far right wing, Christian worldview. The paper discusses what Mr. McDonnell considers — or what he once considered — detrimental to families, chiefly feminism, working women and the "purging" of religious influence from public schools.
Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds has called this discovery "devastating" as he, his Democratic allies, and the Washington Post are doing their very best to cut in McDonnell's seven point lead in a recent poll.
Cheap shot? Not at all. Anyone running for public office has to know that whatever "paper trail" he leaves behind is fair game for both detractors — and supporters — to use as they see fit.
Actually, make that almost anyone. The entire college and law school career of Barack Obama, including every thesis, term paper, and anything else which might offer even a glimpse of his worldview, is completely off limits to public consumption.
And the very same Washington Post, along with a terminally hypocritical Democratic party couldn't care less — and didn't, for the entire presidential campaign.
Such behavior is to be expected from Democrats, for whom winning at all costs has become a fundamental pillar of their election strategy. But what's the Washington Post's excuse, considering their "newfound" appetite for delving into Robert McDonnell's college years?
The Washington Post is not alone. The entire mainstream media's "calculated omission" regarding Barack Obama's school years is arguably the principle media scandal of the entire presidential election campaign.
Why did they do it? The bet here is that the president's collegiate paper trail is a pantheon of Marxist, socialist, far-left claptrap — one which might have gone a long way towards derailing his election.
If the Washington Post and Democrats want to contend that something written by Robert McDonnell twenty years ago represents his true and current beliefs, that's fine. But the glaring failure to apply the same standard of investigative journalism to a presidential candidate they are now applying to a gubernatorial candidate is rank hypocrisy.
With every passing day, the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media make it clearer and clearer that they are "all in" regarding their unblinking support for the most far left president in the history of the country. In doing so, they are abandoning last vestiges of decency, fairness and integrity which are supposed to be the core values of the Fourth Estate.
Barack Obama's college and law school years have been off limits long enough. The same media which considers Robert McDonnell's college years relevant owes the American public a similar vetting of our current president. This is an open challenge to all of the journalistic entities which profess their even-handedness.
"Put up" your investigative skills — or "shut up" about anything resembling journalistic integrity.
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