The media to Americans: Who are you going to believe — us or your lying eyes?

A couple of years ago, I wrote that, when it came to the media love affair with the Obamas, the scales fell from my Mom’s eyes when Time had a cover touting Michelle Obama as the most beautiful, stylish woman since Jackie O.  My Mom refused to accept this as an objective statement of fact.  It started a thought cascade.  If Time was pushing the truth envelope about Michelle, then everything else might be untrue as well.  The wall, once it started crumbling, crumbled hard and fast.

I thought of my Mom’s epiphany when I looked back at the media swoon about Obama’s “gutsy” bin Laden call:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_7nUNiWWvc[/youtube]

Ordinary Americans have long recognized that, while it was a smart thing to send in the incredibly competent SEALS to take out bin Laden, it wasn’t that gutsy a call.  I mean, this is what Commanders in Chief are supposed to do during times of war (or in chess):  Kill the enemy’s king.  For Obama, sitting in the White House with reasonably solid intelligence at hand to announce, “Yeah, you, uh, should, uh, kill, uh, bin Laden,” doesn’t strike anyone as being an unusually onerous task for a wartime president.

By constantly emphasizing Obama’s gutsiness, the media harmed him and themselves.  They harmed him by appearing surprised that he had the courage to make a responsible decision in his capacity as Commander in Chief, and they harmed themselves by exposing their credibility problem to the American people.

(And yes, I know this is old news, but the “gutsy” video just came to my attention recently, so it seemed as good a time as any to post on the subject.)