The Questions That Have To Be Answered!

I think its time to look at the anatomy of the "scandal" that President Elect Barack Obama is currently embroiled in (according to talking heads on cable news) involving disgraced Governer of Illinois Rod Blagojevich.

Lets take it from the top.

First we have Mark Halperin coming out and chastising the media (of which he is a part of) for being in the tank for Barack Obama during the Presidential campaign. I believe the word he used was "disgusted".

Then on December 10th Governer of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is arrested by federal authorities on corruption charges.

Then on the same day the seventy eight page indictment is released to the public.

Also on the same day United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald the prosecutor of Scooter Libby in his perjury trial, holds a press conference anouncing details of the investigation. At this time he drops the bomb shell that Gov. Blagojevich was caught on wire taps trying to sell Barack Obama's open Senate seat.

Fitzgerald then goes to great pains to warn the press not to associate President Elect Barack Obama with the Blagojevich scandal because his investigation has found no wrong doing on Obama's part.

The press proceeds to associate President Elect Barack Obama with the Blagojevich scandal.

Obama who has been in meetings all that morning with former Vice President Al Gore trying to come up with ways to help solve our global warming problems as well as seeking counsel on green energy initiatives comes out to do a press conference. When asked directly about the arrest of Rod Blagojevich Obama responds that he has had no contact with Rod Blagojevich and that he is saddened to hear of the arrest.

The press interpret this as Barack Obama being sympathetic to Rod Blagojevich.

The press then scurry off to scour the internet where they find a clip of Obama advisor David Axlerod from a couple of weeks earlier saying he knew Barack Obama had met with Rod Blagojevich. The clip is then used to show that "obviously" Barack Obama had lied about meeting with Rod Blagojevich about paying him so that Blagojevich would install Valarie Jarrett into the Senate seat.

The next day Joe Scarborough on his MSNBC show "Morning Joe" leads the charge alledging that Obama must have done something wrong. He starts flogging an article from 2002 written by Chris Cilliza in which Scarborough says Rahm Emanuel claimed he and Obama ran Blagojevich's gubenatorial campaign. No one notices that Obama was a State Senator at the time not a campaign manager. Nor do they notice that Obama endorsed Blagojevich's opposition in the primary that year. Then he and Pat Buchannan spend the rest of the three hours of the show assailing Obama for not coming out harder against Blagojevich.

Rick Sanchez uses his time on CNN to try to get his moniker for the scandal, "Blago gate", to catch on.

The day after that President Elect Barack Obama comes out and slams Blagojevich and says he thinks its best if he steps down at a press conference announcing Tom Daschle to lead HHS in his administration . In response to a question Obama asserts that his office was initiating an internal investigation to document each and every contact his office has had with Blagojevich and or his office that he will provide to the press at its conclusion. He further reasserts that he had not had any contact with Blagojevich and that he firmly believed that no one in his office engaged in pay to play with him pointing out the racy language Blagojevich used to signify that fact in the wire tapped conversations.

The press takes the news of an internal investigation the fruits of which having been pledged to be presented for public consumption as further proof of Obama's complicity and his willingness to hide it.

Going into and during the weekend different talking heads and print media journalists forecast clouds to hang over Obama's head until the content of the internal investigation is presented. They also baselessly speculated that Rahm Emanuel was the person who had contact with Blagojevich over pay to play regarding the Senate Seat.

On Monday morning December 15th Scarborough is back at it flogging the "Obama is hiding something" meme. But curiously another conversation emerges between Scarborough and Buchannan about whether or not what Blagojevich did was even illegal. Scarborough asserts that from his experience many politicians including himself say stuff out of frustration which may be just blowing off steam. After going back and forth about how Blagojevich might not have "really" done anything wrong Scarborough and his cohorts go back to hitting Barack Obama for not releasing the information found in an investigation that had not yet been completed.

On the same day Obama's transition team releases a statement asserting that they were done with the investigation and had sent it to Fitzgerald to be vetted at which time he asked that they not release the investigation for another week. Because they wanted to respect the investigation Obama's team decided to honor the request. The press release also asserted that the results of the investigation confirmed Obama's assertion that no one on his team had engaged in any innappropriate contact with Blagojevich or his office.

Rick Sanchez read the press release on his show and focused on the word inappropriate and decided that it was a problematic. This besides the fact that the opposite of innapropriate is appropriate. I am still trying to figure out how Obama's team having appropriate contact would be a problem but I digress.

Many other media members pick up on Sanchez's vibe and start railing against Obama not revealing what appropriate contacts his team had with Blago and or his office.

President Elect Obama holds a press conference to announce the selections of Steven Chu as his pick to head the Department of Energy, Lisa Jackson as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner as assistant to the president for energy and climate change and tapped Nancy Sutley as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. After the introductions are done Obama takes a question about the Blagojevich scandal and he refers to the press release and the request by Fitzgerald to not release the contents of the investigation until next week.

The press is undeterred.

A day later the press is back at it outraged that Obama had the nerve to actually honor the request of a U.S. Attorney to hold back on releasing the results of his internal investigation. This despite the fact that many of those same media members were saying just a few days prior that the only valid reason Obama could have for not talking about the case would be if Fitzgerald had asked him not to. Never once does any talking head or print journalist ever say what the problem would be with Obama's transition team having contact with Blagojevich. Its enough for them that the contacts were not released that they need not worry about silly issues like that.

The next day Obama holds another press conference to announce his pick for Education Secretary, Arne Duncan. Again he is asked about Blagojevich. Before the journalist can get out his question however Obama stops him and repeats what he has already said about not talking about the contexts until they are released in the next week because he wanted to honor Fitzgeralds request.

This time the press is outraged. "We gotta get tough with him" says one. "There are questions he has to answer" says another. "The honeymoon is over" declares one more.

So to recap, Blagojevich is caught on tape calling Obama a mother bleeper for not being willing to pay for someone to go to the Senate, U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald comes out and says Obama wasn't involved, Obama says he wasn't involved, Obama announces he will make public an internal investigation into the contacts his team has had with Blagojevich instead of just making a blanket statement that nobody had done anything wrong and putting the onus on the press to try to dig up the information, Obama agrees to hold off a week in releasing the list of contacts at Fitzgeralds request, and Obama refuses to answer questions about the list at press conference because he wants to respect Fitzgeralds request.

And for this our free press wants us to be outraged?

Well here are my questions that needsto be answered. Why in the hell does it matter? What does it matter if he hands the press the contacts today or next week? Does anyone think he is never coming back from vacation? Does anyone believe that he is going to be able to avoid the press for the next four years? Does anyone TRULY believe that he engaged in pay to play with Blagojevich?

The media in the last week has gone from woefully inept and spineless during the Bush administration to hyperactive with Obama and his incoming administration. It seems that they are going out of their way to give this none story legs just to prove to the Halperins and Sean Hannitys of the world that they don't have a liberal bias and that they aren't in the tank for Obama. The truth is all they are doing is lowering their only low bar and proving themselves to be even more inept and spineless. The stories generated by this scandal that try to tie Blagojevich to Obama do nothing but prove that the media will waste no opportunity to pander to the right wing of this country. Of course many of these same members of the press are working for corportions that are now undergoing financial problems. There was a time when I had empathy for them, but not any more. The press in this country have been failing us for the last 8 years and from the looks of them they will be failing us for the next. Coming out trying to invent a scandal about the incoming President does NOT show that you are getting tougher or that you are not in the tank. All it really shows is that the journalists that engage in that behavior are more interested looking tough than looking competent.

And to think there was a time in this country when most of the journalists were both.