Posted 7:32 AM by steve

One of my favorite Simpsons episodes has a scene "where there are a load of garden rakes lying on the ground... and Homer stands on one, gets whacked in the face by the handle, stands on another, gets whacked again, stands on another, gets whacked, and so on for a number of whacks".

What makes it so good is that (my bold) "the joke is not so much the sight of a man whacking himself in the face with a garden rake, which is in itself very funny, but his inability to learn not to get whacked again. Homer is locked into a grim cycle of self-inflicted pain, too stupefied to break out of the loop, too numb to begin to understand why the bad thing keeps happening. He accepts his fate with unquestioning gloom".

Well, that is how I view the GOP when it comes to its interaction with the MSM. They know that the so-called journalists are liberals who would like nothing better than to make the GOP look bad, and not out of journalistic ambition which would target Democrats equally, but rather naked political bias against Republicans and conservative programs and policies.

And yet, like Homer, they keep showing up to get smacked upside their heads. Last night, the GOP Presidential candidates showed up for a CNN/You Tube debate hosted by Anderson Cooper, that paragon of media independence, in which a number of Democratic plants were given the opportunity to ask questions of the candidates.... questions that just coincidently attempted to portray the candidates in as bad a light as possible.

That ought to have been no surprise. It's silly to expect anything to come out of a newsroom full of liberal reporters, editors, producers and research assistants that is even close to politically neutral and balanced. The people who work at CNN aren't conservative, they don't know conservatives, they don't like conservatives... and, as a result, their entire mindset revolves around the notion that America needs to be shown just how bad conservative policies are for them. That is their goal in life, it is what they set out to do from the moment they get up in the morning to when they go to bed at night.

And just as one can cont on the sun to rise in the east, one can count on the roosters to crow in response... and here comes the right side of the blogosphere, all upset at this (latest) breach of journalistic fair play. Just as they were with the TNR making up stuff that portrayed the military in a bad light, they're screaming now that CNN needs to fess up and come clean.

But what do you all expect? How many times do you have to stand on a rake before you accept that the MSM is NOT neutral? How dense do you have to be to not figure out that the MSM has no intent of playing fair? If the folks at CNN think they made a mistake, it's not their selecting Democratic activists to ask questions at a GOP debate, it was their being rather inept at covering their tracks better. C'mon folks, even Homer Simpson would eventually figure it out. Are you all not even as smart as Homer?

For GOP candidates and officeholders, why show up for an ambush? Why not stay away? When GOP candidates enter the proverbial lion's den, whether a debate such as this or a Sunday morning political talk show, they can't hope to win, they can only hope to get away with some non-fatal flesh wounds, and what's the point of doing that? To show people that aren't going to vote for them anyway that they're tough? They may think that, but what they're really doing a whole lot of people how stupid they are.

There was some talk ago about the Democrats refusing to show up for a FoxNews hosted debate, that their boycotting the debate would leave them vulnerable to attacks along the lines of "if they're afraid to face FoxNews, how will they ever survive having to face the likes of the Mad Mullahs of Iran?", and maybe the GOP candidates all think they'll be made to look silly if they're 'afraid' to face the tough questioners at CNN.

Maybe, but I think the better way to approach this would be to think about how little the American people would think of a Presidential candidate who is so obviously unable to recognize an enemy right in front of their very microphone. How is the likes of McCain or Romney going to make sense of the world if they can't recognize the MSM enemy as what it is?