So Tony Bennett gets the boot, and liberals get a gotcha. Hooray.
After several days of bashing by the drive-by media, Bennett resigned as education secretary.
I didn't follow the story that closely but it didn't look like much. Bennett may have been doing the same thing Democrat politicians and bureaucrats do every day helping some buddies. (It wasn't even in Florida!) He says he wasn't guilty, but who is going to listen to someone pronounced guilty inthe Court of Public Opinion by the high priests of the media other than the jury in the George Zimmerman trial?
If only Bennett had Barack Obama's special ability.
The Internal Revenue Service is stiffing conservative organizations to help tilt elections? No biggie.
Obama simply tells the media, These are not the droids you're looking for and they wave him through the checkpoint.
Even Obama had said what the IRS did was outrageous if true, and apparently it is. Except that now it has become a phony scandal. One of several, in fact.
However, thanks to Obama's Jedi mind-clouding trick, the media are focused on castigating those in Congress who are trying to get the facts. I wonder how well that would have worked for Richard Nixon if he had called Watergate a phony scandal. I guess Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would have been reassigned to covering speeches on the rubber-chicken circuit.
Then, there is Charlie Rangel. This old codger (a decorated and wounded combat veteran, let us note) has been in Congress forever and is unfazed by a little thing like being censured by Congress for unethical behavior and cheating on taxes.
Rangel went off on a rant the other day, calling people white crackers and likening tea party members to terrorists.
Will his hate speech get him the Paula Deen treatment? Are you kidding?
As far as the media are concerned, only conservatives are capable of hate speech. Basically, it amounts to anything they say, but specifically any criticism of Obama.
Rangel, Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow or anyone in the inner circle can libel conservatives, whites, Christians or anyone else they dislike to their heart's content. At most, after an especially egregious or profane insult, they will toss out a lame apology, just to show how fair they are.
In the meantime, the media constantly are lecturing conservatives on the need for more civil discourse in political discussions, and accusing lovable, pleasant and humorous people like Rush Limbaugh of hate speech.
Fair enough. Liberals own the public school system and the media. Conservatives will have to do the best they can with facts and reason in their struggle against the Dark Side of the Force.
At stake is the future of the nation, but that hardly matters when there is an opportunity for the left to pick up a few cheap political points.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as speech writer for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
