The Soft Bigotry of low Surge Expectations

So, Ben Smith says that this New York Times piece "hardens a new CW on the surge, working"

At the same time, Frank Rich points out that the media is not covering the violence:

When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.

The media has an interesting way of helping its buddy John McCain with a "surge is working" narrative: don't report much about anything contrary to that narrative.

The media likes to play the expectations game in elections, usually to the Republicans' benefit.

In 2000, they lowered expectations on Bush so that as long as he did not piss in his pants in the debates, he would be declared the winner even if Gore made better points on the merits.

Today, they are busy lowering expectations for John McCain and raising them for Barack Obama.  'Why is Obama only 6 points ahead?' they concern troll, ignoring the fact that it is remarkable he is in such a position after an extended primary season in which the media did endless hit jobs on him over Wright and bittergate, but gave McCain a free pass on multiple gaffes.   The real question is why can't the beloved "Maverick" get a lead when the media is so obviously in the tank for him and none of his extensive dirt has gotten much air time.

Perhaps this is why they are trying to re-write history with the Iraq war by playing a similar expectations game. Even though Iraq is worse off in many ways compared to before the invasion, the key m.o of the media is to compare the present to the worst point in the last couple of years.    

The "surge is working" meme will ignore the fact that there were no WMD's.

The "surge is working" meme will ignore the fact that there was no real Al Qaeda in Iraq until we broke the country so that they could infiltrate it.

The "surge is working" meme will ignore the fact that political reconciliation is still a farce.

The "surge is working" meme will ignore the fact that we have spent way too much blood and treasure for a fool's errand that has not made us any safer or even brought down gas prices.

The "surge is working" meme will ignore the fact that we have increased Iran's influence in the region by weakening its counterbalance, Iraq.

I suspect that there will be a virtual media blackout of bad news from Iraq until the election because the media don't want to hurt John McCain.  I doubt it will work, but it won't be for a lack of trying.  The lack of ethics in the traditional media never fails to amaze me.