By Dave Andrusko
Pro-Life Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
The day has gotten away from me, but I do want to say a couple of new words about an old topic—media bias—and return for a lengthier look tomorrow or Thursday.
We’re all adults here, so we know that pro-life Republicans will never receive the time of day from the mainstream media, except when they take time to lambast, demean, and caricature their positions.
And because she is a conservative pro-life woman, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a GOP presidential candidate, probably expected to be treated mercilessly. If so she has not been disappointed.
In early August I wrote about “The Ongoing Media Assault on Pro-Life Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.” And since Congresswoman Bachmann is doing better than those self-same “experts” anticipated, they have rolled out the heavy artillery.
What, specifically, am I talking about? In the piece that I wrote earlier this month, I mentioned theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer, whom Bachmann cited as a major influence on her thinking. Schaeffer, along with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, played a major role in mobilizing Evangelicals to enter the public arena.
A staple of recent hit jobs on Bachmann is to simply misread, mischaracterize, and—let me frank—lie about what Schaeffer said about a host of issues. If that weren’t bad enough these assaults sloppily lump Schaeffer in with other thinkers whose views (surprise, surprise) are also distorted. By the time these attackers are through neither Schaeffer, let alone Congresswoman Bachmann, are recognizable.
Schaeffer is just one example of ominous “links” Bachman supposedly has to various people and movements that (it is suggested) are fundamentally anti-democratic. Who’d want to vote for someone—Bachmann—who associates with such allegedly shady characters?
I read a smarmy piece last night about pro-life Texas Gov. Rick Perry, another Republican presidential candidate that tried to impute the same kind of association to him. Needless to say that kind of free guilt by (free) association was in 2008 and is today impermissible when it comes to President Obama, which is as I should be. It’d just be nice if the same fairness were extended to pro-life Republicans.
I bring this up now because President Obama is in deep electoral trouble. Both his campaign team and most of the media will sling mud by the ton. We need to know that ahead of time and be prepared.