Dr. Alterman wonders why the MoveOn.org General Betrayus dustup received 10 times as much coverage as the more-inflammatory comments about the military by the vulgar pig-boy. Rhetorical question of course, since the standards are obviously different for Rethuglicans.
Last month, we were treated to wall-to-wall media apoplexy over MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ad in the New York Times. The four all-news cable channels mentioned it over 500 times in the week following the advertisement's appearance. The New York Times published five stories on the controversy alone. The Washington Post immediately declared that the advertisement "provided Republicans a life raft," and Time's Joe Klein agreed, saying the advertisement was "potentially very damaging to Democratic candidates running across the country."[snip]
Now compare and contrast a far worse offense to common decency and military sacrifice. On September 26, Rush Limbaugh -- the nation's most popular radio talk show host, a mainstay of Armed Forces Radio, and Dick Cheney's go-to interviewer -- characterized active duty troops who opposed the war as "phony soldiers."
Anyone getting their metaphorical media umbrellas out in anticipation of similar precipitation -- that is, a storm of criticism similar to that showered on MoveOn -- likely found themselves all dressed up with no place to go. Limbaugh's week-long assault on active duty troops, or phony suicide bombers as he called them, garnered far less attention than the two words in MoveOn's advertisement in the New York Times about the record of testimony by Gen. Petraeus.
After mentioning the MoveOn controversy 50 times in the week after the ad was placed, CNN brought up Limbaugh's comments only 10 times after he originally made them despite the almost daily gasoline Limbaugh poured on the fire during that week. The New York Times ran just one story on the matter, albeit a good fact-check piece that made short work of most of Rush's phony explanations on the comments.
[snip]
Also missed by the mainstream media, but reported by Media Matters months before the appearance of the MoveOn ad, was when Limbaugh himself called Vietnam veteran and U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) "Senator Betrayus" after the senator sided with Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a non-binding Iraq withdrawal vote. Remember that media firestorm? Neither does anyone else...
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