Yes, Someone Here Does Indeed Have a Fetish

NBC's First Read yesterday before Obama's speech on health-care reform:

Fixing the public option fetish: But the speech also will be a failure if progressives -- Obama’s second audience tonight -- are still obsessing over the public option a week from now. We've said this before and we'll say it again: Obama never made the public option the focus of his health-care ideas, in the primaries or in general election. In fact, he never uttered the words "public option" or "public plan" in his big campaign speeches on health care. But there is no doubt that the public option has fired up the left, and how he sells them near-universal coverage and lower costs -- even if it means no public plan -- could very well be the trickiest part of tonight's speech. Indeed, that the White House allowed this to become the be-all, end-all on the left ("Public option or die!") remains a mystery. On TODAY this morning, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that “there can be no reform without adequate choice and competition,” but didn’t say that choice and competition had to come from a public option.

(Emphasis mine)

Craig Crawford, of all people (I guess I don't actually have anything against the guy to be honest), on NBC News's assessment (from Chuck Todd, of course) on the public option "fetish" of progressives and liberals (via Crooks and Liars):

NBC News calls the public option a "fetish." Providing insurance to Americans who cannot afford or obtain coverage is a fetish? A fetish? Have things gone so awry that health care for all is considered a deviant concept. Seems to me that big media's knee-jerk defense of the status quo is the real fetish.

(Emphasis mine)

Exactly. A fetish? Liberals are the easy, buffoonish-clown whipping boys of the mainstream media. Fetish? That kind of language seeks to completely discredit and delegitimize a very basic public option that poll after poll finds that a majority of Americans want, at the very fucking least.

There's your supposed "liberal media" at work: Placate conservatives at all turns, and don't rock the establishment's boat. Go play with your maps Chuck.

But seriously, when was the last time Chuck Todd or some other TV "journalist" broke a big, important story? I wracking my brain here. When was the last time Chip Reid or Ed Henry told us something we had to hear, or didn't know already? These guys couldn't care less. They just want to keep their access so they can ride on the president's plane and be a hotshot Washington press corps sycophant. Fellas, you need Satan more than he needs you.



(Photo: 365 Project, Day Six, 9/10/09: A rip in the sky.)