CNN's disgraceful "balance."

So I tuned into CNN this morning on the way to the gym, and caught the beginning of a rather absurd piece they were running on the new strategy, on the part of conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, to jump the gun and blame Barack Obama for the nation's miserable economic state. What I found most appaling about the piece was that they treated it as legitimate issue for debate. Forget the fact that Obama has not even taken office yet, forget the fact that the GOP has been running the economy into the ground over the past 8 years, too distracted by their ridiculous war in Iraq to notice that the bottom was about to fall out of the housing market. Instead, CNN decided to take a look at the question of whether Obama's proposed tax increase (whic, by the way, he has said he may put off depending on economic necessity) is keeping investors out of the stock market. Now this proposition is absurd enough as it is, but even more absurd was the way CNN deiced to tackle the issue. Rather than calling an economist into the studio to assess the argument, they instead invited a left leaning talk show host and a right-leaning talk show host to "debate" the issue.

If there's any question in your mind as to whether the mainstream media is going to give Obama a fair shake over the next few years, or whether they are going to bend over backwards to please Republican sensibilities in the name of "balance," then disabuse yourself of that notion. If CNN is going to give legitimacy to such an idiotic talking point as "Barack Obama is responisble for the economic crisis we're in" then we know the answer already. There is no statement so absurd, no manufactured scandal so transparently artificial, no lie so outrageous that the mainstream media won't treat it as a serious subject over which honest people can have a legitimate disagreement.