12 Dogs That Aren’t Barking

By George Noga

Many readers recall the Sherlock Holmes story they read in high school entitled Silver Blaze wherein a famous racehorse is stolen during the night from a barn guarded by a dog. The dog’s failure to bark led Holmes correctly to deduce the thief as the dog’s owner. Dogs that don’t bark reveal much even today.

The so-called watchdogs in the media are not barking at many things they barked at during the Bush presidency. Just as in the Holmes story, the media dogs’ failure to bark enables us correctly to finger their owners (state sycophant media) as thieves of the truth. Following are some of these suddenly mute dogs.

“Media watchdogs have gone mute; their silence is revealing.”

1. Homelessness Stories about homelessness spike sharply whenever there is a Republican president and magically disappear when a Democrat occupies the White House. The same is true again despite the hard economic times. Moreover, the few homeless stories that are printed, direct blame, not at the president as in the past but, at greed and inequality.

2. The Uninsured A cacophony of barking dogs announced (incorrectly) the number of Americans without health insurance during the Bush years. Under ObamaCare that number will be reduced by only about 40% still leaving 30 million Americans putatively uninsured. If a Republican had proposed ObamaCare, all the media would be reporting is the 30 million it did not cover. Have you seen one story reporting there will be 30 million uninsured?

3. Unemployment The media have reported the standard unemployment rate, currently 8.3%; they never report other unemployment statistics such as the Labor Force Participation Rate, the long-term unemployed and other measures of unemployment that show the true rate to be much higher. Imagine what they would report if Bush were president. This is a classic case of the dogs intentionally barking up the wrong tree to let the perpetrator escape.

4. Wikileaks The press (and Obama) went into a feeding frenzy at leaks while Bush was in office. When there were damaging Wikileaks on Obama’s watch, it was a different story. Suddenly the leaks were condemned as harmful to national security. Go figure.

5. OBL Photos Obama didn’t want graphic photos of OBL published because “it would enflame the Arab Street”; the toothless media watchdogs complied. It was a different story with Abu Ghraib photos; Obama pressed for publication and the media eagerly went along. I guess they cared more about bashing Bush than Arab sensibilities.

6. Gaffe-a-Minute Biden Every time the Veep opens his mouth, it is to extract a foot. Very little of this is reported and what is reported is low key. Contrast this to the reportage during the prior administration characterizing Dick Cheney as Darth Vader.

7. Gasoline Prices Bush was relentlessly excoriated in the media for high gas prices when it hit $3.00/gallon. Did anything remotely comparable happen at $4.50 gas under Obama? Note: gas prices were much lower when Bush left office than when he entered.

8. Stem Cell Research The media hortatorily hyped stem cells as the penultimate panacea – especially when Bush limited research. Now that the reality is much different (stem cells no longer show much promise) the media have gone silent. I’ll bet most readers didn’t even know about the deflation of the stem cell bubble because it was so under reported.

9. Guantanamo Obama has been pres for three years and Club Gitmo remains open. But Obama gets a pass because he wanted to close it. Gitmo will be back in the news just as soon as a new Republican president’s hand comes off the inauguration bible.

10. Corruption and Scandals The Obama scandals such as Solyndra and Fast and Furious have received scant media attention compared to the most minor Bush faux pas. Surprise!

11. Corporate Profits Exxon Mobil reported a quarterly profit of $13 billion in 2008. The media called it obscene and then-candidate Obama called for a windfall profits tax. Last quarter, Apple’s reported profit of over $13 billion was greeted by silence from Obama and the media.

12. Personal Wealth The hounds are baying about Romney’s self-made wealth but either were asleep or approbative of JFK, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry (incidentally, none of whom earned or created the wealth) to name but a few. This is a rare case of dogs who were silent before that are barking now. Geewillikers, I wonder why.

Media Watch – NBC Nightly News August 21, 1991

Folks, I can’t make this stuff up. Even if I tried for hours or days to conjure something like the following, I simply couldn’t do it. If the quote below from John Chancellor doesn’t convince you NBC News and the networks are ideological and clueless (not to mention economic cretins) beyond imagination, then nothing will. Incredibly, John Chancellor said the following on live television when speaking about the Soviet Union. (I added the boldface and underline.)

“It’s short of soap, so there are lice in the hospitals. It’s short of pantyhose, women’s legs go bare. It’s short of snowsuits, so babies stay home in the winter. It’s short of cigarettes so millions stop smoking involuntarily. It drives everybody crazy. The problem isn’t communism; the problem is shortages.”

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