Ben Carson and the Media

Behind that mild facade there lurks a nerdy twelve year old boy.

"They are mean to me.  They are not mean to anyone else.  They are just mean to me."

It's true that Donald Trump is a bully, but he's mean to everyone.  Ben Carson is whining about the media's close scrutiny of the words he wrote in his biography, carping that no other candidate has ever been so closely parsed.

It's one thing that he doesn't know the name of the faction we're supporting in the Kurdish hinterlands.  It's another that he doesn't think Richard Nixon might have something to say about the media and its intrusion into his reality.

What about those pictures of Bill Clinton in his teeny tiny jogging shorts? Buzzfeed ran this picture with a caption describing Clinton's white thighs.

Does Mrs. Clinton enjoy having her hair and makeup analysed?  Did the Ford kids like having their escapades recorded in graphic detail?
As President Obama pointed out, the American media is a much gentler opponent than Vladimir Putin.

But it doesn't really matter, does it?  The people who will vote for him will believe his cries about disparate treatment regardless of the facts.  The people who won't vote for him will shrug their shoulders and sigh.  This conversation is being had for the benefit of those in the middle, those who haven't made up their minds.  The right answer is as obvious to me as it is to Candy Carson, even if the rights we know will never meet.  We don't need to be convinced.

And so the conversation about the moderators of the debates and the treatment of the candidates and the refusals to participate and who's in and who's out and on and on and on and meanwhile the world is going to hell in a handbasket.  I don't want a President who relies on his generals and his Secretary of Defense to answer his questions; just look at what Bush Senior has to say about the advice his son received from Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to see where that got us.

I'm loving the fact that a man of color is running for President and his race is not an issue.  I wonder if he's thanked Mr. Obama for taking the heat on that one.  And while he's talking to The Man, perhaps he can apologize for implying that the media was soft on him.  Perhaps the reason that there were no obfuscations or fabrications or embellishments or out right lies reported after his books were perused by media savants was because there were no obfuscations or fabrications or embellishments or out right lies Mr. Obama's books.

I fear the candidate doth protest too much.