Brent Bozell was so happy with Newt Gingrich’s defensive attack on the media in the wake of the interview ABC conducted with Gingrich’s second ex-wife, Marianne, that he issued a special statement at NewsBusters about it:
Newt Gingrich won South Carolina because he refused to succumb to assaults by the liberal media, and because conservatives are just as fed up as he is.
Speaker Gingrich hit a nerve dead-on by pushing back on ABC’s blatant character assassination and standing up to John King’s first debate question. He tapped into the anger and frustration of not only South Carolina voters, but of the rest of the country. The left-wing media have tried to manipulate this campaign cycle through the systematic character assassination of every conservative in the race. The public has had it.
By the same token, they’ve watched the same leftists in the so-called ‘news’ media cheerlead a radical community organizer to victory and are sick and tired of the free passes they continually grant to The Chosen One, who has wreaked havoc on our country.
Bozell conveniently ignores the fact that the ABC interview was promoted by the Drudge Report, definitely not part of the “left-wing media.” Bozell also doesn’t explain how this is “character assassination” when nobody has disputed the basic facts about Gingrich’s jettisioning of wives due to his adultery.
MRC’s CNSNews.com similarly touts this anti-media attitude in a pair of articles by Terry Jeffrey:
- Gingrich Beats Media in South Carolina, 54 to 14
- Final SC Poll: Gingrich 37, Romney 28, Santorum 16, Paul 14; 77 Percent Have Unfavorable View of Media
Bozell is merely happy that Gingrich appears to be validating the media-discrediting agenda of the the Media Research Center. But what he’s clearly saying here is that nobody is allowed to criticize a Republican in the media, lest Bozell unleashes his flying monkeys in retaliation.
Bozell offers no alternative method for when and how the subject of Gingrich’s adultery and divorces should be discussed — he’s trying to shut down all debate of the subject, period.
Because he will not permit criticism, Bozell is thus effectively condoning Gingrich’s adultery — a strange position for a right-wing activist whose organization regularly criticizes the allegedly loose morals of others. In November 2010, for instance, NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard complained that Huffington Post created a “Divorce” section: “Exit question: does a section specifically devoted to this subject increase the number of divorces by not only glamorizing the process and the outcome but also further removing what used to be a negative stigma attached to marital failure? Or am I just hopelessly old-fashioned?”
We thought Bozell was an old-fashioned guy. Instead, Bozell seems to be determined to shout down any criticism of Gingrich’s moral and ethical failings by framing it as the “liberal media” being mean — thereby effectively trying to remove the negative stigma conservatives have long attach to marital failure.
As his sneering reference to “The Chosen One” demonstrates, Bozell obviously despises Obama so much that he’s willing to compromise his own principles and morals in order to defeat him. That, along with his drive to censor debate, is not the sign of a great leader or a solid conservative — that’s the sign of a weak, petty, vindictive man with millions of tax-exempt dollars at his disposal to throw at propping up his preferred candidate and defeat his enemy — which he will undoubtedly do.
The 2012 presidential campaign will be an ugly one. Bozell’s situational morals is one reason why.