MORE HYPOCRISY – AT 11:45 A.M. ET:  One thing about ABC's Jake Tapper – he's a straight shooter.  He gives you the news, in the old tradition.  So Tapper now points out some of Obama's recent gaffes, a notation not found in most of the rarefied precincts of mainstream journalism.  Can you just imagine what the press response would be if George W. Bush or Sarah Palin committed any of these?  Can you just imagine?

Obama's Senior Moment: 'I'll be turning 50 in a week.'

Actually…he’ll be turning 50 in three weeks. His birthday is August 4, two days after the debt ceiling deadline. Senior moment?

He messed up Malia’s birthday, too, calling her 13 when she was at the time 12 and still days away from becoming a teenager.

In fact, this just scratches the surface.  I would suggest that Obama is the most gaffe-prone major politician we've had in years, but few if any news outlets make a point of his blunders.  He once said America had 57 states, maybe confusing it with Heinz foods; he said that Austrians speak Austrian, when they speak German; he told us that Joe Biden is called "the sheriff" in the White House, when no one else could recall any such label; he informed us this week that 80% of Americans favor higher taxes, an absurdity; he got the story of the creation of Israel almost completely wrong in a speech in Cairo; he told us, with a straight face, that he sat in a church pew in a particular church for 20 years, but didn't know the anti-American beliefs of the pastor; and his comments about the energy-saving virtues of certain steps like tire inflation were wildly overstated.

And that's only the start.

Barack Obama is one of the great fiction writers of our time, a true novelist who hasn't yet found his calling.  But let Sarah, George or Michele misinterpret one historical fact and the press screams "ignorant," "unqualified," and worse.

But Republicans must understand that this is the way it is, and work around the media.  You have to have a strategy in dealing with press bias, not merely a gripe.

July 17, 2011