L.A. Times: Romney Attacks on Obama 'Play On Birther Fears'

[Ogopogo]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham ... ther-fears

L.A. Times Imagines Romney Attacks on Obama 'Play On Birther Fears'

By Tim Graham | July 18, 2012 | 13:59
Tim Graham's picture

The Los Angeles Times freaked out Wednesday about Mitt Romney suggesting Obama’s socialist leanings are somehow un-American. Their tabloidish headline was “Romney campaign's attacks on Obama play on ‘birther’ fears: Mitt Romney says the Obama administration resembles foreign governments, and a chief surrogate for the GOP candidate says the president needs to ‘learn how to be an American.’”

Birther fears? The L.A. Times thinks birthers comprise millions of Republican voters? Times reporter Seema Mehta waited until the very last paragraph to notice President Obama is also using a “birther-fear” line by repeating debunked assertions about Romney being a pioneer of sending American jobs overseas.

Mehta began her article: "In remarks that played on debunked assertions about President Obama's birthplace, Mitt Romney on Tuesday said that the current administration resembled foreign governments and one of his chief surrogates [former Gov. John Sununu] said the president needed to "learn how to be an American."

The Times seemed intentionally unaware that Romney’s speech was all about the attacks on his alleged record of “outsourcing,” and Romney was making the point that Obama’s government “investments” in businesses have a record of cronyism, failure, and – outsourcing.

Mehta’s second paragraph painted Romney’s attacks as not tit-for-tat, but as distraction politics, that it “came as Romney tried to change the subject from calls for his tax returns and questions about the length of his tenure at the venture firm Bain Capital. Both issues have fueled sustained attacks from Democrats and even some Romney allies.”

Mehta's story ended by merely recycling Obama's "not-American" rhetoric about Romney: "His main calling card for wanting to be president is his private sector experience," Obama said. "So we asked the voters to examine that experience. He invested — made money investing in companies that had been called 'pioneers' of outsourcing. I don't want pioneers of outsourcing in the White House; I want somebody who believes in in-sourcing. Let's bring those jobs back home. "

This is not the first time Mehta’s articles have been a hot item among liberals. Last December, a Mehta piece including a late quote from Romney about “keeping America American” was transformed into a fact-mangling mess, that Romney was somehow channeling the Ku Klux Klan.

Liberals may not like the idea that conservatives associate free enterprise with America and socialism with western Europe, but that comparison can be made without it being imagined as a birther-baiting strategy.

[Romney-Trump parody image: dailyracingrag.com]
About the Author
Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Tim Graham on Twitter.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham ... z211V2Tojg

[Julian]

The "birthers" are not the people who are afraid. The people who are genuinely afraid reside in the White House and the administration and its media cronies! .... and with good reason now that they have been expose irrefutably to be liars, frauds and traitors.

[wildernessvoice]

The "birthers" are not the people who are afraid. The people who are genuinely afraid reside in the White House and the administration and its media cronies! .... and with good reason now that they have been expose irrefutably to be liars, frauds and traitors.

.....and the 500 plus Congressmen and Senators that should be looking at this issue- but don't because of campaign contributions.

[Kate Shaw]

Romney knows a lot more people have actually BEEN to foreign countries these days, and/or have friends who live in them, and we know the difference between the way an American thinks and the way a Frenchman thinks. This line of country is one of the best he can use to point out that Obama has no idea what it is to be American.

[backhoe]

[RedDog]

Romney knows a lot more people have actually BEEN to foreign countries these days, and/or have friends who live in them, and we know the difference between the way an American thinks and the way a Frenchman thinks. This line of country is one of the best he can use to point out that Obama has no idea what it is to be American.

We get similar politicians who play to a low rung on the bar - and why wouldn't they? I know several people here between 50 and 60 who've never been on a plane. I've also suggested before that we get such hick town running of this city because people don't know the difference. Stopping at four red lights in four blocks is normal here. When you cruise in from rural Saskatchewan or Drayton Valley, this place must seem like Paris.

Yesterday at the parade, they finally completed some street work after 2 months which would have been done in 3 days in Connecticut. I have to take a photo of this one crosswalk. They created it out of the interlocking bricks, except that it goes across 2 of the 3 lanes and abruptly stops, the street being fully repaved level beyond that. It's as though they ran out of bricks 2/3rds of the way across and just left it at that. All those responsible for this folly will be re-elected.