Obama Voters "Better Educated and More Diverse"

Pro-Obama Snobbery: His Voters "Better Educated and More Diverse"
"Support for Mr. Obama is much stronger in the northeastern section of the state, especially in places like Fairfax County, near Washington, whose population is younger, wealthier, better educated and more diverse." - Ian Urbina on Virginia's voter demographics, September 18.

Bob Herbert Unleashed: Clarence Thomas, Self-Hating Conservative Black?
"It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned. Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas." - Columnist Bob Herbert, September 9 .


Why Are Reporters So Eager to Advertise Their Reflexive Urban Liberalism?
"Why is the McCain clan so eager to advertise its anti-intellectualism?" - Question from reporter Deborah Solomon to conservative intellectual Charles Murray in the September 21 New York Times Magazine.


And This Year's Award for Poor Metaphor Goes To...
"For now, Mr. McCain seems a happy captive in a hijacked campaign. Before Ms. Palin joined the ticket, he typically attracted crowds in the low hundreds for what his own aides admit were at times soporific events." - Campaign reporter Elisabeth Bumiller on September 11. John McCain was a prisoner of war for five years during Vietnam.

That About Sums It Up
"Throughout her career, Ms. Palin has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and blurred the line between government and personal grievance." - Online caption to a photo accompanying the September 13 story on Sarah Palin's political career in Alaska, "Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes."

Paulson's Request for Power Like Bush on Iraq
"Some are suspicious of [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson's characterizations, finding in his warnings and demands for extraordinary powers a parallel with the way the Bush administration gained authority for the war in Iraq. Then, the White House suggested that mushroom clouds could accompany Congress's failure to act. This time, it is financial Armageddon supposedly on the doorstep." - Economics reporter Peter Goodman, September 23.

Yes, It's Still All Reagan's Fault
"This kind of bold government planning died long ago, of course, a victim of both the public's disillusionment with the large-scale Modernist planning strategies of the postwar era and the antigovernment campaigns of the Reagan years. The consequences were obvious as soon as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. And they have been reaffirmed many times since, with the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis and myriad accounts of our country's crumbling infrastructure." - Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff praising Communist China's state planning for the Olympics, for the September 14 Week in Review.


Watch Your Back, Barack: McCain's "Rhetorical Shiv"
"[McCain] has used fairly consistent techniques during his roughly 30 debates on the national stage: he is an aggressive competitor who scolds his opponents, grins when he scores and is handy with the rhetorical shiv ....Voters give higher marks to Mr. McCain as a potential commander in chief, and Mr. Obama should expect Mr. McCain to question his credentials for the job at every turn - and to distort his views, as Mr. Romney insisted he did." - Reporter Katharine Seelye previewing the first presidential debate on September 23 .

McCain's "Demonstrable Falsehoods"
"But the Times article was built on a solid foundation of fact, and Richard Stevenson, the editor directing coverage of the election, said, 'We don't want to fall into the trap of false equivalency.' He said reporters had seen a pattern of 'demonstrable falsehoods, exaggerations, misconstruals or omissions' on the part of McCain that seemed notable, even for a heated presidential campaign." - Public Editor Clark Hoyt, evaluating an anti-McCain story for the September 21 Week in Review.