How did they do it? How did Barack and Michelle sit there calmly, with so much class, while Meredith Viera raised one fake controversy after another during their interview this morning on the Today show? Her face frozen, her back stiff, her tone of voice stern, Meredith smiled coldly and unleashed a barrage of questions challenging Obama's handling of the Wright controversy and charges of elitism, issues that have been covered already and have no bearing on the everyday concerns of Today Show viewers, who are dealing with high prices for gas and groceries, low wages and expensive healthcare.
The message was clear. The media has presumed Obama guilty and it's up to him to prove himself innocent. When has this not been true for a black person in America? Suspicion and mistrust from white folks, hour after hour, day after day, year after year. If it were me, I might just crack under all that hostility. But the Obama's are used to the drill by now, and responded with amazing wit and grace.
Viera pointed to a 5 percentage point drop, according to a WSJ poll, in people who say they "share his values." Five percent! Let's compare that to Bush's approval rating drop of 40 points since the start of the Iraq war. And that small decline is after the media flogged the Wright story, with constant repetitious video clips, 24/7 on the cable news channels, with rarely a peep about the Hagee/Paisley/McCain connection. She brought up the "arugala" inanity, which is a pure invention of the media. At times she even appeared to be scolding him, and her questions had a hostile edge.
It was obvious who had true class and who had none. Meredith Viera and Today: zero. Barack and Michelle: off the charts.
Let's see how the interview might have gone if the interviewee had been John McCain.
Viera: Despite the glowing media coverage you have received, and our no-holds-bared, take no prisoners, relentlessly hostile coverage we have given Obama, the polls still show him beating you in the general election. How do you explain your failure to connect with the American people?
McCain: I..., I...
Viera: Several years ago, you came out strongly against a long-term American presence in Iraq. Now you say we should stay 100 years, if necessary. How can Americans elect a commander-in-chief who flip-flops on such an important question?
McCain: Just let me say...uh, where was I? Let me just say, I haven't figured out my position on the war this week, so ask me again in a few days.
Viera: Now, polls show that your age is a greater concern to voters, than either of the media-driven, manufactured controversies -- I'll call them respectively Wright-gate and arugala-gate, are to Obama. Granted that we, the media, have failed in our repeated efforts to make these idiocies into issues that the American people care about, how do you explain this concern that American's have that you are a dottering old fool? Ur, I mean, of a rather advanced age?
McCain: Why don't you ask my 92 year old mother? She'll kick your butt.
Viera: You have said, "The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should."
Now that our economy is in recession, and many voters list it as their number one issue in the election, can you explain why anyone would vote for you, since you don't have a clue on how to confront this problem?
McCain: I don't like the drift of these questions. Why don't you ask me about Iran? Please, please, ask me about Iran. I say we bomb, bomb, bomb them. What we need is a new war to get people's minds off their troubles, to get them worked up over a new enemy. That does it every time. I'm a Republican, after all. You don't really expect me to have solutions to real problems people face, do you? The people? Who needs them. I...I...
Viera: Thank you, Senator. It's always a pleasure.