Tell Your Momma The Corporate Media Is Sliming Obama

The Times printed this picture of Obama squinting into the sun, as though he were being grilled about his blind trust. He wasn't.

Robert Sullivan/AFP-Getty Images
Times caption: Barack Obama answering questions last weekend outside a church in Selma, Ala.
Page One news in the New York Times yesterday: In ’05 Investing, Obama Took Same Path as Donors

In which we learn that a blind trust to which Obama had entrusted his money invested $50,000 of it in companies owned by friends of his. It was a blind trust, so Obama didn't know about it; when he found out, he sold the shares and terminated the blind trust. (P.S., he lost money.)

Oooh, what double dealing. Oooh, I smell a hint of scandal. Oooh, you know that this really means. The Clinton Rules (as Digby named them) are back. Democrats are scrutinized within an inch of their lives by the rich corporate media; Republicans are given a pass. I mean, really, Rudy Giuliani was giving speeches at $100,000 a pop (and skipping his son's high school graduation, family values party, my ass) and this is a story about $50,000 in a blind trust? Where is the story about how Rudy Giuliani has invested his money? Who was Rudy giving all those speeches too? You don't think those folks are expecting a little homina homina for their Benjamins? You won't find the Giuliani story out there, or the McCain story, or the Romney Bain Capital story either. The corporate media exists to perpetuate the government that gives it the best tax breaks, and that means all Democrats under the microscope, all the time.

And today the Boston Globe (owned by the Times ownership cabal) weighs in with a story about how Obama paid $375 in ancient parking tickets. I kid you not.

Trey Ellis, HuffPo: Obama, the Times and Central Casting

What a curious and misleading headline on the front page of The New York Times:
"Obama, in Brief Investing Foray In '05, Took Same Path as Donors."

The only reason to put on the front page of the paper of record a story about a politician's stock holdings is if there were even a hint of impropriety.
The coy headline slings mud in bold letters and then, only in the fine print of the article, explains that not only was nothing improper done, in fact as soon as there was even the hint of a possible conflict the junior Senator from Illinois divested himself of the holdings.

This is a far different story than that of Senator Bill Frist whose blind trust ended up not being blind at all.

Did the Times editors really feel that this story belonged on page one while, say, "At Least 109 Shiite Pilgrims Killed Across Iraq as Holiday Nears," was banished to page A10?

Boston Globe: Obama paid late parking tickets
Racked up penalties while at Harvard

Total $375; $140 in fines, $235 in late fees. George Bush spends that much on Members Only jackets with the Presidential seal every day.