I suppose you could point to a dozen examples of hypocrisy and double standards in the press every day. But here’s a mighty good one, courtesy of Breitbart.com. It shows Keith Olbermann highlighting the issue of Mitt Romney’s treatment of his dog Seamus when it potentially hurts Mitt Romney. (For those lucky enough to be unaware of the story, in 1983, Romney put his family’s dog in a crate strapped to the roof of the car for a drive from Massachusetts to Canada.) But when Olbermann was on ABC’s “This Week” and the dog issue threatened to damage Barack Obama, Olbermann dismissed the story as trivial and unworthy of a moment’s discussion. (In his autobiography, Obama admitted to eating dog meat as a child.)
Now I happen to think that this focus on dogs is ludicrous and tells us exactly nothing of importance about either man. But what Olbermann is doing is what essentially much of the rest of the press is doing, which is to take a silly issue seriously right up to the moment that it no longer hurts Republicans, in which case it suddenly becomes a distraction from the grave challenges facing America (Jonah Goldberg make this point quite well here.)
I’d simply add that the fact that the Obama campaign has been doing all it can to raise the issue of Romney’s trip to Canada demonstrates how desperate and childish it has become. To go from “hope and change” to attacking Mitt Romney over Seamus-the-dog is quite a descent. And unfortunately, I suspect it’s simply a preview of coming attractions.
He got a dog on the roof? Wow. I can't get my cats into the cat carriers to go to the vets. I can just imagine, Gayla, Gidget and now you're going on the roof! Good luck with that. You couldn't pry them off your shoulders for a week.
When you have nothing to talk about, you talk about nothing. The Democrats can't talk about anything good they've done, so they talk about Romney's pet from 1983; and Democrats tout themselves as, oh so much smarter than Republicans.
I agree this is a silly, manufactured controversy. Nonetheless, Olbermann is right about Obama's dog-eating being less important … he was a CHILD when it happened and children are supposed to obey their (step-)fathers, right? In contrast, Romney made his dog-related decision as an adult.. n nMARCU$