Save Us President Daddy
by digby
Please just shoot me now. The media has gone insane. Suzanne Malveaux just asked Candy Crowley how the voters in 2010 are going to rank the president's response to this failed terror attempt. It's a stupid question, but the answer really takes the cake:
Candy Crowley: I think the fact that we have seen him for two days in a row is the White House recognizing that this is perhaps more important --- the safety of the American people ---than jobs at this point. It wouldn't take much to rev up security moms who were so important in 2000 and 2004. So I think what voters judge is, sort of, the record. So it won't be today, but then what did he do? How safe did he keep us?
That's ridiculous. Did Candy wake up this morning and think it was 2003? The plane didn't go down. Nobody died. The perpetrator is some young, screwed up loser who tried to set his pants on fire. The only "security mom" who cares more about that than the fact that she doesn't have a job is a well paid television celebrity.
The press loves the boogeyman story because it makes them feel like crusaders for freedom and allows them to make common cause with macho right wingers. It's far more exciting than dull stories about losers who don't have jobs --- you can see the exhilaration coming off of them in waves. They love it.
Case in point, Chris Matthews, who is ready to force everyone to be cavity searched in the ticket line:
Matthews: You know what when we get on an airplane, we give up all kinds of checks we don't do by just walking down the street. I think we give up a certain amount of rights just getting on an airplane and I think you've got to recognize that your safety is tied up with everyone else on that plane's safety and anybody else that gets hit on that plane. You don't own the right to be on that plane because you're getting on an airplane so you do have to yield some civil rights...And by the way, Cliff, you know it and I know it, they're going to get smarter and smarter and sooner or later they're going to get all kinds of people to do their dirty work for them. They're the enemy. They're going to use any means they can to get us. They're out to kill us. Let's be as smart as they are because they are already smart.
Run fer yer lives!
Apparently, Matthews thinks that there is some Koranic law that requires all attacks against America to take place on an airplane. If some terrorist with imagination succeeds in a mall or on a bridge will we have to submit to profiliong and screening there too? Sounds like it.(And if he thinks these would-be terrorists like Richard Reid and Abdulmutallab are super criminals, no wonder he's petrified.)
Clearly, the security bureaucracy didn't work. A number of people at various levels dropped the ball in letting this guy get through. But I suspect a lot of that is because they decided to rely on the stupid security theatre to scare off the bad guys rather than putting their efforts into tracking people like Abdulmutallab.
Unless we actually have a terrorist attack, I think we can feel fairly confident that the 2010 election will be about the economy. This failed attempt was a wake-up call, but it's not the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor. And this media revival of Daddy Keep Us Safe is nothing but a cheap sideshow.
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