Mitt's Mormonism: Recriminations time!

"And by the way, anyone who thinks that Romney really pulled over his car and wept when he learned that the Mormon church changed its views on black people has been smoking something." - anon evang

Not true. For one, if you watch the Meet the Press moment, those were Mitt's eyes getting genuinely moist just remembering it. It led to Hillary deciding to choke up when someone asked her "Who does your hair?"

I was four at the time, so I have no memory of blacks not holding the priesthood, but in talking with older members and reading a couple relatives' journal entries, I'd say the vast majority of the church was praying for the priesthood to go to all worthy males.

Hey, did you notice Obama won Utah?

I watched Fox News intently during the primary's, and being somewhat a veteran of ferreting out subtleties of liberal media bias (which have kept getting less and less subtle over the years) I immediately noted bias against Romney on Fox News. Having respected Fox News over the years for their at least attempted objectivity, I gave them the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe these things came from the AP or other biased source because Fox does use those and often they are biased and false at the core.

Well Fox only got worse, and I couldn't figure out why they would. Carl Cameron's reporting was extremely pro McCain and anti Romney, as was Fox. I started noticing that Fox talking heads made snide comments about Romney and called his commercials dishonest. Well I checked them out and they were not untrue, they were very accurate. I saw Romney nail Huckabee to the wall on some things he was dishonestly denying, in a debate, and he did the same to McCain who was twisting things, but McCain was also lying.

I saw Fox News come up with a constant flow of rational why Romney should get out after losing Iowa, which I thought was pretty stupid as he placed well. Then they ignored Romney's win in Wyoming which was a landslide of over 50% for Romney while McCain got less than 5%, which was larger in delegates than New Hampshire. Then Romney got 2nd in New Hampshire, Fox news pundits and talking heads said that was really bad, because it neighbored his home state of Massachusetts, but it was a great "come from behind victory for McCain", who'd won it last time, and there were less delegates than Romney won in 2nd place from Iowa. I thought to myself "well that's some stupid rational" and it was stupid and thin, but I thought maybe they at Fox were just not really up on this stuff, but that seemed to be obviously very unprofessional.

I started to note that when a primary came up FOX would go on a huge McCain Blitz, Give good positive press to Huckabee, and anti or ignore Romney blitz, funny thing to do to the one who was by by any rational measure, THE front runner. Fox would play "The Life Of McCain" on the day of the primary and have him as a guest, while largely ignoring Romney. Have Huckabee on over and over, and ignore Romney.

Romney was by then way ahead in the delegate count, which, crazy me thought might mean something, but not to Fox, at least not while Romney was ahead it didn't, until McCain was ahead, then it was "All About The Numbers" but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Romney then won Michigan by 9 points, but then Fox diminished this by saying Romney only told them what they wanted to hear, and it was his home state, and he should be expected to win. The buzz on the Fox programs got desperately anti Romney. They would not show the delegate numbers for Republicans, but they were showing them for democrats. It got to be a joke, they asked Major what's his name covering the democrats about the delegate count, of course he knew the democrats, but not the republicans count. They never asked Carl Cameron for that count. In that period Romney got all the scorn, frowns, and negative attachment, and McCain and Huckabee got all positive comment and smiling attention. They were calling McCain the front runner, which was a real joke because Romney was way ahead at that point.

Then South Carolina, and it was becoming very evident that Fox was very biased pro McCain, Huckabee, and anti Romney. They were constantly talking about Romney getting out of the race. When Romney went to Nevada in stead of stay in South Carolina, Cameron dumped all over him, saying that showed he wasn't really competitive. They kept saying that the winner in SC (with 24 delegates to NV's 34) would surely be the front runner. Well McCain won SC and it was HUGE! and Romney won NV by 52% to McCain's 13%, and it was IGNORED. The delegate count was also ignored, though by badgering Fox and Friends I and whoever else was complaining finally got them to put something up on it, but they still really didn't use it, even on so called analysis shows like Special Report. On special report I actually saw Britt hush Mort Kondrakie when he mentioned Romney's name, saying they would cover him later, but they never did of course, they were shutting him out of the news at that point.

South Carolina was the big News, Nevada? Nearly nothing on Nevada. By that time Romney had chalked up 3 "gold" 2 "silver" in larger races than McCain had won only 2 of and Romney had won nearly triple the delegates. You never saw that analyzed, hardly ever, if ever really acknowledged.

The pattern continued that had been going on. Romney would come up in the polls, and Fox would freak and go into blast Romney and Play up McCain mode, while the entire time pushing Huckabee as well with favorable press. They even had Chuck Norris come on to attack Romney in an ugly way impugning his character and complaining that he was buying the presidency, and they just let him go on and on when they wouldn't even allow anyone to say much about McCain that wasn't positive without arguing. I'd seen Chuck Norris do the same thing on MSNBC minutes before and he had a script down. Giuliani didn't get such great press either, but nothing like the beating Romney took constantly on Fox News. Romney's polls would go up, he went up by 3 in Florida, and Fox would go on a blitz all the way through the primary voting, and Romney's numbers would go down. Fox's dishonest practices were obviously working. You could follow it in the polling. Fox, it became quite evident, were working against Romney, and they didn't mind using what I consider extremely biased and dishonest reporting and manipulation.

I thought this was all pro McCain motivated at the time, because Romney was the only real threat once it was clear Giuliani wasn't going to do well in the Florida primary. I supported Giuliani up until that point, but their bias and even hate towards Romney was evident.

Coming up to super Tuesday things really started to gel as far Fox's consistency pointing to their motivations for dishonest and extremely shabby journalistic practices. Huckabee was a joke, about a cartoon character akin to Ron Paul, in fact Huckabee finished 4 races behind Ron Paul. Fox was tying Romney constantly to the Mormon Church before elections, and it was obvious they hoped this would hurt his numbers, which I looked at with some disgust as that type of religious bigotry is an ugly thing. I figured it probably wasn't religious bias driven, what would Fox have to gain there? Well I was wrong I fear. After Super Tuesday, where the Fox News team was taking the east coast results and saying Romney was getting nothing, which was stupid (as Carl Rove explained) because Romney's area's were coming up later, or it was a deliberate tactic to hurt Romney's support in polls not closed yet, which seems very probable. They were saying Romney had now no reason to hope he could win, long before California which was trending good for Romney in the polls. They were at the same time praising Huckabee, who'd just shot his all in the south eastern states and ran more like Ron Paul about every where else and was in an extremely unviable position to win. I started thinking, what is up with this love of the Huckster? So, since the anti Romney bias was so pronounced and uniform at fox (except for some of the shows where they are very principled on their stances like Hanity and Colms, Cavuto, and O'Reilly) I started checking into Rupert Murdocks religious affiliations.

Guess what I found when I looked into Murdocks religious affiliations? I found beliefnet and an article about McCain's religion, and info that Murdock at just acquired this site. In that article McCain said he was Episcopalian but was turning to the Baptist denomination, just had not been baptized quite yet ... (suuure I thought, and what does McCain feel like he will get from so obviously dishonestly pandering to Baptists?) The questioning in the article was slick in drawing correlations between Islam and the Mormon Church.

Now it makes sense to me. Nothing else quite adds up on this. Rupert Murdock leading Fox News had a problem with Mitt, not so much over a preference for the person of McCain, but over a dislike, or bias, or call it what it seems, a latent but motivating bigotry concerning Romney's religion.

This is a sad thing for me. I was so dependent on Fox News to at least present a balanced view, only to find out they are probably worse than the liberal networks in allowing their form of bias to not only color, but control the content of their coverage in elections. I find this very offensive, because an informed vote is absolutely necessary to the ability to practice the only power most citizens have in this country. The power that distinguishes us from others and gives us freedom and a voice in our government. Fox was the only bastion of honest media left in this country ... But NO, they are no source of honest information. They are only a source of propaganda driven by sadly bigoted individuals or probably actually just one powerful and bigoted individual.

I am sorry for the length of this post, but to get it all tied together, it was necessary. Like wise the mistakes I probably have made, and some less than shining technical writing. I have things I have to get to. I may have events slightly out of time line, but this was very long and I didn't have time to check my documentation. I have extensive documentation in chronological organization as I took notes and wrote hundreds of emails to Fox News over the whole process because I was noting some serious accuracy problems with their reporting.

My Perspective:

I am Agnostic (who thinks there is a supreme being probably, but I don't know anything or really believe in anything I've heard so far), but I feel strongly about keeping freedom of expression guaranteed by the constitution, and most of that was tied to expression of religious material in it's original motivation.

I supported Giuliani until he "went south" in Florida, so my initial upset at the inaccuracy and unbalanced information disseminated came from an expectation of honest and accurate reporting. I did come to support Romney after Giuliani, and before that started to look at him with a large degree of support because his head is on right and he seems like an honorable man who was in it for the country, while McCain and Huckabee seemed like they were in it for ambitions sake, and I saw them lie through their teeth, which I don't like.

Unless I want to hear about Democrats, I have turned to FOX. I was also shocked at the open campaigning against Romney. The daytime coverage was particularly noxious. (Of course, nothing could match that giggling, preening woman paired with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC). I am not clear what Murdoch has to do with this, however, when it is McCain and Huck who share the same religion and probably the same prejudice given McCain's mother's shocking anti-Mormon diatribe on TV. Wherever there are enough Mormons to create a voting block, they need to resoundingly vote against a party that panders to the very element that demands they sit on the back of the bus. Is there similar bigotry in the Democratic party? Perhaps, but Mormon Harry Reid is one of their most powerful leaders. The first step in eradicating bigotry is shaming the instigators into silence. The Dems seem to be ahead in that. If Mormons have any sense, Utah will go Democrat for the first time in recent memory.