The Good Cop

I have no doubt in my mind that this NYT article on Rahm Emanuel would have been much different were it written about a Republican.  Seriously: for the past few years ‘industry ties’ has been a kind of buzzword for ‘corruption’ under the Bush administration, and I don’t see why that should change under Obama.  I don’t think that this provides evidence of a left media bias because Emanuel isn’t that left, which is really the point – the obsequious media coverage of the Obama campaign/administration, forecasting change and lauding the team of experts starts from some fairly shaky assumptions.   Mainly it rides a partisan/Manichean frame that associates the “last 8 years” with failure, and any ‘change’ with ‘hope.’  The other implicit assumption is that Obama-as-is is the only change we could ever really see, when in reality there could be many different Obama Administrations, depending on how much critical pressure the media and an organized opposition places on him.