Pro-Obama blog seeks MBJ boycott to silence opposition
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
A stylish Web site with all the markings of what super-rich liberals might expect for their money seems to be the opening salvo by militant Barack Obama supporters to crush press opposition in Nebraska.
The Midlands Business Journal and the Lincoln Business Journal are in the crosshairs of a blog calling itself “newnebraska.net,” occasioned because this writer compared to Adolf Hitler what he sees as increasing evidence of egotism, arrogance, demagoguery and dangerous techniques of mass manipulation coming out of Barack Obama.
And how do the bloggers of “newnebraska.net” answer criticism?
Naturally, they’ve launched a boycott of our advertisers, a move aimed at intimidation of the business community and the closing down of both newspapers.
Just what Hitler would do.
With no sense of irony on their part, the Oba-bloggers have given Nebraskans a show and tell, proving the very Hitler-comparison point they are complaining about.
Actually, Hitler only used boycotts until mesmerized Germans handed him total power as head of state. After that, with all the levers of police authority in his hands, the storm troopers simply kicked in storefronts, smashed presses, closed down all opposition newspapers, and jailed their editors.
As to whether I’m misreading the evolving Obama, readers can judge for themselves at our Web site, mbj.com and by watching his moves going forward. The column is in the editorial opinion section under the headline, “Obama embraces socialist remedies and Hitler’s hoopla.”
A central point of this writer’s opinion can be summed up by quoting as follows:
“With Obama, all we can say is that Americans need to be careful. Had he been less in a hurry, had he been not so eager for ultimate power so quickly, the country could have gotten to know him as a man in full. But he is in a hurry, and so those marking a ballot for him Nov. 4 should understand the risk.”
No one hopes more than I that my forebodings about Barack Obama are wrong.
But if they are not, the nation is in peril.
Look around. Reporters, editors, anchors and owners, those who by journalism’s great tradition refused to suck up to political charisma, charm or threats are now too often, as the phrase goes, “in the tank for Obama.”
The worst of the worst is MSNBC’s star, Chris Matthews, who actually confessed on the air that just the thought of Obama as president sent a tingle up his leg.
Hard to imagine: A tingle going up the leg of Edward R. Morrow.
The New York Times, once an icon of fearless journalism, is nothing less than a newspaper arm of the Democratic Party; even more sharply defined, it is the arm of the Obama campaign, as Hillary Clinton learned. The same can be said exactly on the television side for NBC’s creature, MSNBC.
The three major networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, race to send anchors trailing Obama around the world, while denying equal treatment to John McCain. The same for The Times and other big newspapers.
We are not talking about the editorial opinion columns of newspapers, which in this newspaper’s case has so frenzied the glitzy Nebraska blog, or to segments of broadcasts set aside for opinions, best exampled by talk radio.
What has given way in 2007-2008 is the general press sycophancy to Obama. Opinion and staged photo ops are routinely masked as news and shoveled into American homes via front pages and celebrity anchor telecasts.
Here, however, from this small corner of journalism in Nebraska, a news flash for the Oba-blog:
The Midlands Business Journal and the Lincoln Business Journal are not caving in!
July 2008
