The former KFI radio host has a new website, www.howobamagotelected.com, where his premise is Obama voters were stupid to have elected him and that the news media didn’t do their jobs. And since KFI’s signals boomed well into the OC, I’m sure readers will remember Zieglar’s “work.”
The Orange County Register might agree with his premise, having offered up an Orange Grove column to Nicholas Wishek on this same topic last week.
From Zieglar’s site, here’s his premise:
On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama’s limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States. For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple… the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job.
An extensive interview with www.fivethirtyeight.com and Zieglar appears here. The arrogance from Zieglar just exudes through the Q&A. Its much like the copy Zieglar wrote for his site www.therealkfi.com.
In his defense of the poll (and his upcoming documentary), Zieglar writes:
“The bottom line here is that this poll proves that this election (like perhaps all of our elections) was illegitimate and based almost entirely on the news media deciding it wanted (for various reasons) Barack Obama to be President. I plan to prove that with my next documentary “Media Malpractice… How Obama Got Elected”
One of the questions Zieglar asked Obama voters is “where did Obama launch his politcal career?” With the “correct” answer being in the home of William Ayers (though I’d argue Obama’s political career was launched well before that when he was a community organizer.Â
On the Orange Grove column, Wishek writes:
“While Barack Obama ran a superior campaign, he also had a huge advantage from overwhelming support of the mainstream media. President-elect Obama benefited not only from the bias of the stories written, but by the absence of stories never written.
Take, for example, all troubling the aspects of Obama’s associations, his personal history, and the stated agenda he has espoused. These sorts of stories should have been considered valid questions to investigate, but were mostly ignored. Whereas the questions of Sarah Palin’s unwed teenage daughter’s pregnancy and the cost of the governor’s new wardrobe were deemed more newsworthy. Such reporting does not bode well for the future of our country.”
Google “Barack Obama”+”William Ayers” and nearly a million hits come back. Google “Barack Obama”+”Rev. Wright” and 2.2 million hits come back. “Obama is a Muslim” draws 3.5 million hits. The news about Obama’s “troubling associations” has been reported to death. Its been on every mainstream news program, in every major TV network newscast, talked about endlessly on talk radio and written extensively about in the Blogsphere.
Obama ran a great campaign and had a superior national organization. He was on message from Day 1 through election night. John McCain ran a terrible campaign; his message changed as often as his positions. Conservatives never fully embraced him, and right or wrong, as a Republican, he bore the brunt of blame for President Bush’s failed policies since he was hardly a maverick in voting with the president 90 percent of the time.
As far as voters being stupid, a CBS/New York Times poll released shortly before the election showed that 14 percent of Republicans and 13 percent of independents believed Obama was a Muslim. And 23 percent of all Texas voters believed Obama was a Muslim before the election. As far as proving voters are stupid, I’m sure Zieglar, who remains a huge advocate for the Iraq war, voted for W twice.
Â
Â
Â
John Ziegler is a moron of the highest degree. Although a brilliant radio commentator (in the way Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt are, knowing how to play audiences like a Steinway), he leaves jobs because he’s just a horrible human being.
About the only way Zieglar can have any sort of career is to become a hardcore, hardright wingnut
I don’t know John Zeiglar, but the videotaped interviews of those who had just voted for Obama speak for themselves. They tell us what many of us have known for a long time. Voters refuse to do any homework or think for themselves, and essentially vote the way the media tell them to. When I was campaining for a candidate a few years back, I heard people say things like , “I’m voting for her because she has a lot of signs”, or “Isn’t he a fireman? I feel bad for them after 911.” (Anaheim’s two firemen elected in the wake of 911 turned out to be the worst of the bunch, one is now a convicted felon) The media absolutely skewed the results of the election, but ultimtely I fault the people of this great nation for being lemmings.
Colony: As much as I’d like to believe the media greatly influences the minds of Americans, gimme a break. Look at the results in SanTana and Irvine–the incumbents got back into office despite themselves, and despite constant negative media coverage on their shenanigans. Or how Dana beat Debbie Cook–she got nothing but positive coverage, yet got trounced. The Republicans were trounced in the presidential election because their ticket was weak, the sitting president is loathed, and the party is a mess. Conservatives need to stop blaming others (isn’t that a liberal thing, btw?) and turn the microscope on themselves.
So we have 12 cherry picked video interviews agaist 67 million votes total? Oh yeah, that’s proof.
I posted the sheer number of Google hits, so while the details of Obama’s associated were well-reported, voters decided it didn’t matter compared with things like the economy, Iraq, healthcare et al.
Colony Rabble,
When voters pick someone for what many would consider dumb reasons, all it tells me is that their opponents didn’t do a good enough job getting their message out.
I don’t think the reasons you listed are dumb btw…just that the candidate you were working for probably didn’t have a strong enough message compelling them to vote for your person.
Sometimes, there’s no way to overcome their reasoning, so you move on and contact that many more candidates to reach your goal.
And Gustavo,,,I disagree that finger pointing is a liberal thing. It’s the reaction of an uneducated candidate/campaign team. Be uneducated, I mean folks who just don’t get the basics of campaigning.
Colony Rabble,
When voters pick someone for what many would consider dumb reasons, all it tells me is that their opponents didn\’t do a good enough job getting their message out.
I don\’t think the reasons you listed are dumb btw…just that the candidate you were working for probably didn\’t have a strong enough message compelling them to vote for your person.
Sometimes, there\’s no way to overcome their reasoning, so you move on and contact that many more candidates to reach your goal.
And Gustavo,,,I disagree that finger pointing is a liberal thing. It\’s the reaction of an uneducated candidate/campaign team. Be uneducated, I mean folks who just don\’t get the basics of campaigning.
Misha: It was a joke!
I personally think that if Barack Obama were not black, he would have gotten between seven and ten more points.
As for the media being in the bag for Obama, well, the McCain campaign was such a disaster (“Joe? Are you here? Hello? Joe?”) that the stories wrote themselves. Add that to the well-run, grass-roots Obama campaign and there you have it. It also seemed that Obama simply worked his tail off to get elected, whereas McCain just ran out of steam.
Ok, so this is sort of on topic and sort of not, but it does point out, if you take the test, how well you actually know, what you think you know.
It only takes a few minutes and might just surprise you when you get to the end and your test is graded. The results might make you think a bit too. How poorly electeds faired is scary. I don’t care who you voted for, we all need to be better educated.
Try it! Looking at the results on its site, John Zieglar might be more correct than any of us want to acknowledge. It is very enlightening at how bad all of us do as a society. It is not a biased nor pointed to any political viewpoint either, so have no fear.
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx
Ok, here’s my results:
You answered 28 out of 33 correctly — 84.85 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 77.2%
Average score since November 20, 2008: 77.2%
Kind of interesting don’t you think Gary? You did better than average!
I don’t want to brag, but I did a little better and not as good as I had hoped. I will say it’s rather enlightening as far as it goes and we should all be better educated.