Why is Obama's experience questioned by MSM, while Thompson is mooned over for his "star" quality?

[beaconess]

In the runup to Obama's announcement that he was running for president, the MSM (and others, including many in DU) obsessed over whether he had sufficient experience to run for or serve as president. They insisted that three years in the U.S. Senate, after seven years in the state senate and several years before that as a lawyer, law professor and community organizer just wasn't enough.

Yet,since Actor-Lobbyist Fred Thompson stuck his toe in the water, we've been inundated with fawning, drooling coverage of HIS "experience" - little of which discussed his rather unremarkable eight years in the U.S. Senate (can anyone point to anything he actually accomplished while there?), but instead focused on his acting career. Behaving like starstruck teenagers meeting their first real "movie star" when covering Fred Thompson, while, on the other hand, denigrating as meaningless piffle the "star power" of Barack Obama, the media has once again exposed its sickening double standards.

[sutz12]

1. In fairness, F. Thompson was a senator from Tenn, IIRC

I don't know how long he "served" though.

[WiseButAngrySara]

3. Hee Hee! It was in the original op! Eight unremarkable years. ....n/t

[EST]

8. No, don't think so.

He has been a lawyer and a long time lobbyist and a crooked republicken, a so-so actor and, is guilty of support for the worst of the corrupt, authoritarian ideas to come through congress.

Edit: I took your post to mean state sen of Tenn, as well as U S senator. If I misinterpreted, forgive me.

[Clark2008]

25. He also served as counsel during Watergate.

For what that's worth.

[tridim]

2. And liberals like Alec Baldwin "should just shut up" while Thompson "looks very presidential"

It's simple, the MSM is set up specifically to pump up Republicans while denigrating Dems.

[liberal N proud]

4. Why did we see weeks of Ann Nichole while the bu$h regime continued to commit crimes against

the state?

[Skip Intro]

5. Thompson - if we could only find a clip of the Rosanne episode

If she'd let us, our side, use it - Thompson plays an evil boss, demeaning and working like slaves the "little guy." I looked on youtube for it, don't know where to get it, but the episode is called, "Let's call it quits." If we could make an ad using that, if he does become the one the repukes put on the ticket, top or bottom, it would ruin him.

Anyone remember that episode, that character?

[Rusty MacHenry]

16. I remember that episode

Thompson played Mr. Faber, the new supervisor at Wellman plastics. He made all the workers work with uxreasonable quotas and if they can't reach them they get fired. He double crosses Roseanne and her and all her friends quit the plant.

[Clark2008]

27. I do.

It was when Roseanne and Jackie worked at the plastics factory - very early episode.

As a funny aside, Thompson's character was canned and replaced by George Clooney's character. :)

[LiberalFighter]

32. Rosie probably doesn't own the rights to the series

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. What's really funny, I think,

is the lukewarm reception the announcement of his possible candidacy has been given on message boards for Law and Order fans. You'd think that at least half of them would be mooning over the possibility of him getting in the race, but that isn't the case. Even the posters who have said they are conservative don't think much of him as a candidate. Could it be we L&O fans are TOO familiar with him?

[sutz12]

7. Didn't he play a corrupt Senator in an old Melanie Griffith movie?

While he was still in office? My memory is a little foggy. Can't remember the name.

[flpoljunkie]

9. Will media remind us how, as DC lobbyist, Fred Thompson enabled the S&L crisis of the late 1980's?

In 1975, Thompson began his eighteen year engagement as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., eventually representing clients including Westinghouse, General Electric (the current corporate owner of the NBC Universal-NBC television network), and the Tennessee Savings and Loan League.

By 1982, Thompson worked the U.S. Congress membership as a lobbyist for passage of the Savings and Loan deregulation legislation desired by the Tennessee Savings and Loan League --- in this case, federal deregulation legislation allowing for additional government support of ailing S&Ls; giving U.S. thrifts the freedom to invest in potentially more profitable, but riskier, ventures; and eliminating interest-rate ceilings on new accounts to increase S&Ls' competitiveness. Enacted into law during in September 1982, the Senate bill pushed by Thompson was incorporated into the Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. The Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 is widely credited with having laid the groundwork for the U.S. Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dalton_Thompson

[madmom]

10. because they see a ronald reagun moment

[babylonsister]

11. That's it in a nutshell, I think. nt

[madmom]

15. "nut shell" lol ... so very apropos!

[beaconess]

12. Bingo!!!

[Cha]

13. The US corporatemediawhores

are just being themselves..I expect nothing from them until they are shut down monetarily from being ignored for the propoganda they sell.

[youngdem]

14. Well, let's be fair

Thompson has MUCH more experience that would be germane to being president.

He was a CRITICAL player in the Watergate hearings, was a two term Senator and is an accomplished actor. Seems like a Repuke prez candidate to me.

Obama is still cutting his teeth. State Senate is like getting elected to student council and he has been on the campaign trail for Prez more than he has been in the Senate.

I like Obama, but experience ISN'T where he shines.

[TwilightGardener]

18. Hmmm, I don't think state senate=student council. Obama's experience is just fine.

Fred, however, has been out of the action for 5 years, and he hated the Senate, according to George Will--thought it was "boring" to have to come up with all those "Sense of the Senate" resolutions. Awww, was Fweddy bored as a Senator? Then the fucker doesn't even come close to deserving the highest office in the land.

[pnwmom]

22. The state senate's like student council? Tell that to Abraham Lincoln.

And there's more than one kind of experience. I'll take Obama's as a professor of constitutional law and as a community organizer over Thompson's as a minor celebrity any day.

I watch Law and Order sometimes, but I'm damn well NOT going to vote for Thompson just because I've seen him playing a prosecutor on TV.

[beaconess]

24. Ain't that the truth

We decry "Washington insiders" and demand fresh faces and perspectives, but then turn around and insist that unless someone IS a Washington insider, they aren't qualified to get in the ring.

Go figure.

[renie408]

26. Yeah, all his years as District Attorney in Manhattan have to count for something. n/t

[Jim Sagle]

17. It's the difference between D and R.

[BenDavid]

19. I have nothing bad to say about Obama,

But seriously, between Obama with two plus years experience and the only team to win back-to-back presidential campaigns since FDR, (the team that beat war hero Bush and war hero Dole), ...

Hey, if Al Gore could not win his home state of Tenn. what is Obama going to do to win it? If Harold Ford could not win the Senate seat and they ran those racist ads the final two weeks what do you think Obama will be faced not only in Tenn but other states? Now answer this question:

who do you think the super-racist GOP wants to run against?

[beaconess]

21. What does this have to do with the subject?

I understand you wanting to take every opportunity to jump out there with your Obama bashing - which seems to border on the obsessive - but this is a real stretch, even for you.

Nevertheless, thanks for your participation.

Now run along.

[pnwmom]

23. Obama can take Ohio, now that Blackwell's gone. And he can take Florida

-- where Governor Christ has just acted to give voting rights back to ex-felons -- and probably Virginia, too. (Remember they had an African-American governor there.)

He doesn't need to take Tennessee to win. We just need to get our votes counted this time. And if we don't, it won't matter WHO we run.

[AtomicKitten]

20. Because Thompson is a Republican, silly. n/t

[NormanYorkstein]

28. Oh well, let's take a wild guess...

...

[w4rma]

29. Because Obama is toast in the general election, I'm sorry to say.

He's being set up to knock down. Hard. They're just planting the seeds for the knock down, if he's the nominee.

[pnwmom]

30. Why? All he'd have to do is take Kerry's states, plus Florida OR Ohio

or even New Mexico. And I bet he'll be stronger in the Midwest than Kerry.

And Virginia, the other critical state in 2004, has already elected a black Governor. I can seem them going for Obama over Guilani or Romney. And McCain's self-destructing.

[Nedsdag]

34. Can't anyone run a 50-state campaign anymore?

Is it expensive? Sure it is; however, the last time I checked, this was the United States of America not the USA and the Confederate States of America.

Yes, win the Kerry states but find other states to be competitive in, not just Ohio and Florida. Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and quite possibly Virginia can be had.

[pnwmom]

35. I was only disputing the idea that he couldn't carry enough states to win.

People seem to forget that we were only one state away from winning last time. The election was stolen in Florida in 2000, and in Ohio and Florida in 2004.

What we need is a clean election. Any of our candidates will do well if everyone is allowed to vote and all the votes are counted.

[ripple]

31. Oh, bullshit.

Do you have anything to back up your claims, or can we pretty much say the same about anycandidate, yours included?

The OP was about the media trivializing Obama as a candidate, rather than building him up to be knocked down. The media's attitude has changed somewhat as of late, not because they suddenly became more objective, but because the level of support Obama has received in the first fund raising quarter has made it impossible to ignore the fact that he is a serious and viable candidate.

[w4rma]

36. Look, I was a Dean supporter and he was able to raise money like this, also.

Dean got wiped out. Of course, us Dean supporters got our revenge by making him the DNC chairman where he has been a huge success (according to the vast majority of the state-level Democrats).

Money isn't everything, although it's extremely important.

[Imagevision]

33. Obama is a serious threat, msm doing what it does best, change the topic content...