From the LA Times:
You have to give Rush Limbaugh a perverse kind of credit. At least when he is demonizing Barack Obama, fabricating Obama policies, blaming Obama for single-handedly causing the recession and the stock market crash, he doesn't pretend to be fair.
Opening his first post-election rant against the president-elect, Limbaugh launched in with a certain relish. "The game," he told his radio listeners, "has begun."
Sean Hannity, on the other hand, insisted on feigning a post-election detente, telling his Fox News television audience last week, "I want Barack Obama to succeed."
Didn't he think anyone would notice that, just a moment later, he was back parroting the failed campaign argument that Obama is a "mystery"?
"I fear [this] is the guy that has these radical associations 20 years ago," Hannity added, an odd way of demonstrating support for the new commander in chief.
A healthy skepticism is not only the media's right but its obligation. Indeed, commentators at many mainstream outlets -- including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal -- have already argu
ed that Obama's best bet to succeed will be if he hews to a centrist path.
But many on the losing end of last week's election want to hold on to their anger. And there are those in the media -- led by the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity -- only too ready to feed that animus, along with their own ratings.
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