CNN.com: The Blame Game

by: Julie Hartz
jh101105@ohio.edu


As I began my virtual exploration of CNN.com this week, the first thing that popped out to me—even before I read any articles—were the titles. “GOP blamed for Wall Street Crisis”, “Palin Accuses ‘Obama-Biden Democrats’ of spreading ‘lies’”, “Bill Clinton says Dems shouldn’t attack Palin.”

As you can see, there’s a common thread between these titles: they are all about each party blaming one another. Well since these articles caught my attention, I decided to take a deeper look past the headlines to see what sort of substance was behind them. What I found was quite surprising.

In the interest of not wanting to repeat myself, I’ll just detail the article that affected me the most. In the article where Bill Clinton says the Democratic Party should not ridicule Sarah Palin’s skimpy resume,



Clinton says, “Why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don’t we like them and celebrate them and be happy for her elevation to the ticket?” Now this sounds like a really nice thing for a Democrat to say about a Republican... especially weeks before the election. Then I think back to the primary season, and remember how critical Bill Clinton was of Barack Obama before he was chosen as the Presidential Candidate.



Was Clinton not doing exactly that? It’s funny how someone’s attitude can change so quickly when his wife is off the ticket. I do agree that the accusations and digging into personal lives has gotten very old, very quickly. But that was the pot calling the kettle black.

Another story that caught my attention sends us back 8 years to the Florida recount catastrophe. In the article, “Florida Voting Issues Raise Fears of 2000-like debacle” problems with Florida’s local elections are creating a panic that the same thing is going to happen in November of ’08 that happened in ’00. Apparently Florida is using paper ballots that can be read by an “optical reading device”; however there have already been issues with the judicial race in Palm Beach County.



Election officials say the system should work, however skeptics will be left crossing their fingers election night that all works as planned.