Politics - Conor Friedersdorf - Hey Voters: The Kill List Is What Matters - The Atlantic

Politics - Conor Friedersdorf - Hey Voters: The Kill List Is What Matters - The Atlantic:

Even as the Times ran that piece on Ann Romney's horseback riding -- one that almost surely won't affect the presidential race -- they also published a major story on the Obama Administration's process for adding people to a secret kill list that it keeps. Its revelations are major.

So on one hand, the Times reports that:

• Ann Romney participates in a fancy rich-people sport.

• The Romneys are super rich.

• They hang out with other ridiculously rich people.

And on the other hand, the Times reports that:

• President Obama has presided over the deaths of countless innocents.

• He has violated numerous campaign promises.

• His administration distorts the number of innocents it kills.

• Some senior officials think Obama's drone policy creates more terrorists than it is kills.

• Obama's cynical interpretation of "due process" guts the whole concept.

• His political adviser sits in on the meetings where they make the kill list.

So to sum up, one candidate is portrayed, accurately, as being extremely rich, with a wife who has rich-person leisure-time pursuits; and the other candidate is portrayed, accurately, as someone whose secretive policies have wrought dead children, broken promises, violated due process rights, and possibly created more terrorists. And our political culture in the United States is so blinkered that the story about the rich candidate whose wife rides horses is regarded, by conservatives and savvy Politico journalists, as the one that is noteworthy for being negative; whereas the story about the Orwellian turn in the White House doesn't even merit mention.